Millie was up at 6:30AM this morning and it was raining. We were tired and cozy and not in a rush to go anywhere. The forecast showed rain all day and we had outdoor activities planned, so I suggested maybe we just have a cozy day at home.

We made oatmeal, drank coffee, picked fresh mint, made mint tea, did some drawing, played what felt like hours of imaginative play, put on our rain gear to look for slugs, drank more coffee, played pretend restaurant, listened to 15 episodes of Story Pirates, read some books, took showers, drank more coffee, read more books.

I checked the clock expecting it to be the afternoon and it was… 10AM. We changed course and knew we had to leave the cabin if we were going to make it to bedtime.

Our first stop was the nearby Cēsis castle. I feel like a brat saying it, but we are castled out. If I have to walk up one more spiral stone staircase, I swear to god…

A nice touch with this one is they gave us a real candle torch to carry as we walked through. The flickering orange light and smell of hot wax with the wet stone really set the mood.

Millie asked some light questions, like “what is war?” And “would I die if I got shot with a cannonball?” And “why would they want to shoot people?”

From the castle we went to a huge grocery store. While I’m sick of castles, I am not yet sick of exploring regional grocery stores. I separated from my family to walk the aisles searching for inspiration for dinner. Some women go to the spa to relax, I grocery shop. We headed home to drop off our food and eat a quick lunch.

By this point it was 2pm. Still too early to call it a day. We drove out to Sigulda to ride the cable car over the river. When we arrived weather and visibility were terrible and we saw that it would cost us €50. We got our cheap asses back in the car and drove across the bridge while pretending to be a cable car.

We stopped at Gutman’s cave, which was impressive not for its caveness but for the 400 years(!) of graffiti that covered it.

We saw a staircase that looked like it would take us to a vista but only seemed to take us up to… more stairs. Nick even ran ahead to see the end and it was nothing but stairs. We gave up. But we got a good leg workout.

Finally we had killed enough time to retire to our cabin. I made soup and toast.

We did all the same things we did this morning, minus coffee and plus some games of Uno. At 7:30 Millie did the unthinkable: said she was tired and was going to get ready for bed. That’s just how boring and cozy today was.