Day 12 Christmas Day

Merry Christmas! Today I planned to spend the day at Santa Claus Village. I got the local bus to the village which is 8km out of town. Rovaniemi is heavily covered in snow so it was so pretty, the lights and snow. I went to the official post office of Santa and sent some postcards for next Christmas. Then I went to the Arctic Circle line and got a stamp on my passport (woohoo, officially in the Arctic Circle!). Then I went to line up to meet Santa in his office. I snuck in with a tour group before official opening time so the line was very short.  One girl in my hostel waited 2hrs yesterday! So they let us in one by one and the elf tells Santa where you are from. You sit next to him, talk to him and get some photos. Unbeknownst to me, they also record a video of the whole experience! Even though I'm a grown adult it was still very exciting!

I wandered through all the shops, restraining myself from buying everything. So much Christmas stuff! By mid afternoon it started snowing! It was so magical and a true 100% White Christmas! Snow & Santa!

The village itself is not big and I had dinner booked at 7.30pm in the Ice Restaurant at Snowman World so I had lots of time to explore. I stayed mainly inside as it was between -11 & -13c today. Dinner is a set menu in a restaurant made of ice. Entree is a wild mushroom soup, main is roasted reindeer (sorry Rudolf!) and dessert is chocolate cake. OMG reindeer = AMAZING!! It was so temder that it just melted in your mouth. It had a mild flavor, more like beef then venison. So so good! In the restaurant I was seated with 2 Aussie groups & 1 New Zealand group. How ironic that we travel so far away from home to be placed on the same table! The carvings and sculpture inside the restaurant and bar are great. We got 1 drink as a pre-dinner drink before our meal. It was a shot of vodka (actually maybe 1.5 shots) in the flavour of your choice served in an ice glass. I chose cloudberry on the bartenders recommendation. It was an interesting flavor. Dinner was a nice evening then I got driven beck to my hostel. All in all it was a good Christmas Day :) Tomorrow I am going on an icebreaker and turn donning a survival suit for a swim in the Arctic water!