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!

Day 11 Christmas Eve snowmobiling

Today is Christmas Eve! I had a snowmobile safari to a reindeer and husky farm booked. Based on last night I dressed extra warm. After pickup we were taken to the tour company office & given more clothes. Then we drove to the snowmobile place and were shown how to drive them. There were 2 families reveling together in the group which were so annoying. 5 young kids between them who had no manners and were so high maintenance! Myself, the 2 Americans and the guide got so frustrated with them. Anyway. We got on the snowmobiles (sleigh for the 2 families) and headed off into the wilderness. It was actually quite difficult to steer. It was a lot of fun though.

Stop 1 was the reindeer farm. Rudolph and Donna and Dancer and Blitzen were all there along with the rest of the gang! We went inside too warm up with warm berry juice (amazing) veggie gong out for the sleigh ride. We got to drive ourselves which was fun. Not very fast though.

Next we drove the snowmobiles to a teepee in the forest for lunch. More sausages, chicken nuggets & kebabs was on the menu here.

Next we drive to the husky farm.  Here we got more warm berry juice (it is seriously good!) before heading out to see some of the dogs. We then got into sleds and had a husky ride through the forest. That was fun too. By now though the temp was -17 or -18c according to the guide and we were feeling every degree of it. We headed back to the van and back to town.

Walking back to the hostel I found the outdoor shopping mall. It's a very pretty shopping strip with an igloo, slide and Christmas tree. There is also a temperature sign:

Now that I have feeling back into my body, I'm spending the night in the hostel. Tomorrow I am off to Santa Claus village to meet Santa!

Day 10 Igloo resort & Rovaniemi

Today I woke to discover faint light. I thought I would be speeding the day in darkness! As the morning went on, it got much lighter. So much for a dark winters day. I was due to spend the morning at the resort and my bus was picking me up at 2pm. I checked out at 10am and went for breakfast. It was so warm in the restaurant that I stayed in there for over 2hrs! I went walking around and explored the resort. The snow was so pretty but so deep off the paths! I got my leg stuck at 1 point with the snow over my knee!

The bus collected a group of us at 2pm for the drive to Rovaniemi. It was so snowy that we had to slow down a lot and at one point we followed a snow plow.

Upon arriving in Rovaniemi I had to walk to my hostel. 4 blocks through snow dragging a 25kg suitcase is NOT fun! The hotel is fortunately close to the centre of town which is great. I had a northern lights tour booked so I had only an hour to relax. We had a big group for the tour. We were wearing so many layers that we felt like Michelin men! We drive 1hr out of town then walked up a steep snow covered hill. By this stage it was -15c. Bloody cold! We were very lucky however that the northern lights were already out when we arrived! We sat down and started shooting photos. After 2hrs we went into a teepee and cooked sausages (hot dogs) over a fire. We returned to the bus and got back at 2am. Amazing lights just really cold.

Day 9 Travelling to Finnish Lapland - Updated

Today was a day of travel. I was collected at 3am and taken to Reykjavik airport for my 7.30am flight to Helsinki. It's less than 3hrs to Helsinki but the time difference is 2hrs. I then checked in for my domestic flight and spent 3hrs wandering Helsinki airport. Expensive place!

My flight to Ivalo (Northern Finland, in the Lapland region) was delayed almost an hour which was a pain. I forget how things have to be different in different climates. We stopped on a side runway and trucks came to the place to de-ice the plane! Fascinating! Small things amuse small minds I guess!

After arriving in Ivalo the girl bus was waiting. Unbeknownst to me, dinner & breakfast is included in my room! Score! Wifi is only in the restaurant so I'm sitting here having dinner writing this before heading to my igloo. I an excited to see my glass igloo! I hope they live up to the Google images I've seen! Dinner is a set menu. I had creamy forest mushroom soup (amazing), sirloin steak (beef) with potato bake (very good) and soon will be chocolate fondant for dessert (omg sounds amazing!).

Now that I've committed the ultimate sin & blogged my dinner, I'm off to explore the resort and find my glass igloo. All photos to come will be in the dark as the sun does not rise here in winter. True Arctic night!

Update: so its morning & last night I slept in my igloo. It was exceptionally warm, I was sweating! But on my way back from the showers, the aurora became stronger! I stayed outside for about 2hrs shooting aurora photos. It was amazing. When the batteries in the camera finally died I went to bed. Then I watched the aurora from the warmth of my bed while drinking hot chocolate! Awesome!