Finland Funland! Part 2 (14-day)

We spent most of our next couple of days travelling from Helsinki, first catching the next domestic flight to Ivalo, and then moving northwards across the border by coach to Kirkenes, Norway. 

The Kirkenes Snow Hotel crafts their houses annually from ice, a pretty elaborate affair. The main entrance is a sitting area and bar shaped from ice, and so is the flight of stairs leading to the bedrooms. Each room is sparsely decorated, with rugs over the ice bed, but the walls are carved, from Frozen's Elsa to political figures. I was too busy poking around to take much photography, but I did snap a quick shot of their more traditional accommodations. 



Snowhotel Kirkenes runs the nearby King Crab Safari. We were bundled up in our full winter gear, and then started layering the safari's thick overalls, ski mask and helmet, something that I've come to learnt is on par for the course every time outdoor activities are called for in Finland. It's a 30 minutes sled ride on the back of a snowmobile across the frozen fjord, and we tagged along the crabbers as they reeled in their cages, separate the crabs from one another and killed them. I couldn't feel my face the minute the snowmobile went at full blast, but later back in the restaurant, as we tucked into the steamed king crabs afterwards, the frozen journey suddenly all seemed worth it. 

While at the Snow Hotel, we also met ... Gabba the Hut. Heehee. 

Afterwards, it’s another day’s journey to Saariselka, where we put up roots at the Kakslauttanen Arctic Resort for one night. This accommodation was the selling point of the trip for me, and oh boy, it did not disappoint. 

The start of the stay in wintertime began with choosing our own sled, to tug our luggage through the snow. 

The village contains neat little rows of log cabins, and the interior was just the poshest log cabin I'd ever been in. Mine (clearly the best of the lots) contains rustic wooden furniture, a granite fireplace, a chandelier made from reindeer antlers, a private sauna, and best of all, a glass-ceiling extension with a bed under the stars, where you can enjoy all the convenience of modern heating while sleeping under the stars (and to keep a look-out for any potential Northern Lights!) There are 6 beds in a cabin, though the tour nicely kept it to two to a room, as I'm sure everybody wanted to sleep under the stars. 

I was keen to view the northern lights, but I conked out right after a hot shower. It was the best night's rest I remembered! Other members of the tour, clearly less sleep-deprived than me, had a whale of a time making snow from boiling water (courtesy of the sauna just a step away from the front door!), and even though they couldn't see the northern lights with their naked eyes, a couple did manage to photograph a green hue in the sky, and all from the comfort of their beds.

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Over our trip, we tucked into the local daily breakfast of a generous amount of smoked ocean trout, croissants and rye bread with munavoi (a spread made with butter and hard boiled egg). There's Karelian pastries and fresh cottage cheese, and once even meesjuusto, a local brown butter that I regretfully didn't try. Being so close to the salmon migration, smoked salmon is easy to come across and we managed to have smoked salmon or ocean trout almost everyday. I could get used to the typical Nordic hotel breakfast!

A trip to the Husky Dog Safari was our next attraction. Huskies are a mix between wolves and hunting dogs, but contrary to my imagination, they weren't as large as I thought they would be to pull on sleds all day.

We started our tour by playing with the cheeky husky puppies. My favourite pup was the playful one with heterochromia irises! They love winter accessories and will make opportunistic grabs for your winter hats or gloves. One in particular was enamoured with Miss XS’s scarf and started nipping at it, and it soon became a game involving all three pups until the trainer pulled them away. Luckily, much like me, they're easily distractable and the strings tied around the trainer's waist soon caught their attention,  and they started playing tug of war with that instead. 

All your dangling winter accessories are now fair game 

In the teepee, the trainer got a fire going quickly, and as we were chilling by the side of the fire, he showed us his collection of Northern Light photography taken from just outside his house annually. Instant jealousy. According to him, he had the best luck after 9pm, and in the months from September to October, and afterwards in February to March. 

A quick drink of hot beverage and it’s our turn at the sleds! These are pulled by adult huskies, who can be trained to go up to 80km a day.

I don't know if everybody knows this except me, but doing physical exertion in winter-appropriate clothing is incredibly hard. You're packing on a couple of extra kilo of clothes, and the chill still nips at the cheeks and nose. Which makes what the huskies do very, very impressive. 

They had just came back from one circuit, and were definitely winded from the first circuit. Because they were quite poor dears really, and as we sped through the snow trail in the woods, I got off the sled intermittently at some uphill points and started pushing the sled along instead. Still, the pace that they kept to was no joke, and after every few minutes of exertion, I promptly hopped back onto the sled. (My stamina did not impress the huskies.) 

Restroom: no points for guessing which gender

In the afternoon, we had a bit of downtime after checking in to Saariselkä Ski and Sport Resort. Some people went for the sauna, or to the spa, or for the toboggan trail. Me, I took the opportunity to change into PJs, lounge around the hotel room and eat cup noodles with Miss XS. #priorities

The main reason why we were here in the resort was for the snowmobile activity, where we went on a trail designed to see the Aurora. It was hard to get out of the comfort of the warm room and PJs, but we knew it was a good sign when after we got onto our snowmobile, we could already see a faint aurora grew and ebbed on our west side by the resort grounds. Score! 

A brief instruction on how to handle the snowmobile, and we were off. True enough, as we sped (ok maybe more trundled than sped) through the woods upwards the mountain, the elusive aurora came and went. Some danced, others had hues of pink and white, others stretched across the horizon in many arcs and encompassed stars and galaxies between the arcs. It was beautiful.

But also, it was mostly cold. Lessons learnt from a Finland trip: when a Finn tells you it’s going to be cold, pack on the layers and take everything they offer you. I had on all my regular layers, and had thought the extra socks, overalls, ski mask and second set of gloves I was offered was overkill. But, like all the wise men on the trip with me, I kept my mouth shut and took everything they offered, and swapped out my winter boots for the one in the shop. Listen to the experts - they were right as always. It was indeed freezing and even with those additional layers, I still couldn’t feel my toes halfway on the trip.

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Mooo....se? 

We continued on our tour of Finland to Lapland, Finland's most northern territory. Rovaniemi is the capital of Lapland (and the land of Santa!) In a postcard-worthy turn of events, it began snowing heavily as we approached Santa Village. The weather was perfect as we boarded the reindeer sleighs: large snowflakes were tumbling in every direction, accumulating over treetops and roofs.

Unlike huskies, reindeers are far more placcid. We plodded along at a leisurely pace and afterwards, warmed up at the giant campfire set up for us at the ticket office. 

The Arctic Circle marks the area of the Earth where the Sun can be seen above the horizon for more than 24 hours at least once a year ("midnight sun" in summer), and where the sun can be below the horizon for more than 24 hours at least once a year ("polar night" in winter). The boundary of the Arctic Circle cuts through Santa village, and like all good and proper tourists, we spent a long time posing with the demarcation pillars, and did the rest of the kitsch tourisy things like meeting the official Santa Claus, and then sending a postcard (stamped with the official Santa Claus Village postal stamp) to remind the rest of our families that we’re doing something fun without inviting them. 

We stayed for a couple of days at Hotel Santa Claus, where our total star tour manager wrangled free upgrades to our hotel rooms, and we got a deluxe room on the sixth floor,  complete with a personal sauna. I didn't appreciate how good having a personal sauna is, until my stay here where I looked forward to taking in some hot steam after a cold day out and about. (Also, we may or may not have used it to humidify our hotel room, until we finally spotted the warning sign notifying that doing so could set off the fire alarm. Don’t be like us.)

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Our Ice Breaking Cruise was in Sweden, where to nobody’s surprise, we crossed the border and the first thing we saw was an IKEA. (I didn't realise IKEAs were colored in the Swedish flag colours!)

In regions where sea-routes are regularly frozen over, ice-breakers are utilised to rescue stranded ships, as a supply vehicle for far-flung research laboratories and to make a path through iced-over seas for regular ships. The Polar Explorer was employed by Germany as an ice-breaker in the 1970s until its retirement, where now it enjoys a cushier gig as a tourist cruise in Sweden along its coast.

As the ice-breaker powered through the frozen sea, we were taken on a tour of the interior of the ship, where we saw the machinery of the engine room and even made our way into the captain's room just as the ship moored. 

But the best part of the trip is undoubtedly when the ship stopped in the middle of its path, and we donned the survival suit and floated in the in the icy waters in the path bashed out by the ice breaker. We remained fully clothed beneath the suit and didn't even get wet!

It was so cold, you can already see the just-broken path reforming ice over its surface

We also took a walk on the Bay of Bothnia, which surface had entirely frozen over and powdered with a fresh layer of snow. It was surreal. 

Arriving back to Finland from Sweden marks the last day of our hols, which makes me both a little homesick and sad. On our final day, we snuck in a cheeky visit to Ranua Wildlife Park, where the zookeeper brought us around. There were boars, polar bears, and the Snowy Owl, and she coaxed some of the friendlier animals out with bits of carrots or meat. That's when I saw the shy Arctic Fox and my new personal favourite. 

MAUURR CARROTS

Fazer has an outlet just around the corner, and I picked up as many chocolate bars, chocolate-covered almonds and strawberries as I could conceivably carry.

It's a winter wonderland indeed.