Exploring Finland

My ''Aussie mom'' Maree, came recently to Finland and she gave me an perfect opportunity to play tourist. See, I've never really traveled in Finland, even though there is quite a lot to see. You wake up to that fact when people ask you about northern lights, Lapland and the differences between different cities and you don't really have an answer. In Australia, I started thinking, where would I take my friends who'll visit. What would I want to see, if I'd never been to Finland before? I wanted to see Finland through someone's eyes, who's never been here.

My wish was granted. Not only did I have one friend visit me, I had two. With the first friend we didn't get to see much more than Helsinki but we did get to go to Poland as well. More about that in my previous post.

It's been great playing a tourist in my own country.

First thing we did with Maree, was a cruise to Stockholm, Sweden. It was our plan B, since we failed to get the visas on time to go to Russia. Nothing wrong with Sweden either, I just have seen it before. But I'm going to tell you guys more about that cruise on my next post that's dedicated only for cruises.

A day after the cruise we left straight to Lapland. We were on a tight schedule really, since she only had 10 days with me, and I wanted to show her as much as possible. We flew to Kittilä, which is all the way up north, near Swedish border. It was only hour and half flight, since Finland isn't that big. At least in Australian point of view. We arrived around midday and went straight to our rental car that was waiting us outside. Since we had the whole day to spend, we headed straight to the reindeer farm.

It was a bit of a drive to the farm and everything was just completely covered in snow. It was mesmerizing. Honestly, I've lived in Finland for over 20 years and I've never seen anything so beautiful. Northern Finland is a whole different world and no wonder a go to place for 80% of the tourists. We were lucky enough to get great weather too. Usually it's pretty dark here during winter but we had 3 sunny days out of 4.

At the farm we had hot chocolates inside by a fireplace and we prepared sausages for ourselves in the traditional Finnish style. Meaning you put the sausage on top of a stick and cook it in the fireplace and then eat it with tomato sauce and mustard. All that got us warmed up for the reindeer sled. We picked the 30- minute one. It was a tight sled but it was very comfortable and nice.. Until the last 10 minutes when your face froze off and you couldn't feel your toes. But really It was worth it. I even got to pat a reindeer at the end! Like the farmer said, he can't tell me if I can or can't, I need to try for myself. I'm pretty sure the reindeer liked my scratches since he was shrugging and wasn't trying to go anywhere. So cute!

Afterwards we went straight to the grocery store and to our cabin. I booked a cabin with everything we needed, engine heating pole for the car, sauna and a drying cabinet to warm up our clothes. We cooked a nice dinner, went to sauna then chased some northern lights at the highest point of Levi. We didn't see anything though. There was too much light. Still I can say it was a perfect first day in Lapland.

Driving itself was an adventure for us. I can't drive here yet, since I haven't changed my licence to Finnish one yet, and Maree had never driven in the snow or on the right side of the road. She did a great job though.

The next day we went to the famous Game of thrones- themed snow village. The whole place was absolutely gorgeous and so much better than I expected. Everything, and I mean everything was ice. All the rooms had themes too, like the house of stark with the head of a wolf and the mother of dragons with 3- baby dragons and Khaleesi. Just beautiful. My toes were freezing solid though. I sat on a ice throne. Felt good. They had an ice restaurant there as well, but we preferred the cafeteria inside in the warmth. We had traditional creamy salmon soup with rye bread. That night we watched a movie, went to the sauna and around 11 PM we left out again to chaise the lights. The tourist information center told us where to go and we were supposed to leave our car at the parking spot and hike to this tiny hut on the top of the mountain but we failed to see where the road was, since it was snowing quite much and we got stuck in the snow. First I tried to dig out the car and push it by myself but it was no use.

We decided to go look for people to help us. First people we found, were an Aussie guy and his Russian girlfriend. We managed to get the car more stuck by trying to reverse out of the snow pile. After an hour or so the gave up and left. Four more people came our way but they didn't seem too keen to help and the just passed us saying it's never gonna work, we stayed behind determined to call the road services and so we did. While we were waiting another group came our way, this time there was a group of German and Dutch guys. They were all super helpful and got us out of the snow in no time. We exchanged numbers and decided to go see the northern lights as a group the next day.

The next morning we decided to go try our luck with the husky farm, unfortunately all the ones we drove to had pre bookings only. So note to you, if your ever going over to Lapland, pre book everything! We booked the husky farm for the next day, that also happened to be our last day.
So instead the farm, we headed to the Sami exhibition. Sami people are the indigenous people of Finland, and the only indigenous people of European union. The live and lived mostly in Sweden, Norway and Finland. The exhibition was both in and out doors. Unfortunately the temperature was close to -30c that day and we just ran through the outdoor exhibition part really quick. I can say I learned a lot. The first people in Finland were some bad ass people. Temperatures can go close to -40c up north and they survived in huts farming reindeer. Crazy. After we went to have some reindeer meat.

Later that night after Sauna, we went to look for some northern lights. We went to
Kätkänranta, left the car safely in the park and hiked up to the hut. The hike was just about 1k long. There was a fireplace both outside and indoors in the hut. We were able to cook food and enjoy some drinks. Most importantly we did see northern lights!! The were a bit faint and some local guys did say they were bad, but we saw them! I think they were the best lights I've seen!

The whole trip had been more than perfect and we were down to our last day. On our way to the husky farm we realised our 12.30 appointment was supposed to be 11.30 appointment.  They couldn't squeeze us in and despite all our efforts and calls we never got in to a husky farm. No huskies for us.We did some sight seeing instead. Ended up being a good day.

Hope you enjoy the pictures as much as I did taking them!