Goodbye Finland, Hello Norway

After a leisurely start to the day, we travelled for about 3 hours to Kirkenes in Norway. That is what has been great about this tour, there have been no uncivilised early morning starts - the earliest we have started has been 10am - today was 11am. We quickly notice a difference between the 2 countries - Finland is relatively flat, while Norway is quite mountainous.

Kirkenes is where we start the cruise portion of our tour tomorrow, but first we visited the snow hotel which is also our accommodation. Thankfully we are staying in the cabins which look a little like hobbit houses and not in the ice hotel itself. Novelty, yes! Comfortable, I think not!

In the ice hotel, everything is made from ice and snow and each room is decorated in various themes from Santa, to Frozen and the honeymoon suite. Apparently guests sleep in special sleeping bags but even then, the mouth and nose can tend to get frozen. We did, however, enjoy a welcome drink at the ice bar.

There were also huskies and reindeer at this hotel. The huskies looked funny, partly because they were all sitting on top of their kennel. Someone said it was too hot in the kennel for them (it was around-9°C), but it could also be because they were waiting for their mates to return from a sleigh ride.Read more