Lapland

November - December 2023
A short but fine adventure by Emil Read more
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  • 5days
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  • 3.5kkilometers
  • 2.2kkilometers
  • Day 3

    Helsinki

    December 1, 2023 in Finland ⋅ ☁️ -8 °C

    First stop of the trip was Helsinki, we got in quite late Thursday night to a snowy cold city. It already felt quite festive.

    We woke up early for an average complementary breakfast.
    We then went on a walk about town to head towards the (rock church) and find some decent coffee (which we still haven’t found😂)

    We went to a sauna we saw on YouTube that is right next to the Baltic Sea. So once you get out of the sauna you jump into the ocean which is about 1 degree and go back to the sauna. It sounds crazy but after wards you are super relaxed.

    We then went to the local food market to try the famous salmon soup, which was delicious. After we went to the local Christmas market in-front of the famous cathedral. After trying a few more delicacy’s we caught an over night train to Rovaniemi.

    A perfect start to the trip.
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  • Day 4

    Rovaniemi & Santa’s village

    December 2, 2023 in Finland ⋅ ☁️ -11 °C

    After a lovely overnight train (significant improvement on our previous experience in Egypt) we started the day quite early at 7 am. Got the car and we headed to town to try and find breakfast… That seemed harder than we thought as nothing opened before 10 am. We eventually found a hostel that had its restaurant open.

    We then went to Santa’s, it didn’t really live up to expectations, but we sat down with Santa and had a nice conversation, after a 35€ photo we went for a walk about.

    Eventually we ended up at a tipi that sold fire cooked salmon which was amazing.

    At that point it was almost sunset so we went for a drive to a recommended view spot. After a short freezing hike we found this outpost thing that’s about two stories high. The view from the top was insanely beautiful seeing the early sunset.
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  • Day 5

    Frozen waterfalls & huskys

    December 3, 2023 in Finland ⋅ ☁️ -8 °C

    On the second last day we went to a Korouoman canyon out to the east of northern Finland. This was a tip given to us by our guide the previous night. It was an almost 2 hours drive which meant it was a race against the sun.

    Here we did a 5km hike to look at 4 frozen waterfalls. The hike was very beautiful, we also had to hike with crampons for the first time seeing as it’s -10 and the trail isn’t maintained.

    The waterfalls are brown due to all the iron in the ground in the area. There is also 1 that’s pure blue. Some crazy people climb up these waterfalls 😳.

    It was amazing, we also saw some reindeer on route.

    The last day we went dog sledding, both Nicola and I were uneasy as animals usually aren’t in the best of conditions in tourism industry. We did allot of research to find out if it’s ok.
    The guide explained to us that these dogs NEED to run 50km a day or they start pulling their enclosure apart. You could also see when they were prepping us these dogs were chomping at the bit to get started.
    They all seemed to be looked after extremely well and the guides really placed an emphasis on their safety even more so than the clients.

    This was such a fun experience and was great to be able to spend some time with these amazing pups.

    This was the last big activity of the trip.

    Lapland is such a beautiful place and I can highly recommend a long weekend away here.

    Ps. Northern lights aren’t guaranteed but 50% chance, it’s one of the best places in the world to witness it, unfortunately we didn’t get the chance
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