All good things come to an end

After the amazing and succesful holiday in Rovaniemi, Finland, we finally arrived back home after long traveling hours. Even though the traveling takes a long time, it was totally worth every second of it. In the end we had very nice trip. We were there for a week so we totally had enough time to experience the Christmas atmosphere in many different ways.

Finnish food was delicious even though a bit weird for me. Like I would have never imagined that someday I would be eating reindeer or berries that people have actually picked up from the forest with their own hands. I think its incredible that you can actually use so many ingredients straight from the nature close to you.

I really liked our cottage and the sauna was an amazing experience itself. We also heard that we should try to go straight to snow from the sauna. That sounded so extreme that we actually had to do it. One of my favorite things in Santa Claus village was the post office. It is incredible how so many people from all over the world actually sends letters and gifts to Santa Claus and not forgetting Santa Claus himself, it was so exciting and felt unreal.

I would definitely go back to Finland someday. And if you want something else than just a basic city holiday or beach holiday, this place is like made for you!

Though maybe next time I will go skiing even more Northern in Finland because unfortunately this time we didn't have enough time for that.

Lapland giving its best

Yesterday we landed and made our way here, and we are already absolutely amazed. The first thing that totally blew our minds is this purely fresh air. This is not called the worlds cleanest air without reason, and now we really do understand it. The feeling when snow is crunching under our feet, and the Christmas light decorations are shining in the dark night, is just incredible. All the buildings with different colors here are made of wood and picturing very traditional Lappish style. Local cuisine is making effectively use of different ingredients people can find from the nature around us. This surrounding atmosphere is at the same time full of happiness and certain kind of smooth calmness which we are not used to in the big city back home. We feel the local people are very friendly and willing to help in every case.

Last night we ended the long day full of many hours travelling by having a lovely dinner at a local restaurant, just next to our accommodation. We are actually staying in Santa Claus Holiday Village which is next to Arctic Circle and we love our cottage because we can enjoy the coziness and Finnish traditional sauna too. The service we received was very professional, the waiters made us feel comfortable in there and gave some personal recommendations what to try. We ate some smoked salmon, reindeer served with lingonberry jam, and as a dessert we decided to try frozen cloudberries with vanilla ice cream – delicious. We are surprised how tasty these Finnish delicacies actually are!  In this point we are very happy we made the decision to come and experience this beautiful part of Northern Europe. Overall this area of Santa Claus Village is very clean and well organized. Only the big road and the traffic in front of Christmas House is a thing which concerns me a bit. Luckily people are keeping their eyes open very well and accidents are avoided.

There are many things to see here during our stay which makes us even more excited. Today is the day we have been waiting for, we are going to visit Santa Claus!

Booking the trip

Last summer we were wondering with my best friend that where should we travel next. We have been exploring different destinations all over the world in past five years but we have never been in Lapland. Especially I am very enthusiastic to see what Finland has to offer.

Santa Claus Village is located along the Arctic Circle, in Rovaniemi, Finland. This will be our next place for an adventure in winter 2018. In order for some pre-investigation regarding our destination, I did some searching and found the official webpage of Santa Claus Village. First I found two different but very similar webpages, Santa Claus Village and Santa Claus Holiday Village which caused a bit puzzlement. Although very quickly I figured out that the second page I found was an accommodation concept there in the area of our destination (and we actually already booked our accommodation from that site). So the first result from the search was the actual site.

“Rovaniemi is The Official home of Santa Claus.” This is the fact based on the whole function in the area of Santa Claus Village. Already as a first experience the webpage strongly conveys the warm and mystic atmosphere in this breathtaking winter wonderland. I can say to my eyes the layout of the page feels a bit old fashioned but it also is the point of the old and well-known story of Santa Claus.
Websites are written in 6 different languages, unfortunately there are no option in Chinese so we must go with English. The information in the webpage is very well described and the amount is brilliant. It may easily take hours to scroll the pages and watch the videos taken of the area. In case I want even more info there are many links I can follow further to the official pages of some husky safaris for example. I honestly can say the information I find from this webpage of Santa Claus Village can definitely be enough for many travelers who are planning to visit there. This is for sure the best source of information for us as well.