Finishing up my trip in Helsinki with a great breakfast buffet at the GLO art hotel. Highly recommend this hotel especially for the price, cleanliness and location.
Now back to the central railway, buying a ticket back to the airport which was easier the second time around. Video posted below on how to purchase this cheap ticket. Make sure you ask someone to help you get on the right train back to the airport. There is an app but it was a bit confusing, plus everyone is very friendly. I met a lovely lady that chatted with me the whole way from Finland.
Onto Rovaniemi!! I looked at multiple ways to get to Lapland and I have a few options below I looked into (prices fluctuate depending on season). You might be asking yourself what is Lapland? Lapland makes up 1/3 of Finland and is a region of the country. Lapland covers northern Sweden, Finland, Norway and part of Russia’s Kola Peninsula.
- By plane it’s an hour and a half and $100
- By night train it was 8 hours and over $200 (night train was my thought so I wouldn’t lose a whole day of vacation)
- Another option is to rent a car and drive which 10 hours. I wasn’t willing to sacrifice a whole day and I didn’t really want to rent a car since the public transit is so easy and cheap.
Long story short I hopped on a flight! Finnair is great and got me there in a jiffy. Don’t worry about transportation because there are taxies and buses galore. I was headed to the Arctic Tree House Hotel so it was on one of the bus stops which was 8 Euros and around $9…done! Most of the time you can get one to Santa Claus hotel in town center, Santa Claus village, Arctic treehouse and many more places.
About 5 minutes later on the bus I was ushered into a very welcoming reception area with a fire and Glogi 😋. I gave them my cards, sat down and was able to drink my hot beverage by the fire while they checked me in. Next they gave me a rundown of the location and then drove me around the property with my luggage to my tree house.
The afternoon was spent reading a book (Snug in Iceland) having a delicious bowl of soup with unbelievable good bread and a snowball cocktail which tasted like orange dreamsicle at Raka the restaurant on the property. Why does their bread have to be so good!
Later that evening I came back to the same restaurant for the cauliflower curry with Brussels sprouts. I just couldn’t bring myself to eat the reindeer, they are so stinking cute! I also enjoyed a small cheese plate with a glass of red wine. The art on the walls, the roaring fire behind me and a view with mounds of snow outside the window just seemed to make it that much more magical.
Next up was finding the northern lights. I figured I would have a go of it and hike to the observation tower up the hill. There wasn’t a soul on the trail, quite dark and not a sound anywhere. Luckily the hotel uses what’s app and you can message them for anything and they navigated me back to the trail after a few wrong turns. I wish every hotel had a prompt response to questions like they did! I waited for about 30 minutes in silence until the sky opened up, the clouds disappeared and the dance of lights began. It was incredible! All of my photos and videos were taken with my iPhone which still amazes me on the clarity of them. After my fingers hurt so bad from the cold I headed back to the room and the lights started up again right over the hotel. People were running out of their rooms to get pictures. I do recommend getting the Aurora app, it seems to be the one most of them use here and it will send you notifications if you have a good chance at seeing them based on your location.
Northern Lights Finnish Myth
The Finnish word for the Northern Lights translates to “fox fires”. The firefox is a mythical and elusive creature of the North coveted by hunters. Legend has it that a person who catches the firefox would be rich and famous beyond belief.
As it runs along the fells, the fox’s flaming tail whips crystals of snow into the sky and the fur scratches the trees, setting the skies on fire. There is a small element of truth in this explanation as fur can be charged with static energy, producing sparks. Indigenous Canadians had similar ideas about the fur of their reindeer.
Another explanation for the Finnish name, revontulet, is the word “repo”, used by the migrant Forest Finns, meaning a spell. Thus, the auroras were spellfires, caused by forces of darkness and light waging war in the sky. I took this from https://www.lapland.fi/visit/only-in-lapland/lapland-northern-lights-myths-auroras/ if you would like to read more about the myths, some are a tad darker but the fire fox is the best one.