We booked this trip in June (and if you plan on doing something similar, I urge you to not even wait that long - it was almost sold out then). I have been drafting this post from almost the moment I clicked send on our reservations. But I knew that it would all have to wait until we had experienced it all, and then I could do it the justice it deserved. And now, we are home, I have the pictures uploaded and I am ready to write and nothing I can come up with will do it justice. There are no words. Nothing that can explain how magical it is to be at ground zero during the holidays.
You see, we took the girls to the North Pole - LITERALLY - right before Christmas. We took them to where Santa lives. We went North to Helsinki, and then even farther North, to where the sun doesn't shine - LITERALLY! It was a fairy tale. It was a mythical, magical place. It was every child's dream come true (and maybe that of an adult or two also). There just aren't any words to describe the joy of watching two little girls experience Santa and the wonders of the holiday season on such a grand scale. So, I won't even try. Maybe I will amend this post at a later date, but for now, I just can't.
So, I will let the pictures tell the story. But I do warn you, the sun doesn't shine here at the Arctic Circle at this time of the year. So the pictures can get dark (I tried to lighten them, but mostly, you get what we saw). But the mood was anything but dark. I don't think MadHatter and Stinkerbell stopped smiling the entire time we were there. And I don't think they have recovered from it, even now. Santa Claus Village - Rovaniemi, Finland. It is not just for believers. It is for anyone that wants to believe that magic exists in the world.
See picture captions for the story...
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| This is what greeted us at the airport. And this is the only hour of daylight we saw the entire time we were there. I snapped quickly to get this and the next photo. |
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| Our cabin for the weekend. Just before sunset, at 1:30 pm! |
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| About 5 minutes after the above picture was taken. 2 pm and complete darkness. The girls kept asking when we were going to have dinner. |
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| No dinner. No just yet - first we had the first surprise of the weekend...a reindeer sleigh ride. |
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| Fires were everywhere to warm up next to. After the reindeer ride, they sat for a minute. But only a minute - there were too many other things to go see. |
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| This big guy is outside of the ice bar, restaurant and igloo. They also have the tubing park. At 20€ per person (kids included), we passed. We have seen an igloo, we have had a drink in an ice bar, and we have been tubing before. We will settle for taking a picture with the snowman. |
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| We had been in Santa's house for over an hour and had yet to see him. Time to remedy that. |
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The big guy was in. We waited in line. We saw SANTA. He was as real as it gets.
We saw Santa 4 times in all...each an experience not to forget. But I don't have pictures of any of them (except the one in Helsinki). Because cameras aren't allowed. And the pictures aren't free...in fact, they are about 40€ each...each. So I don't have any - but I do have the memories. |
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| We all stood on the Arctic Circle...Some more readily than others... |
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The. Arctic. Circle!
What does that mean?
It means that North of this line, there is at least one day in summer in which the sun never sets and in winter the sun never rises. And it is amazing. Visiting so close to when the sun never rose was an experience. In the two days we were there, it threw our body clocks off. Way off. It is disorienting. |
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| Thats us - on that white dot right there... |
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| The village was beautiful... |
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| It was time for dinner -finally. And we tried the traditional Finnish Christmas drink of Glögi. Almost identical to the Hot Toddy's my mom makes. |
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| And since we weren't having enough fun - MadHatter lost her second front tooth. We sure know how to pile it all into one vacation |
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| We awoke to this - and a 1 hour and 15 minute day... |
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| And found that Santa brought us this... |
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| We drove our sled to and from breakfast. (I have lightened these pictures so you can see the girls. In actuality, it was still very dark at almost 10 am when I took these)...notice all of the lights that are still on all over the village. |
We spent our day at Santa Park (next post) and then headed back to our village to check a bucket list item off of MadHatters list. Can a 6 year old have a bucket list???
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| Dog sledding with the Huskies! |
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| Despite her face here, she was in heaven. And neither of them could stop taking about their husky ride! |
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| Back at the village again and time to send some post cards - It is the only place in the world that has the official Santa postmark. |
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They receive over half a million letters a year. And they open every. single. letter.
Send your letter to -
Santa Claus
Santa Claus Main Post Office
Tähtikuja 1
Fl-96930 Arctic Circle
You can even order a letter to be send back - here |
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| CHILE |
And then we were off on our final adventure. We were going out to see the Northern Lights. Now, if you know anything about the Northern Lights you know they can be tempremental. It's about a 50/50 chance that you will see them on any given night. The weather has to be just right - no clouds, low temps etc...We bundled up, took our tripod and crossed our fingers. The weather was warm and the sky was partly cloudy but we do think we saw one or two. Whether my camera captured them or not is another story...
So, we headed off to our bonfire. Where we cooked sausages, made snow angels and warmed up with forest berry juice. The perfect ending to the perfect weekend.
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| And we caught the 5:30 am flight the next morning - and saw the first sun we had seen since leaving Prague on Thursday. |
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| About 5 minutes after the last picture - the sun sets fast here! |
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