Land of the North.

After our time in Kraków, we headed north to Helsinki. We were going this far north now as at the end of September the weather starts to get colder. This year, all the world experienced a very warm summer season.
Upon arriving here, we noticed that the city was so quiet. It seems like you never hear an ambulance or a police siren. It’s a bit unnerving as these are the sounds of the city. The second thing we noticed was how clean the city was.
Helsinki is home to approx 400,000 people.

In the city, there is excellent public transportation provided by buses and trams, and on the water, there is a large network of ferries. You can go from Helsinki to Norway, Sweden, Denmark or Estonia, and many other destinations.
These waters have been used extensively for the transportation of people, goods, and services for hundreds of years. This tradition continues today.

Cafe life is alive as is a great food culture.
We found an old glass house cafe called Kappeli that was built in 1867. Lots of local history besides great coffee and cakes. A lot of restaurants in Helsinki are more like cafererias. Order at the counter, and food is delivered to your table.

We tried the local specialties of reindeer meat with liganberry jam on a baked potato twice. First at our friend Emilia’ home as she prepared it for us with reindeer meat that was from her mother’s herd in northern Lapland.

The second time was at the Old Market Hall in Helsinki. This is an old hall where you can try many local delicacies ranging from coffee to fresh soups to various types of local meats.

The difference between⁰ the two preparations was that there was a bit of difference in the flavor of the meat.
Reindeer is a bit gamey but sweeter than elk.
The other specialty we tried a few times was salmon chowder. Sometimes, the broth was creamer than others. Helisinki offers many food experiences.

One night, we ate a new French restaurant that had been open only for two weeks.  It’s on the second floor called Bouchon Carema. Very lively with some of your food prepared and cooked tableside.

We also tried out a few sauna experiences.  In Finland, a sauna is almost daily, if not weekly, activity. It’s a social, it’s for business it’s for meeting new people. It’s in some respects the Finnish equivalent of meeting for a coffee.

We went to Loyly, which is a very modern seaside sauna with a stylish, glass-walled restaurant & large deck for sweeping views of the ocean. There are 2 saunas, each with a different type of heat. Wet and traditional smoke sauna.

There is an area to go outside after the sauna for cool down, and you can even swim in the Baltic Sea, or as I did, take a cold shower to cool down.
Sitting in the wet sauna, your vista thru a huge glass window was the bleak waters of the Baltic on a gray day.

After 2 hours of this, your body is refreshed, your skin has a healthy glow, and you are starving.

The other place we tried was close by our apartment and called Allas Spas. If you are a pool swimmer, this is your place. Our pool is natural salt water, and the other is heated water. Here, the saunas are much smaller and more of an emphasis on the swimming part of the experience.
I think either one is definitely worth a visit as they are such a part of Finnish culture.

We spent a week getting to know the city, which is rather small.
We visited cafes, went to the contemporary art museum and even went to a classical music concert at the concert hall.

The city is quiet and somber as are the people, and they are not as outgoing as up north in Lapland, which we were able to visit on this trip.

Going up north to the Arctic Circle was amazing. We took the overnight train from the Helsinki train station. We booked a sleeper car and ordered our breakfast in advance.  It’s a bit different sleeping on a train, but the best news is when you wake up, you are at your destination.
Rovaniemi. This small city is also known as Santa Claus village.

We never went to the village. Instead, our two days were filled with different experiences.  We booked our stay at the first guesthouse built in the city. This place is close to the train station and offers a hearty breakfast buffet every morning. The place is run by two sisters.
The weather here was substantially colder than Helsinki even with my borrowed sweater, I felt the chill, but we were now equipped with wool socks and fingerless wool gloves

We walked and found a great cafe for a coffee and a bit of food. Cafe 21. Unfortunately it started to rain so we decided to go to the market to buy some soups for dinner. As later that night, our first tour to see the Aurora Borealis would start at 10 pm. We shopped and scheduled a Bolt back to our guesthouse as it was now raining heavily. Hope was fading to see the lights as the sky was very cloudy.

Later that evening, we were at the offices of Lapland Safaris, getting fitted out in additional warm clothes and boots with our veteran guide named Paivi. She was wonderful, informative, and funny. As she too felt hopeful, we would see the lights. Our group size was a total of 4 people. She drove us to a restaurant farm area that was about 45 minutes outside of town to get into total darkness. We were at this farmers’ restaurant by a lake that had a hut that was partially enclosed, allowing us a bit of protection from the winds and torrential rains.  The farmer was there too, offering us warm beverages and delicious homemade cookies against a background of a giant roaring fire.

We waited while there was a downpour. We told Ghost stories. We heard tales of Finnish folklore. We drank hot mulled wine and ate homemade cookies.
The time passed.
The cloudy sky opened up for the stars. The light show began. We stared, we fotoed the sky. All told we saw the Aurora for 10 minutes. But we were lucky and saw the lights.

A planet shined brightly. I think it was Venus, and then the sliver of the moon burst thru the clouds.
Then, just as quickly as the skies opened, the stars disappeared, and the clouds returned.
All the lights were gone.
We got dropped off at 1am and promptly fell asleep.

That next day, we took a taxi out to a sauna called Arcos Lapland.  It’s about a 20-minute ride outside the city. I had booked this private experience for us to enjoy.

Imagine an outdoor woodfire hot tub on the edge of a lake with a small building that contains a woodfired sauna. It was all ours for 2.5 hours.
They provided coffee, cookies, a sausage to roast over the fire complete with buns and all the extras, and of course, the campfire necessities; the marshmallow.

We stayed in the tub while it rained, then quickly went ran inside to the sauna to get heated up. This was a simple life for two and a half hours. We played music, we chatted, we ate a bit and relaxed, and got cozy.
It’s remarkable how slowly time does move when you are still in the countryside.

Then our time was done, and our taxi arrived. We returned to guesthouse to nap a bit as our next safari was on a small boat on the cities main river again to see the lights.

It continued to rain all day, sometimes in buckets and other times in a mist. We were hopeful for another sighting, but as the clouds and rain persisted, I was doubtful.

After a tasteful and impressive dinner at the Arctic Board Restaurant, we were picked up by our next guide, Mieke.
We returned to the Lapland Safaris office yo get fitted out for more warm clothing as the temperature was dropping. Again, it was just us and another woman from Japan. We walked out the back door of the Lapland Safaris offices to a small covered boat.

For two hours, we sat on this boat and looked for any sign of an auroras. the river at night is very calm. It was lightly raining. Our guide gave us some hot juice to drink that did its job warming us up.

But this was only a temporary warmth because the temperatures were plummeting down to the low 30s.
Wet and cold after two hours we returned to the office.

Once inside, returning our clothes again, the heated room was the perfect place to get warm. Our guide and driver dropped us off at the guesthouse.
We fell asleep only to wake up at 7.30 in the morning as we were ticketed on the day train back to Helsinki.

Once back in Helsinki, clothes were washed, and luggage got repacked.
We slept in on Saturday as we were exhausted from our quick back to back adventures.

Rising early on Sunday, our bolt driver showed up on time at 6 am and off to the airport we went.
Continuing our adventures, but now on to Brussells and a week at Tango camp in Wissant, France with Liz and Yannick Van Hove.

More to follow!!! Abrazo