Rovaniemi, Finland (Lapland)

Rovaniemi, Finland (Lapland)

December 6-8, 2009

Day 1

Snow, snow and more snow! It was early when we arrived. We got in around 7:50am. When we got off the train, there was at least 10cm of snow on the ground. This is pretty much the first time we saw this much snow the entire time we've been in Europe! It was funny how excited I was, since normally I hate snow. I guess I do like it around Christmas time. Trevor had planned that we would take a bus to our B&B, but once we got to the bus stop, we realized that our bus wasn't running today. Actually, most things wouldn't be open today because it was Finland's indepence day and apparently all the shops are closed this day. Anyway, we ended up taking a taxi and arrived in our very out-of-the-way B&B in the middle of a foresty area where we met the couple we would be living with. They were very nice and offered us tea and we were allowed into our room right away. Once we got all the info from them about where to go and what to see, we decided to head to Santa's Village. They were kind enough to take us into town where we caught the Santa Express bus #8 to Santa's Village. It was awesome. First we went inside the info place where they have the Arctic Circle line (though according to Trevor's GPS that wasn't true, but why ruin the fun) so we took pictures. Then we headed to Santa's workshop where we got in line to see Santa and take pictures (though we couldn't use our own cameras, and the pictures were way too expensive!) Then we headed to the Santa Post Office where we saw letters from kids all over the world. You could even buy envelopes from the letters as a donation to Unicef. It was really neat. You could also send postcards and letters from there and get the Arctic Circle stamp. It was awesome. Next we headed to a husky park where we got to walk around and pet some of the huskies. The "bigger than puppies, smaller than adults" ones were super adorable and super excitable. They were fun. Did I mention that daylight here is only 3 hours at this time of year and that we went to eat around 2 and by the time we came out it felt like 7p? It's crazy! We walked around a bit more and looked in all the gift shops and took more pictures and then eventually decided to catch the bus back into town. When we got there, Trevor went on a hunt for some wireless while I went looking through the little market stalls (which I was surprised to find open, though I guess any time is tourist time). We then struggled to figure out if we would be hungry before we got to our B&B and decided to order some food and head back. We decided to walk, now knowing where our B&B was relative to the town, but we didn't quite realize how far and after probably about 30-40 min (and a couple of wrong turns) we got back. We ate and headed to our room to read where I fell asleep around 9p! It was a fun day!

Day 2

13 hours later, I woke up!!! I couldn't believe I slept so long, but I guess when the sun doesn't rise until after 10am, it's hard to believe you need to get up. We decided to hang out mostly around the B&B today until our Reindeer Safari! We were to be picked up at 1:30p from our hotel so we hung out in the B&B and went for a short walk around the neighbourhood (to get at least a little Vitamin D). I hung out with our B & B's dog, Mori, for a bit too. Then our ride came taking us to downtown Rovaniemi to begin our adventure. I was really hoping to be at the Santa's Village again, because I had read they will stamp your passport with the Artic Circle stamp (until I was informed that it's probably not likely that it's the real passport they stamp since that's official documentation). When we arrived at the Erasetti main office, we were pretty much the only ones there. They provided the winter clothing for the safari, so you didn't have to remember your own stuff. We got into our one piece snowsuit and boots and waited. More people started showing up and then finally the bus came to pick us up. They drove us to the site where the reindeers were and the adventure began. Thankfully it had snowed the day before we got to Rovaniemi, because otherwise we might not have been able to go on this safari at all! We were introduced to our guides and then one showed us how to harness the reindeer and let us touch one of the reindeer (who shook every time people touched him; apparently they don't like being touched). Then we were put into sleighs and covered with blankets. Trevor and I shared a sleigh. It was very romantic! All the reindeer were basically linked. There was a leader reindeer, he had a sled and attached to that sled was another reindeer who also had a sled and so on. It wasn't a fast ride, by any means. The tour guides were leading the two lead reindeers, walking them along the track, so you can imagine how quick that would be. It was nice though. The reindeer that was suppose to be behind our sleigh kept wanting to lead so he was pretty much right next to us the entire time. His name was Beekie and ours was Blackleaf. It was a little scary having reindeer antlers in your face, but he was really cute (I'm sure it one of the antlers got too close, he would stop being cute.) We were riding pretty much in the dark as soon as we started, and as much as I would have liked it to be in daylight, the night ride made it much more romantic ; ). They took us to a wooden cabin where we sat around a fire on reindeer skins (that we took from our sleighs and Trevor and I made one of the ladies very angry that we were taking skins from her sleigh instead of ours. I tried to tell her that our guides told us to, but she was not pleased.) We had coffee, tea and cookies around the fire and I learned that it's rude to ask how many reindeer someone owned (apparently it's like asking how much money you have in you account). The same lady that got upset about the skins told the guides that clearly they didn't have a crisis there (as in "the recession"), since all the tours were booked solid! This lady was crazy! Then we got back in our sleigh and rode back. When we got back, our bus wasn't quite there yet, and again the crazy lady who yelled at me about the reindeer skins was super upset and taking it out on our guide because she was cold. It was only about -5C! She just kept yelling at the guide that she paid for the tour and wanted the bus right now! I felt so bad for him. Fortunately the bus did come and took us back to the main office. From here we decided to get some supper (an all you can eat pizza and pasta place, yeah!). Then, since we were downtown, we went to see some buildings built by some famous Finnish architect. We stopped into the library so that Trevor could understand why the Arctic Circle moves and where it's at now, then we headed back to the B&B. When we got back, Trevor decided to do the most ridiculous thing. He had calculated that he hadn't actually reached the Arctic Circle, so he decided to go on an 11km run to actually cross the circle!!! I was so worried about him. Thankfully he made it home alive! And he had made it! It even had a sign! I'm just glad he made it home.

Day 3

We decided for our last day, we would head to their major museum on the Arctic called Arktikum. Once we walked around for a bit we realized that it was not exactly the best museum we had ever been to. It was really expensive, too. It did mention Canada quite a bit, since I guess this is also a research centre for Arctic related things. There was also a section on the Sami people which was kind of interesting. After exploring most of the museum we went to grab something to eat from the café. I've always found it very trusting of people and restaurants where they feed you first and then ask you to pay. This situation proved why you should worry. We got all our food and when we went to pay with our Mastercard, the machine didn't work, and we had no more cash with us. They kept telling me to eat before the food got cold, but I just felt so silly going to eat something that I knew we couldn't pay for. Thankfully, they were absolutely okay with us going back to our B&B and getting money to pay them back. It's a good thing we're trustworthy, because we easily could have not paid for our meal. But, after walking back to our B&B, we told the cab to stop there before we headed for the airport. The airport had a lovely banner hanging saying Official Airport of Santa Claus! For our first flight (to Helsinki) we boarded with no boarding card and no assigned seating! That was a little weird. Once in Helsinki, we had to rush to our next gate and got told that our bags might not make it to Warsaw because there was very little time before take off. I figured it wouldn't matter much. Good thing I had that attitude, since it was my bag that didn't make it! Otherwise, the flights were good. My bag didn't actually make it until 3 days later! But, luckily, nothing was missing or damaged. All in all, a FANTASTIC trip!

Helsinki, Finland

Helsinki, Finland

December 3-5, 2009

Day 1

Today we were up around 6:15 am so that we could check-in for our ferry by 7:10 am. We also tried to sneak in some breakfast before check-in which was interesting since breakfast didn't start until 7am. Luckily the ferry was across the street and the breakfast was set up 10 min early. We ate quickly and off we went to the ferry. I pretty much slept through the whole ride. Once in Helsinki, we figured out our ferry had docked in a different location than expected so it was a bit of a search to determine how to get to our hotel cheaply. Thank goodness Trevor is good at that kind of thing and he got us there with very little trouble. Since our room wasn't ready we headed out to do our exploring. Unfortunately, Helsinki does not have an Old Town, so there was no seeing medieval buildings. We followed the Lonely Planet walking tour and saw some nice churches including one built into rock! That was really cool. Of course I also wanted to see the beach here so we headed in that direction. Helsinki is the first city to show evidence of winter since we started this trip! There was frost on the ground and ice patches and once we got to the beach, the sand was frozen. We got to the beach around sunset so we got to see some beautiful colors in the sky. We then headed back to the hotel and realized we wanted to go out for supper so back out we went, into the chilly, humid air, had some Thai and then headed back to the room for the night. Helsinki is extremely modern compared to the other 3 cities we were in. There's also a lot of English everywhere, the buildings are all newer and the people here are much more relaxed with their fashion. It's interesting to see the differences between the countries. The prices here are also interesting to point out. The numbers are all pretty much on par when it comes to prices for items, compared to the Canadian dollar, you just have to remember they're talking in euros, 1.5 times the price. For example, we went to McDonald's for lunch and paid 9.75, which is the same as we would have paid back home, except when you convert, our meal actually cost around $15!

Day 2

First sign of real snow. It was all over the ground when we woke up this morning. We decided to go see the Suomenlinna Sea Fortress today. It is on an island about 15-20 min by ferry from Helsinki, but still Helsinki. I believe that the island was used as a defense system against people invading Helsinki. It was started by the Swedish when they owned Finland and then the Russias rebuilt it or something. Anyway, it was really cool. The ferry was fun. We saw many little islands with one house or two houses on them along the way. When we arrived on our island, there was a map showing us the basic path to take to get from one side to the other (but really it's 2 islands because you cross a bridge over water at the halfway mark.) On the first side there were pretty much just houses and information buildings (maybe museums too) but the second side was neat with hidden underground rooms and cannons everywhere. It reminded me of the movie Tristan and Isolde. Trevor enjoyed sticking his head into the cannons sayng that it was warmer in there. We climbed around took pictures, explored the rooms (some with water in them). It was fun. We then headed back to the ferry, and since it was to be another half hour, went inside and had a drink. Once back in Helsinki, we walked around downtown a bit and looked into some gift shops and then went to eat at a place called Zetor which was a very dark but very fun pub looking restaurant. They had tractors inside and chicken wire everywhere. It had a farm feel. They were suppose to serve Finnish food, that's why we came (and Trevor likes wacky décor). Trevor had sautéed reindeer with ligonberries and I had salmon with mushroom sauce. It was quite tasty. It was then back to the hotel for the night. It gets really dark really early and it's easy to forget it's 4 o'clock when it looks like 7 or 8.

Day 3

Part of our hostel cost included 3 hours in the morning when you could use the sauna. Saunas are really big in all the countries we visited on this trip. Figuring that I had to take part in this Finnish tradition, I woke up early to get to the sauna before 9:30am. It was a very pleasant way to wake up. I started with the sauna to myself, but soon there were 4 of us squished into the tiny sauna. The saunas are all gender specific (most people go naked). After my lovely relaxing morning I went back to the room to "waste" time until checkout. We had to be a little inventive today because we no longer had a tourist bus ticket. It would have been expensive purchasing a day ticket for the bus so we had to figure out where we were going to go to be long enough to take a whole day, but short enough that we wouldn't miss our train for Rovaniemi at 7:26p. Trevor wanted to go see the Sibelius monument (looked like frozen organ pipes from the picture) so we headed out there. We realized that we were really close to the monument when we had gone to the beach on day 1, but we hadn't known the Sibelius monument was going to be cool, so we never went. We headed over and along the way we saw more of Helsinki downtown. There was a ski sale happening. It took us about 30-40min to get there, but we made it. There was a large tour group there, getting in the pictures, so we waited patiently until they left, at which point we pretty much had the whole thing to ourselves (at least for 5 min) before another smaller group came. We took some cool pictures, and Trevor tried to climb inside the pipes and then we headed to the old Olympic stadium. My goal was to find the Olympic sign which took us walking around the entire complex (and after walking for quite some time, felt like forever). We then headed back to downtown where we decided to eat in the food court of the Forum shopping centre. This was unlike any food court I had ever been to before. It was like a restaurant. You order at the place you want food and then you sit down and they bring the food to you, dressed as waiters and waitresses. And, it was way cheaper than a real restaurant. Only problem was finding a place to sit. Otherwise, the food was great and cheap. It was back to the hotel to pick up our stuff so that we could walk back to downtown to catch the train. My feet were hurting, but we kept on walking. We made it to the train station with plenty of time and waited on a bench until it finally came. Our train was very nice and roomy. The seats went back really far. I ended up having a short nap (8-10p) at which time we headed to the restaurant car to have some drinks. We then went back to our car and went to sleep to await our early morning arrival in Rovaniemi.

Tallin, Estonia

Tallin, Estonia

December 1 and 2, 2009

Day 1

It was an early morning again, so that we could catch our 7 am bus ride over to Estonia. I made a friend waiting for the tram. It was a cat who made it appear as if he had been starved all his life and I would be the best person in the world if I gave him some food. He was super cute and fluffy and I couldn't resist (I know I shouldn't have, but you should have seen him begging). After a short tram ride, a bit of a wait and some tea, we were on the bus. Again, lots of leg room, very nice bus, this time with a "special seat" section for those willing to pay a little extra for even more leg room and for the ability to move your chair sideways as well as back! We cheaped out, who needs that stuff anyways? A 4.5 hour bus ride got us into Tallin, the most modern looking of the 3 countries. We walked to our hotel, which we found out was directly across from the ferry (made me very happy since we were to take the ferry 2 days later). Everyone was once again willing to speak English with no problems. Our room had a view of the Old Town (sort of. It was at quite a distance) which was cool. Now it was off to explore another Old Town. Third times the charm. We found a guide map to get us to all the important buildings. This Old Town seemed much more interested in telling tourists about its history. There were plaques on a lot of buildings with info on who had lived there during the medieval times. Very cool! We wandered around and got rained on as it started getting dark. We decided to have some groggi (hot wine) at the market and earlier I had seen a girl with a cup of melted chocolate, so I figured I might as well try it. Man, it was AWESOME! I love hot melted chocolate! The hot wine was interesting, though less appealing than the chocolate. After the warm drinks we went in search of some food and decided to eat at Hesburger, a burger place from Helsinki. They were pretty good at making their stuff taste McDonald's like. Then back to the hotel to do some reading, writing, watching TV and then bed time.

Day 2

We had some lovely breakfast at the hotel to start our morning. It was then off to find a bus to take us to Pirita beach. We found out that wasn't too difficult and found ourselves at the beach very quickly. The beach was separated from the road by a forest that looked like someone had planted rows of trees. It was a fun day walking on the beach, searching for shells, jumping over the little streams that formed. We even got to see the moon rise! It was beautiful. With not much else in mind, we headed back to the hotel and had a lovely supper. This was very much a quiet day.

Riga, Latvia

Riga, Latvia

November 29 and 30, 2009

Day 1

We got to Riga this morning. We walked to the bus station from the hotel in Vilnius and had a quick McDonald's breakfast (but they had no breakfast items so Trevor had a cheeseburger and I had a tea) and then off we went on our 4 hour bus ride. It was amazing how uncomfortable more leg space can be when you plan to sleep on the bus. Both busses so far have been very clean, very modern busses. This one had exceptionally big spaces between seats and it felt like you were slipping all the time because there was nowhere to catch yourself. I shouldn't complain, though. How often do you get more leg room than you ask for? The bus driver on this bus was good, too, and got us into town early. From there I made sure we took a cab, but it's ridiculous how expensive the Latvian currency is. It's 2.6 times American dollars! So, things that appear to be cheap (a 0.40 Ls bottle of water) isn't really all that cheap. We got to our hotel (Dodo) after driving through a very rundown old neighborhood and went off to start our exploring. First we walked to the mall near our hotel (5 min walk) that was out of place in the rundown neighborhood. The mall was very much like any nice mall in North America. Once we got our day tram tickets, we were off to the Old Town. It was pretty incredible, but really the first day in the Old Town was spent looking at cool buildings, but not really knowing what they were. It was still fun. In the middle of the Old Town was a beautiful Christmas market and good ol' St. Nick (he's got to make it back to Rovaniemi before we get there, I hope that works for him ;) ). We wandered until we got hungry and found a really cool medieval restaurant to eat at. It was awesome. It was in a basement of a medieval shack where the chairs and tables were solid wood and the walls were cement. The lighting was low and the waitresses had on medieval dresses. The menu even had explanations of what time period the food was from and who served it! It was a really cool (but expensive) experience. The drink I had was pretty cool too. It was apple juice with honey and mint leaves. Very interesting flavor. At this point it was getting dark and after a little more walking around we decided to head back to the hotel. Great day!

Day 2

We had a slow start to our morning, but once we got up we headed back to the Old Town with more of a purpose. We had found a map with points of interest for the Old Town and we planned to see all those places now knowing what they were. So once again we wandered around the Old Town (though I could really do that all day any day) and this time learned some interesting facts. This time, to stir things up, there was a protest going on because apparently they were going to tax motorcyclists, so there were a bunch of bikers and a bunch of regular and military police all over one edge of the Old Town. It was quite intimidating! It was a rather quite protest, but there were plenty of people there. After taking some pictures we headed to a park next to the Old Town with a canal and bridge. The bridge is called the Bridge of Love because married couples come and put locks on there with their names and date of marriage. It was neat. Then it was off to eat. We were in search of a place to eat called Lido. Once we found it (in the opposite direction than I thought it was) it was really cool. It was kind of an amusement park. It was all decorated in Christmas stuff. We took pictures near the really awesome giant Christmas tree and then went to eat in this cafeteria style establishment where food was much cheaper than the night before! After our lovely meal we decided to head to the skating rink and go skating. It was so much fun! I haven't skated in years! It was a very slow start for me (and it didn't speed up much by the end) but it was a ton of fun. The crazy thing is that the rink was open air, but it was definitely not cold enough for an open air rink. There was no snow or ice (or any evidence of either)anywhere in Riga. It was awesome. The temperature was great for skating! Trevor skated like crazy, so he was pretty sore after. We decided to head back to our hotel to get ready for the bus ride the next day. It was a really good day!