We started off with a nice breakfast with a great vegan spread. I had
requested for vegan options at breakfast as part of the booking but was
surprised how seriously they took it. More than 75% of the items were vegan!
It was much better than the dinner the night before. We gorged on everything
we could and then checked out of the Igloo to make our way to the Santa Claus
Village. Again, we had to spend a lot of time to scrub the car off ice and
snow. Since it was brighter, the children joined in as well, all while having
fun in the fresh snow all over the place.
Santa Claus Village is very close to the airport so we made the trip there in
about 45 mins, although the roads seemed very easy to drive. It helped that it
was daytime as well, and there was a beautiful blue-green glow in the sky to
show us a clear path ahead. We reached the Snowman World around 11am giving us
a good 2.5 hours before lunch that we had booked there in the snow
restaurant.
The place was smaller than I had expected but packed a range of activities
including snow slides, ice slides, ice bar, a snow labarynth, and ice skating
ring that the children loved. The ice and snow carvings were beautiful to look
at, while everyone tried their hands on ice skating, falling down quite a few
times and having fun. We drank some fruit juices in a ice glass in the
ice bar, which was much more slippery than we expected. My daughter spilled
the juice on the first try but got a free refill to enjoy her ice cold drink.
They even had an ice dart competition nearby using the ice glass.
We had lunch at the snow restaurant. We had ordered adult portions of the
only 2 vege options they had - tomato soup and tofu pasta - but were
disappointed seeing a very small portion arrive on our plates. We also had
the traditional Finnish glorgi (non-alcoholic version, which I later
realised is rare in these parts), which was like kashayam, a herbal
concoction. We kinda developed a taste for it.
After the Snowman world, we crossed over to the Santa Claus Village which has
a range of Santa themed activities. It was too late to visit the Santa himself
given the hours' long wait time and queue, so we chose the pose for pictures
at the Arctic Circle, get a certificate for crossing the same and posted some
cards from the Santa Claus post office to our friends and family. The
atmosphere though was magical in the dark at 3pm and a chilling -7 degrees, we
were finally getting the Christmas vibe at the official home town of Santa
Claus!
We drove back to the city to checkin to our apartment in a residential
neighbourhood about 3km from the city centre. The apartment was well
furnished, stocked and had everything we needed. We did take a while to
figure out the washing machine, with the water inlet being a different
valve to what we thought. With this being the place of stay for the next 4
nights, we finally offloaded all the suitcases and packed only the
essentials for our trip tomorrow. I sent a courtesy message to the owner
saying we have checked in, but after a while was pleasantly surprised when
they texted back saying that the northern lights are on display. We
quickly scrambled into our bare minimum winter clothing (which is actually
a lot) and headed out.
We were met with a beautiful dance of charged particles almost
spanning half the night sky with a range of colours on display. Its
actually much more vivid on camera pictures and videos than with
naked eye. It was so mesmerising that I went out multiple times to
take a look. It only lasted for about 15 mins but left a lasting
impression. Coincidentally my daughter's classmate also saw the same
dance over at Tromso, Norway and beamed us the pictures. The aurora
seemed to be much better away from the city lights. But the view I
got right in front of my apartment would be etched in my memory for
a long time!
With dreams of more Santa Claus Village activities and aurora hunting planned
for tomorrow, we all went to sleep.
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