“Let’s not bother with Christmas presents this year.”

“Good idea, why don’t we commit to going on holiday together instead.”

“Where do you fancy going?”

“Finland in the winter.”

“Erm, okay…”

This was a summary of the conversation Elaine and I had with our son, Nicholas, before Christmas. To be honest, we had never thought of going on a winter break to somewhere that has proper winters. Other than the skiing set, not many Brits do. When Nicholas mentioned it we thought why not. It isn’t too far away. It would be a new country to tick off. There are direct flights from Edinburgh. There’s really no excuse not to, is there? Apart from the expense, the lack of suitable winter clothing and maybe the sheer cold but hey, no pain, no gain as some idiots say. As it was Nicholas’s idea we left it to him to come up with an itinerary that fit between the flights we intended to book. This was it: Fly to Helsinki from Edinburgh early morning. Spend the rest of the day finding out what Helsinki had to offer before overnighting in a city hotel. The following day we would fly to Rovaniemi which is situated on the Arctic Circle and part of Lapland, the name given to the northern bits of several already quite northerly countries. We would spend three nights there before flying back to Helsinki and spending a night there before the even earlier morning flight back to Edinburgh. We booked the two Helsinki hotels and for Rovaniemi we splashed out for two nights at the Apukka Resort, some ten kilometres out of town, and one night in an apartment in the town itself. Finnair then threw a spanner in the works by cancelling the outbound flight so we were rebooked on an evening flight the day before and had to book an extra night in Helsinki. It turned out to be a particularly fortuitous spanner as it meant we were well rested before our day in Helsinki.

Finland isn’t a bargain destination. Whilst the hotels in Helsinki were certainly cheaper than, say, London, everything else was a bit on the pricey side. I’ll talk a bit more about this at the end as doing so here might put you off reading the rest of the blog.

Helsinki

The nation’s capital city is situated in the south of the country on the Baltic Sea. South is a relative term of course, it is at a similar latitude to two other Nordic capitals, Oslo and Stockholm, and also the Shetland Islands. It is served by Helsinki Vantaa Airport with the IATA code HEL which amuses the Finns greatly. There certainly were no fires of Hell burning there when we landed at 23:00 on a February Monday evening. It’s a nice airport – they play birdsong in the toilets. It is also well connected with commuter trains taking two different routes to Helsinki Central Station. These take either 28 or 32 minutes so there’s no real hardship if you miss the faster one of the two. It’s about €4.50 for a ticket into town, better value than the Elizabeth Line at Heathrow so a thumbs up from us for that. We were staying at the Scandic Helsinki Central which was next door to the station. We were glad about this as it was well beyond midnight when we got there, -12C and we were dragging suitcases with us as you need to take a lot of stuff to Finland in the winter. The hotel was pretty good, did a decent breakfast and had the only sauna I went in whilst I was in the country that claims to have given sauna to the world. We basically had one day to discover the delights of Helsinki. I very much doubt we discovered them all but wrapped up warm we headed out the following morning. We had to quickly come to terms with the art of walking in a snowbound city at, by now, -9C, where the delineation between roads and pavements were not exactly well defined. However, we managed to negotiate the 1km walk to Tempelliaukio Church. This is a fairly modern church that is built into the side of a hill. As such it doesn’t look much from the outside but for a place of worship is quite unique on the inside. They do charge tourists €8 to go in though, everyone welcome.

From there we headed back the way we came, past the station and walked (carefully) to Market Square. Whilst there were one or two market stalls and probably loads more in the summer, I felt the name was a bit of a misnomer as it was basically the Helsinki waterfront. Ferries to the Baltic states go from either side whilst in the middle you can get a smaller ferry to Soumenlinna Island. With the Baltic seemingly frozen over, we were surprised to see the ferry operating but a bit of sea ice is nothing for the Finns to worry about. We purchased some tickets and took the ride over to the island. There we had a wander around. The island is home to 800 folk who prefer the peace and quiet of the place to the bustling city. Positioned at the entrance to the harbour, Soumenlinna had strategic significance and much of it was fortified. It was a nice place to visit and plenty of tourists do, even in February with the sea seemingly frozen over. A few hours on the island was plenty though and after just missing the ferry, we spent an extra hour in a nearby cafe before heading back to the mainland. A few photos of interesting buildings later and we were back at the hotel for a bit of rest prior to dinner. This is where I managed to fit in my sauna session, just to say I’ve been to a Finnish sauna. It was no different to any other sauna I’ve been in to be honest but it was nice to have a bit of a sweat.

This brings us on to food in Helsinki. We had two dinners here, once after our sightseeing day and another on the night before we came home when we were staying at the airport Hilton but had time to nip into the city thanks to the excellent rail link mentioned earlier. Neither dinner saw us having Finnish food. The first one was at a Georgian restaurant called Rioni. I guess the link between Georgia and Finland is a shared loathing of their Russian neighbour but our reason for going was that it was rated very highly on Trip Advisor. It was very good too, hearty stuff and plenty of it, washed down with Georgian beer as God intended. It was, however, a bit on the costly side. Helsinki dinner number two was Nepalese. This was a bit of an odd one. I’d found Onni Nepal on Google Maps, the reviews were positive so off we went. Rather than a normal restaurant, it was a concession at a food hall in an underground shopping mall. We ate there anyway and it was fantastic. Despite the Nepalese name the food was what we would identify as Indian but none the worse for that. It was also a bargain – €15 for your curry, rice, nan bread, salad and a mysterious sauce. The accompanying Nepalese beer pushed the price up a bit but per-head it was less than the Maharani in Troon.

Apukka Resort

Between our Georgian and Nepalese dinners, we had to fit in the main reason for our trip to Finland. We took a flight from HEL to RVN, the latter being Rovaniemi Airport. The airport will be well known to quite a lot of Brits who take their kids or grandkids there to meet Santa Claus on day trips or short breaks in the run up to Christmas every year. The airport itself has the Arctic Circle running through it but as we were soon to find out, there was plenty of Finland further north than that. From the airport we took an Uber to the Apukka Resort. This went past the destination for most of those pre-christmas travellers, Santa Clause Village. We could have stayed there but decided Apukka, a few miles further north, would suit us better as we wouldn’t have to tell some bearded bloke that we were going to be good boys and girls for the rest of the year. Despite not having the Santa franchise, Apukka is popular with families as well as adults. My first impression was that it was a bit like a small Center Parcs but that does it a disservice. There’s a range of accommodation types but all feature a lot of glass. The idea is that the Aurora Borealis, aka The Northern Lights, may well be dancing their merry dance and you sure as hell don’t want to miss them. We had chosen igloos to stay in. These are not the ice domes that Pingu lives in but wood and glass structures. They look really quite stunning in the snow and were equally stunning on the inside. We chose them as the idea of lying in bed on the upper level and gazing through the glass roof at the Aurora was more than appealing. That didn’t happen but more on that in a bit. The resort has a couple of restaurants and a bar. Guests are a bit of a captive audience, though you could head into town by bus or Uber if you didn’t fancy what was on the menu. We enjoyed lunch there but the one dinner we had was Lappish cuisine. It was quality fare at a price but we didn’t really like it very much. Should there be a next time we would probably seek our evening meals in the town. A breakfast buffet is included in the room rate and was a good quality. There was plenty of things to do there, mainly at extra expense but just wandering round the place, sledging down a hillock and making snow angels was free. It was -13C when we arrived with glorious sunshine. It was, to coin a phrase, magical.

One of the main reasons we had chosen Lapland for a winter break was the opportunity to see the Aurora. In the run up to the holiday we had been keeping an eye on the forecast. Not for the solar activity as that is virtually impossible to predict but the weather. It doesn’t matter how much coronal mass ejection is going on, if it is cloudy you won’t see it. The clear skies had allowed the resort’s visitors a great view on the evening before we arrived. However, those clear skies were due to cloud over just after we got there and remain so for the following three nights. Based on this forecast we (Nicholas actually) decided to fork out for a Northern Lights tour. The tour company would take you to wherever the forecast was more favourable. If that meant entering another nearby country (not Russia, obviously) then so be it. The tour was booked for the evening we arrived at 19:00. Nicholas then got a text to say we would be being picked up at 16:30, instead. Along with three others from the resort, we were picked up at the new time, driven to the company’s office in Rovaniemi and issued with cold weather gear which none of us needed as we were pretty well wrapped up already. Then we set off in search of clear skies. As it turned out we didn’t quite leave Finland. We headed north and bar a couple of comfort breaks kept going for four hours, passing signposts to Murmansk on the way. That’s a long time in a minivan. Eventually we came to the town of Ivalo and left the main road. A few miles further we turned onto another road heading north and a mile after that came to a stop. We got out of the van. The sky was as clear as a bell. The two guys from the tour company set up a camera and reported that the Aurora was there, if rather faint. So faint in fact that we couldn’t see it but the night mode on the iPhone picket up a slight green glow. To be honest, a four hour, 300 km drive for that would have been a disappointment. However, we only had to wait a minute or two before an arc of light formed above us. It was the Aurora! We spent about an hour at the location, oblivious to the -17C temperature, gazing in awe at the spectacle. Well, when I say oblivious to the temperature I might have been lying. Removing gloves to take photos resulted in painful hands almost immediately but I wasn’t going to not get the photos. Speaking of which, the photos bring out the colours. Even after giving my eyes a chance to adapt to the darkness, it was hard to see the colours. The vivid green in the photos was a slightly green tinge to the naked eye and the reds only became apparent when reviewing the pictures. This, however, did not diminish from the spectacle. We have wanted to see the Aurora for years. Every time there has been good sightings where we live we have missed them. Elaine and Nicholas went to Iceland a couple of years ago and didn’t see them. We’ve seen them from an aircraft but observing them whilst on Terra Firma was the goal. Had we stayed at the Apukka Resort that evening we would have missed them. It took £120 each, a ten hour, 600km round trip in a minivan, some frozen hands and a very late night to finally tick off that bucket list item. Woohoo!

Back at the Apukka Resort, under overcast skies now, we had other things to do. The resort offers ‘experiences’ and we’d booked three of them. One was a session in the sauna/whirlpool but we’d cancelled that in the nick of time when we decided to go on the Northern Lights tour. Experience bookings are cancellable up to 24 hours before. That left snowmobiling and dog sledding. The activity centre issues all guests with cold weather gear which, whilst a bit of a faff to put on, is certainly required. For the snowmobiling they give you a helmet too which thankfully wouldn’t be tested on our two hour session. It was good fun zipping around a snowy wilderness on what is basically an ATV fitted with skis. I did nearly take out a signpost but managed to avoid it at the last second, thankfully. There was a €900 excess on the machines if you damaged them. They are easy enough to operate but very heavy on the steering. The speed is limited to 40 kmh or 25 mph if you prefer it.

Activity number two was the Husky Adventure. This was originally planned for the morning after we arrived but we rearranged it for the day after that just in case the Northern Lights trip went on late. This was a good call as the Northern Lights trip certainly did go on late. A short introductory course on how to operate a dog sled was given before we were assigned to our sleds and, of course, the huskies that would be pulling them. Having had Elaine as a passenger on my snowmobile, she decided to be a passenger on Nicholas’s sled leaving me to do the mushing solo, hauled by four dogs rather than six. Two of mine were trainees so the handler went ahead on a snowmobile to encourage them. Dog sledding proved even more fun than the snowmobiling. The dogs just loved the snow and seem to enjoy pulling us along. They did drop the occasional shit which was then squashed by the sled runners, thereby liberating more of the smell than the mushers and passengers would have liked, but this was a small price to pay for the experience. Once back at base we were given a hot blueberry juice and a cookie to warm up before being allowed to pet the future sled-haulers. We were told they were puppies but they seemed awfully big for pups. I got a face full of slobbers when I picked one of them up, otherwise they were all rather cute and a bit squidgy thanks to the insulating layer of fat they all have.

Rovaniemi

With the Husky experience done (and slobbered face washed) we had a spot of lunch before leaving the resort and checking into our apartment in Rovaniemi town. Being the centre of all things winter and with many references to Santa, Rovaniemi is something of a boomtown at this time of year. As a tourist destination it is more of a hub for the activities in the surrounding area than a place full of stuff to see. There’s plenty of shops and restaurants and a walk along the river is rather nice but I would say that is about it. It’s cheaper to stay there than at the Apukka and fine to use as a base but I’m glad we didn’t book all three nights there. One of the things that is listed as a tourist spot is Roki, the town’s ice hockey club who play in the second division of the Finnish league. As it happens they had a game on the evening we were there. Elaine and Nicholas didn’t want to go for some reason, I can’t think why. They went off for dinner at a nearby Tepanyaki place (they said it was very good) whilst I set out to walk nearly 3 km to the Lappi Areena to take in the game. A ticket was €22 and the venue was nearly full of locals and quite a lot of tourists. I enjoyed it, with Roki winning 3-1. The quality is very good. Finland were, until a week prior to me being there, the Olympic hockey champions and they do seem to love the sport. The following morning we had another wander around the town, saying hello to Santa on the way. He has a booth in the middle of town where you can go and pay to have some photos taken with him. We declined. It was quite interesting to see how a town works when covered in quite a lot of snow where temperatures remain below zero for, seemingly, months. It had actually got warmer whilst we were there with the mercury hovering around -5C – it was almost worth taking a layer off. It was soon time to get an Uber to the airport which was mobbed and finding it hard to cope with the volume of passengers. We flew back to Helsinki, where the temperature had actually crept up to +3C, for a night in the airport Hilton and the aforementioned Nepalese curry. We rose at 04:00 the following morning for our 06:30 flight back to Edinburgh.

Conclusion

In the days leading up to our Finland break, we all experienced some apprehension. It was a new country, one quite different from ours when it comes to climate. Would we find the cold too oppressive? Are the Finns welcoming? Was there enough to do? We invested quite a bit of money in cold weather clothing, from snow boots to long johns, though in the Apukka resort they let you have some serious cold weather gear for the time you are there. Layering up was recommended along with a decent hat and thick socks. Maybe two pairs of thick socks. We must have been doing something right as we kept warm for the most part. You need to give yourself time to change out of the outer layers at least when you go from outside to inside as all the buildings are kept pleasantly warm. Weather considerations aside, Finland seems a great place to visit. The language is indecipherable – its closest relative is Hungarian, don’t ask me why – but virtually everyone speaks English and they speak it better than you do. Everyone we dealt with was pleasant. The public transport in Helsinki was excellent though not so much in Rovaniemi where we found Uber (and walking) to be the best way of getting around. Nothing stops for the snow. It was piled up all around Helsinki but the trams ran as normal, cars were driven, bicycles were ridden and the ferries ran through iced up waters. Even more snow was piled up in Rovaniemi but they just shifted it and got on with life. We never spent a single Euro whilst we were there. This is not really true, we spent quite a lot of them, but all transactions were contactless and all the cash we had brought with us came home. Whilst I’m happy to persuade you to go, I have to mention the elephant in the room, or perhaps it’s the reindeer in the igloo. How much did it cost? I must admit, it wasn’t cheap. An igloo at the Apukka Resort is going to cost you over €1000 per night. It’s a couple of hundred Euros to go dog sledding. Having said that, hotels in Helsinki aren’t too expensive and you might find some bargain eateries like we did with the Nepalese so you may not have to break the bank while you are there. Not too much anyway. It may prove to be the only time we go there but we certainly enjoyed the experience and it has given us memories that will last for as long as we do.

To conclude, as long as you wrap up warm, Finland is a great place for a break. A true Winter Wonderland.