A year ago I was awarded a place on our Travel Agents’ Top Performers VIP trip to Levi in Finnish Lapland. I really wasn’t keen to go and almost turned it down- mainly because I detest the cold and snow and don’t get that excited about all things Santa any more! I decided to go and didn’t expect to enjoy very much of it at all, other than the log fires and hot chocolate. The trip exceeded all expectations so I’m going to share my experience with you and a few tips.
Lapland is in the Arctic Circle and consists of the most Northern parts of Finland, Norway, Sweden and also the Kola Peninsula of Russia. There is permanent snow by mid October which melts around mid April and temperatures can reach a staggering minus 50 degrees Celsius, in early December we experienced minus 25 more than once, so definitely cold! Fortunately Lapland packages mostly include appropriate outer clothing and boots so you don’t need to take your own. As when skiing, layers are best under this and not cotton as it absorbs moisture which makes you cold-synthetic best for base layer, fleece or wool for mid layer, mittens best for hands and thin inner gloves. I discovered by accident skiing gloves which had inner gloves with the touch screen bit on-these were invaluable when taking photos with a mobile phone as your hands freeze very quickly with no gloves! Talking of which, you need at least one of those amazing mobile charger devices as the cold causes your phone and camera to lose charge extremely quickly-changing to power saving mode and switching off everything you don’t need will help too. Your devices may also stop working altogether in the low temperature-wrapping in something warm will help, or buy a special case.
Direct flights to Lapland only operate around Christmas time, mainly to visit Santa of course but it’s also an excellent place to see the Northern Lights if you’re lucky-for obvious reasons post Christmas trips don’t usually involve Santa. Flights are sometimes delayed or cancelled due to weather conditions and coaches are sometimes used for long transfer to next airport-we took off in blizzard conditions which just wouldn’t happen at Gatwick but had a long delay and other flights had been diverted. Packages range from day trips up to 7 night stays, some packages include all meals and full experiences, others don’t and only taster sessions-so cheapest isn’t necessarily best value as the cost of living is quite high in Lapland. Experiences usually include a reindeer sleigh ride and meeting the indigenous Sami people (most interesting though reindeer are difficult to train and steering a bit erratic), husky sled (very fast-some of the huskies we met do 1000km races, and I didn’t realise husky is a term for a sled pulling dog rather than specific breed), visit Santa of course with Mrs Santa and the elves (some offer private meeting some don’t, some of the Santa “villages” are a little bit commercialised and some aren’t-yes I know there’s only one Santa really and it was a most odd experience facetiming our own children with the man himself as they weren’t with us), horse drawn sleighs (I liked them a lot) and snowmobiles (didn’t like them but I was riding pillion with a nervous driver!). Depending on resort, other activities include skiing (Levi best for this), horse riding (I went twice, needless to say my favourite bit!), laser quest in the snow, go karting, bowling, swimming, tobogganing and snow shoeing. Accommodation ranges from self catering apartments to luxury hotel rooms with private saunas (I liked that bit too). I would also recommend weighing up all considerations before taking very young children to this destination.
Other memories of Lapland are that all the snow, and the roads are permanently covered, does not bring things to a standstill (granted they use special studded tyres) and also the days were very short, light from about 10am dark from about 2pm-in the summer it’s the opposite of course. Also there are around 350.000 reindeer in Finnish Lapland, each one owned by a Sami herder and used for meat, cheese, milk and clothing, footwear and keeping warm.
I hope you have a very Happy Christmas and are all on Santa’s “Nice” list this year!
Julie Hill
