Since I decided it would feel weird to have school when it is usually Thanksgiving break, I decided to make my own vacation! To be honest, I wasn’t planning on skipping class, but after already booking a journey to Helsinki for a hackathon that weekend, I thought I’d take advantage of the opportunity of going north and try to catch some Northern Lights while I was at it.
My journey started Wednesday morning with a quick train ride to Paris. From there, I took a flight to Helsinki, and then another flight to Rovaniemi, which is a northern town in the Finnish Laplands.
The weather was very cloudy the first evening I arrived, so I decided against hiking out to the middle of nowhere to hunt for lights and just sleep. The next morning, I explored what the town had to offer. I walked around town and saw the Christmas festivities and lights and some views of the frozen surroundings before making a trek up to Santa Claus Village. Oh yeah, did I mention? Rovaniemi is the official town of Santa Claus! It was bit of a long walk, but I thoroughly enjoyed the wintry scenery around and especially the Christmas mood of the village.
Following that, I went back into town and took a nap. Since the town is so far north and within the Arctic Circle, the sun rose around 10am and set around 2:30pm so by the time I was back at my AirBnB, it was already dark! Waking up, I went to a local bistro and got myself a reindeer sandwich in placement of the usual Thanksgiving turkey. It was quite delicious!
Now came the fun part. Since this was going to be my last trip, with my Eurail expiring the next day, I decided to go all out and book a Northern Lights hunting snowmobile safari! It started with an hour drive to the middle of nowhere where we then hopped on the snowmobiles and rode around to different “prime” locations to see Auroras. Unfortunately, the weather wasn’t the most generous, as it was cloudy again. However, that meant we got to ride around much more, and that we did. We went on various trails through the forest and when we got to this flat, swampy area, our tour guide let us go on a little joy ride and crank up the speed to about 70 km/h! Regrettably, my phone died in the freezing temperatures and no photos were taken besides the dashboard of my beast.
Even though it was a short trip, it was definitely one of my favorites and was an excellent way to end my travels with a bang. It also means I must buy a snowmobile in the future, as I had a blast!