Hiking in Yllas

April 26, 2023August 13, 2024 / Maria / Leave a comment

Anyone who’s ever been on holiday with me will tell you I’m not really the relaxing kind of vacationer. I like a good beach day, but I love experiences more and I am generally trying to cram in as much adventure as I can in a limited amount of time, which makes me an early riser. I had to try and let that go in Lapland. Since we were up every night looking for the aurora, we couldn’t also get up early. So we had a lie-in our first morning in Yllas and got up just in time to take advantage of the free buffet breakfast, which could definitely not be missed.

This was by far the most intense buffet breakfast I’ve ever had in my life. The resort had a full continental breakfast spread with a bread and oatmeal bar, cheese and meat plates, yogurt and fixings, and a whole smoked salmon. Then they had a full hot breakfast bar with eggs, bacon, potatoes, waffles, and even reindeer sausage, plus they had drink machines with all kinds of sparkling juice.

We had 2 full days in Yllas, so our plan for the day was to go skiing. You can ski down either side of the mountain, with the main part of the ski resort on the Yllas side. However, there is a smaller chalet on the Akaslompolo side as well, so we decided to start there. It was a beautiful sunny day when we got up and we were shocked by how few people were on the mountain when we parked. We went through a long questionnaire to rent skis before one of the employees finally informed us that the top of the mountain was totally closed because of wind, which explained why it looked so empty. The bottom half of the mountain was still open, but there’s limited lifts on this side, so we’d have to drive around the mountain to access the rest since you couldn’t ski over the top. Staff thought it likely the top would be closed the following day too, but we decided to take our changes and postponed skiing.

Instead, we backtracked to the visitor centre for Pallas-Yllastunturi National Park. They have a video that shares lots of information about the park and we got some recommendations for snowshoeing from the park staff. Originally we’d been planning to rent snowshoes, but they’re pretty expensive and despite how cold it is, Lapland only gets about 1m of snow base every year, so we decided to save our money and make do with our microspikes instead (which we’d brought from home). People seem to use studs for walking around in the city, but we didn’t see anyone hiking in microspikes. People were either just walking in their winter boots or they were trudging along in snowshoes that weren’t needed.

There’s tons of walking and ski trails in the park and around the ski resort. Nordic skiing is incredibly popular and I feel like we probably should have tried it, but I really have no interest in it (sorry nordic lovers!) so we did an assessment of the walking trails instead. Like I said, it’s not a particularly mountainous region, so a lot of the trails are flat, either through the forest or across the frozen lakes. I like a bit more of a challenge, so we picked Kuertunturi, which is one of the few hilly views. It’s across from Yllas mountain and I figured if the ski resort was still closed the following day, we’d at least get a view from the hike.

We returned to the cabin and re-packed our bags for hiking. There’s a few options for hiking Kuertunturi: you can hike to the summit from either side of the mountain as a there-and-back trip, or you can thru hike it and then make a loop back to your car along the road. We decided to start from the Akaslompolo side, which leaves from the church and is supposed to be more scenic if you only do one side. We figured we could decide at the top if we wanted to hike back or do a loop.

The hike starts off with a gentle incline hiking through the trees. It’s not too steep or challenging and you meander up the side of the mountain. Once you hit the open top (it felt like the alpine, but I think it’s just barren), it gets a lot steeper to the summit. It could be hiked in boots, but I was really glad we had the spikes at this section for better traction on the steep ups and downs.

The views from the exposed section are phenomenal, but the downside was that it was indeed extremely windy. We could understand why the lifts were closed at the top of Yllas while hiking Kuer. But it felt good to be out hiking. I’d been quite cold for most of the trip because we didn’t do a lot of extraneous activities, but I felt really good hiking Kuer. I only needed my fleece on the way up and even at the top, my puffy was still sufficient to keep me warm until we stopped for a break.

We didn’t stay at the top too long because of the wind and found some shelter under a tree. It was an easy decision to forgo the loop trail, but on a less windy day I think I would have gone for it. Instead we hiked back down and found a cafe for some hot chocolate before taking a break at the cabin and going out in search of supper. The KP was supposed to peak on this night, so we went for pizza supper around 6pm when it started to get dark. Before we’d even finished dinner I was getting notifications from my app that the aurora would soon be visible, so we didn’t waste any time in heading down to the lake around 7:30pm.

Holy moly, the aurora on this evening was something to behold. It’s the kind of aurora I only dreamed of seeing. The KP was over 6 and we were in the height of a geomagnetic storm. We later learned that people had been able to see the aurora in Scotland and as far south as England, so you can only imagine how it looked north of the Arctic Circle. Even as we were walking to the lake, the sky was completely lit green by the aurora. I practically ran there and even though it was incredibly windy on the lake, we were overwhelmed by the dancing night sky.

I quickly set up my tripod, but it was hard to even know where to aim it because the aurora was literally everywhere and the sky was filled with green and purple. The sky looked like it was on fire and the photos turned out incredibly vibrant. The first two nights we’d seen the aurora moving, but I’d say this was night where it really looked like it was dancing. It warps across the night sky and we could see it from horizon to horizon. The photos turned out amazing, but it’s hard to capture the scope when you’re surrounded by them.

Like I said in my last post, the aurora goes through cycles, so we hung around for about 90 minutes watching the show. To be honest, it was hard for me to leave even after an hour and a half, but eventually the cold does start to creep in (especially with the wind) and my camera battery kept freezing on me. But it was really special. That was our third night seeing the lights and while we would see them for the next 3 nights, this was by far the best show we got while in Lapland. The aurora always shows up better on camera, but even to the naked eye, it was an amazing sight.

A Sunny Welcome to Lapland

April 5, 2023August 13, 2024 / Maria / Leave a comment

We had an early departure from Tallinn for a flight to the far north of Finland. We had a layover in Helsinki, where we were joined by Katie and 2 of her friends, before flying to Rovaniemi. It was a sunny day from the air, but a thick layer of clouds hung over Rovaniemi and there was a fresh coat of snow on the ground and trees. I picked up my rental car, which was a tiny Toyota Yaris with studded tires, and we did our best to cram 5 people, 2 suitcases, and 5 backpacks into it – not an easy feat!

Rovaniemi is located right on the Arctic Circle and it’s a very popular tourist destination. I haven’t seen any stats about Finland’s tourism, but I’d argue that it’s probably stronger in the winter than in the summer, at least in the north. Lapland is a large region that dominates Finland’s North, attracting tourists who want to visit a snowy wonderland, see the northern lights, and participate in a range of traditional winter activities. Unlike Norway and Sweden, which are quite mountainous, Lapland is pretty flat and is characterized more by trees and barrens.

In general, Finland actually reminded me a lot of Newfoundland. While it definitely has more topsoil than “the Rock”, the terrain is really similar. Finland in Finnish is called Soumi, which loosely translates to Swamp Land, so it boasts a lot of the same boggy mosses and lichens as Newfoundland. Lapland is filled with elk and reindeer, whereas Newfoundland has moose and caribou – but the most notable is the berries. Lingonberries and cloudberries are incredibly common and popular in Finland, which reminded me a lot of home, where they’re known as partridgeberries and bakeapple.

While maneuvering the luggage into the car, the clouds started to break up and they completely transformed the landscape in no time. Where it was cloudy and snowy when we arrived, the sun filled the sky, sparkling on the fresh snow. We were staying about 15 minutes outside of Rovaniemi in a quaint little cabin in the woods. It wasn’t very big and only had one bedroom, but there were 2 futons in the living room, a toasty fireplace, and a sauna.

It was around 2pm in the afternoon, so we were all hungry for lunch and immediately returned to Rovaniemi in search of food. We opted for a chicken and waffles restaurant called 21, which was delicious and filled our bellies for exploring. Everyone was in search of some warmer items for the -20 degree weather we were expecting, so we set off wondering around town to do some shopping. It was about -10 degrees, which we thought wouldn’t be too bad for walking around in the sun, but the cold felt different in Lapland and I immediately wished for a few more layers. I may just be a wuss from living in Vancouver for the past 10 years, but we did get used to it over time.

Rovaniemi is a quirky town. Its big claim to fame is that it’s the “home of Santa Claus” and they’ve definitely leaned into the marketing. We passed everything from Santa’s “city office”, to “Santa’s Hotel”, to “Santa’s Luxury Boutique”, to my personal favourite, “Santa’s Donor Kebab”. We ended up at the Kemijoki River, which was mostly frozen over, and went for a very chilly walk along the riverbank, enjoying blue hour as the sun went down and the frost sparkled on the trees. When it started to get dark, we made a stop into the grocery store for some breakfast foods and pizzas before heading back to the cabin for the night.

We spent the evening playing cards while periodically checking outside for the aurora. I had downloaded a bunch of aurora apps for the trip, the best of which was definitely “My Aurora Forecast & Alerts”. The forecast is indicated using KP, which measures geomagnetic activity and is an indicator of whether you’ll see the lights. Simply put though, the numbers just indicate how far north or south the lights will be/can be seen. So for a low KP, they will only be in the far north and difficult to see until you are also very far north. 0-2 is considered low on the index, though Rovaniemi is far enough north that you can still see them when the KP is 2. 3 is moderate, and 4-6 is quite high, though the index tops out at 9. Once the KP hits around 4, you can see the lights in Helsinki, and at 6 you can potentially see them in Scotland and parts of the UK. But of course, that’s only if the sky is also clear of clouds, so in addition to KP, the forecasting apps also tracks cloud cover.

I didn’t really understand all of this until after the trip though. The forecast was only at 2 on our first night, so we kept popping outside, but only for short periods of time and we didn’t really know what we were looking for, so we didn’t see anything. Personally, I suspect they probably were visible, but when the KP is low, it takes a bit more patience to see them. I’ve since learned that they go through cycles when they are more visible and with a low KP, they can be pretty faint and won’t look how you expect. They photograph super well because it’s easy for all that light to show up on camera, especially when you leave the shutter open, so we expect them to look like all the viral photos we see on social media (which they do when the KP is high). However, when the KP is low, they are more of a faint white-ish glow, so it would be easy to mistake them for clouds if you didn’t know what you were looking for and you need to give your eyes a bit of time to adjust to the dark to see them best.

In any case, I had 7 nights in Lapland, so I wasn’t too concerned and had a great night socializing with Katie and her friends instead. I get a lot of energy from other people, so it was fun to hang out in a cabin in the woods and play cards and enjoy the sauna. I knew a bit more what to expect from the sauna this time and it wasn’t as hot as Loyly, so I enjoyed it a lot more. We did a few sauna sessions, followed by a roll in the snow for cold therapy, before heading to bed. My favourite part of sauna was how well it helps you sleep!

We woke the next morning to cloudless skies! It was an absolutely beautiful day, but despite the sun, it was still very cold, around -10 again and going down to -20 overnight. We didn’t make any mistakes this time and fully bundled up before we went out. We decided to go for a little hike in the morning. Usually I dress on the light side for hiking, but I also don’t usually go out in such cold weather, so I decided to commit to the warm clothing. The snowpants were definitely overkill once we started walking, but they’re too hard to get off, so I ended up hiking in just my sweater and snowpants, which wasn’t too bad either.

We went hiking in Ounasvaara, which is just across the river from Rovaniemi. It’s a popular outdoor spot and even has a small chair lift and a few ski runs – but it’s not very high, so I’m not sure I’d recommend it for skiing. Instead, we hiked up on the back side of the ski hill to a viewpoint. It’s really common in Lapland to come across small shelters out on the trails. I’m not quite sure about their history; I was guessing they might originally have been constructed for hunting, but maybe they’re just constructed by the municipalities for safety when adventuring. But it’s very common to find small cabins and lean to’s with a few benches and firepits for roasting sausage. The one at this viewpoint was heavily in use, but there was also a big wooden viewpoint to help you see over the trees, so we had a really lovely view of Rovaniemi and all the surrounding snow-covered forest.

We did some more wandering along the trails before returning to Rovaniemi for lunch. We landed on a burger restaurant called Kauppayhtio and had the most delicious reindeer burgers! I was really adamant that I wanted to try reindeer while in Lapland and it ended up being incredibly easy. In addition to the burger, I also had reindeer pasta and pizza on the trip, though I was a little dismayed that the pizza was called “the Rudolph”.

There’s a few museums and art galleries in Rovaniemi, so we decided to visit the Arktikum after lunch. It was a bit of a mix of museum and science centre and had a lot of great exhibits. We didn’t get to do them all, but my favourite was their very large exhibit on culture and history in Lapland. It covered everything from the local Sami culture, to Lappish history, to the local flora and fauna. They also had a very large science exhibit on the arctic, which I enjoyed. The other big art gallery is Korundi House of Culture. Me and Seth skipped out on that one because we were heading further north, but Katie visited it before returning to Helsinki and said it’s also excellent.

A Day in Old Town Tallinn

March 29, 2023August 13, 2024 / Maria / 1 Comment

Finland was the primary focus of our trip, but Helsinki is so close to Tallinn that we couldn’t resist popping over to Estonia for a day. There’s a ferry that runs direct from city to city and takes just over 2 hours. We did the evening run and arrived in Tallinn around 11pm and took a taxi to our hotel. We had a small crisis before leaving Helsinki. I thought we were staying in a hotel and was checking my email for the address before leaving and found an email detailing instructions on how to get into the apartment (I had assumed there was reception). The instructions said that the code to get in would be texted to us the day before, which is a major flaw because obviously our phones didn’t work in Europe. I frantically emailed them for the code, but fortunately Katie was able to call them on her phone and get it for us. We’re just relieved we made this discovery in Katie’s apartment and not at the entrance to the hotel, which is not manned and we would have be locked out of without wifi at night!

So crisis averted and fortunately, the apartment was lovely! All our hotel bookings in Finland were very expensive, but Tallinn was cheap and the location was unbelievable! Tallinn is centered around the Old Town, but there’s not much actually in Old Town for accommodations. Our hotel was right on the edge of Old Town and was a large 1 bedroom apartment with a full kitchen and living room. This was amazing the following day because it was really cold and we loved having the apartment to pop back to every couple of hours to warm up.

We had a nice breakfast at a nearby café and did a bit of exploring around Old Town. We started at the Town Square, which we were right next too, and just meandered around the city. The streets are mostly pedestrian only and very confusing, but Old Town is small enough that you can’t ever really get lost. It’s a really beautiful place though – Old Town is split into two parts, the upper and lower city – and it’s completely encircled with old stone walls, so it really lives up to its name of being “Old”.

We decided it was a good place to learn some real history and we found a free walking tour at 11am. It needs 10 people to run and I was convinced it wouldn’t get enough because it was really not busy, but we ended up with 14! There were a few people traveling around like us, but a bunch of the guests were on a cruise. It seemed like an odd time of year for a cruise (especially considering they were Australian and it’s summer in Australia), but hey, who am I to judge!

The tour was excellent! Our tour guide had grown up in Estonia and was the same age as me. She shared lots of personal anecdotes from her family history that really made the tour come alive. Estonia has a long and storied history, like most of Europe, but here it’s mostly about occupation. Her history lesson dated back to the 1200’s, when Estonia first fell to Danish occupation. Denmark occupied the country for a long time and constructed a lot of early Old Town. Old Town is interesting because the Upper part of the town has a great view, which is actually very unique because Estonia is super flat and the highest point in the country is only 318 metres high.

The story changes in the 1500’s when Estonia submitted to Swedish occupation. From there, the history sounded very similar to what we learned of Finland when we visited Suomenlinna. The Swedes ruled the country until early 1700’s, when they were succeeded by the Russians, same as in Finland. There was a brief period of independence in 1918 following the Russian Revolution that lasted for 22 years, until the Soviet Union invaded again in 1939. This reign lasted until the fall of the Berlin Wall and Estonia re-gained their independence in 1991.

Despite the long Russian rule, there’s limited Russian influence around Old Town. During first independence, the Estonians tried to remove as much of the visible Russian monuments around town, save for the beautiful St. Aleksander Cathedral, which apparently they didn’t have the money to tear down. But our guide felt that throughout time, it’s generally become a beloved part of the Old Town.

Russian influence is still very evident in Estonia today though, with some 40% of the population speaking Russian. It was 1 day to a year from when Russia first invaded Ukraine when we were there, which was a somber reminder of how recent Estonia’s history really is. Our guide explained that though there is a large population of Russian-speaking Estonians, Estonian is the only national language and there is still a lot of animosity between the Russian and Estonian speaking Estonians. Her grandmother actually spent several years in a Siberian labour camp and she indicted that her father’s generation are still very opposed to the Russian speaking Estonians and don’t mix with them, even though most Estonian-speaking Estonians of that generation are also fluent in Russian. In contrast, she felt her generation wasn’t so caught up in segregation, but still didn’t mix with one another because these days, neither can speak the other’s language, so it’s too hard to communicate.

We spent most of the tour in the Upper city, which has less tourist amenities and more history. We visited two lookouts, which provide a great view down on to the Lower part of the city and the more modern parts of Tallinn. We didn’t explore much of Tallinn beyond Old Town because we only had 1 day, but we did walk outside of Old Town to the “hipster district” (so named by our guide, we don’t know how legitimate this label is).

But before leaving Old Town, we treated ourselves to my favourite meal of the entire trip! Our guide recommended a small restaurant called Rataskaevu 16 and it was so delicious! We started with mulled wine and homemade rye bread for an appy and then I had an elk steak and Seth had a wild mushroom risotto. Then we finished off with an Estonian cheese platter for dessert. I’m not a big foodie, but it was heavenly! Although I was sad to learn after the fact that what the Scandinavians call “elk” is what we call “moose”, which was a little less exciting have grown up in Newfoundland. Seth also informed me that caribou and reindeer are also basically the same, the name just depends on what part of the world you’re in.

The “Hipster District” isn’t too far from Old Town, so we walked over to the Balti Jaama Turg, which is a giant indoor market with tons of food options and clothing stalls. We found some snacks and spent an hour browsing through the stalls. One thing I noticed in Helsinki, and subsequently in Tallinn, is that there is a lot of quality thrift options. I was sorely tempted by a floor length puffy jacket while thrifting, but figured it would have limited use in wet Vancouver, so I let it lie.

If you continue a little further, you get into more of an industrial area filled with lots of beautiful murals. There’s a collective of artists working in most of the spaces and we did some exploring before taking a break for a beer at one of the breweries. The dark caught up with us after that and we decided to return to Old Town for dinner – it was a nice meal, but compared to our amazing lunch it was a bit forgettable.