I traveled to Finland in March 2023 with Seth to visit my cousin Katie, who was living and studying in Helsinki. We spent a few days in Helsinki, popped down to Tallinn, Estonia for a day, and then flew to Lapland for a full week! In Lapland, we visited Rovaniemi, Yllas, and Levi and were lucky enough to see the Northern Lights 6 nights in a row!

Finland BlogRoll

Snowy Adventures in Helsinki – Even though this blog is mostly focused on hiking and adventures, I initially started it 13 years ago as a travel blog! After a long pandemic, it’s exciting to finally have some travel adventures to write about. My last major trip was to New Zealand for my honeymoon just before the pandemic, so I’ve been excited to start traveling again. My cousin Katie is studying new media art in Helsinki, so I decided to book a trip to visit her in early 2022… read more

A Dip in the Baltic Sea – It wasn’t that cold while we were visiting Helsinki, around -6 degrees, but apparently we’re wimps after living in Vancouver and it was quite cold being outside all day. So on our second full day we decided to shake things up a bit and start with a visit to the Winter Garden, which is actually housed in a greenhouse. I was fully expecting to pay entrance for the garden since it’s indoors, but we were thrilled to discover that it’s actually a city space that’s free to visit… read more

A Day in Old Town Tallinn – 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… read more

A Sunny Welcome to Lapland – 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… read more

Experiencing the Aurora by Reindeer – The highlight of our short weekend visit to Rovaniemi was easily our “northern lights reindeer safari”. After exploring the city, we returned to our cabin to bundle up in every layer we’d brought on the trip for the forecasted -20 degree evening temperature. The KP was a little higher than the previous night (3), so I was hopeful we’d see the aurora with the help of our experienced guides. It was completely clear, so if they were out… read more

Aurora Hunting in Akaslompolo – After Rovaniemi, it was a pretty leisurely drive to our next stop, Yllas. I’m not sure if it’s just because most of the roads in Lapland were covered in a hard layer of snow, but they were in amazingly good shape. With our studded tires, it made for easy driving, though there wasn’t a lot to look again except flat forest and meadows. The trees were still covered with a thick layer of frost, so they were very beautiful… read more

Hiking in Yllas – 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… read more

Dogsledding and Other Adventures – On our second day in Yllas we made another attempt at the ski hill. This time we drove around to the Yllas side since there are more chair lifts. It was still windy, so we were disappointed that the top half of the mountain remained closed, but we decided to go skiing anyways. It was mid-week, so fortunately it wasn’t too busy – we had to wait in line at most lifts, but given that half the mountain was closed, it could have been a lot worse… read more

Skiing in Levi – The last segment of our trip was to another small town in Lapland called Levi. It’s only about an hour from Yllas, so we drove there after our visit to the snow hotel. While I didn’t care to sleep in a snow hotel, I was keen to try out one of the glass huts. There are several different glass huts around the region and as the name suggests, they are basically glass roofed hotel rooms. Unsurprisingly, they are not cheap, so I shopped around a bit before deciding… read more