Christmas is coming . . . except where we are, it has arrived

After a great night's sleep, we woke to an overcast day with the promise of 22 degrees.  The Fins are amazed at the weather we have brought with us so late in summer!

There was a sighting of the Northern Lights earlier in the week, but we had not been able to see them before we went to bed, so we had set the alarm for 2:30 am this morning to get up and check again.  I was up at 1:50 am and checked, and Donna got up when the alarm went off, but this was not our time to be treated specially and we did not get to see the lights.  Bugger, maybe next visit.  😞

There are two main attractions in Rovaniemi - the Arktikum that showcases the Arctic environment and development and changing landscape, and the Santa Claus Village.  Both open at 10 am and we need to be away from here by midday.  Gee what a choice!  What to do?  Which one do you think we chose to visit??! Ha ha - hope you all guessed right!

The added bonus of the Santa Village is that we cross the Arctic Circle here again and instead of passing it on a ship, in the night, we got a chance to have one foot in each of the latitude zones!  Special.

The Santa Village is the permanent home of Santa Claus in Lapland, here in Finland.  It is summer now, although drawing closer to Christmas and the elves are busy preparing and wrapping presents and putting them in huge crates that are marked with the type of toys and where on Santa's sleigh that crate needs to be placed.  We visit Santa and tell him all about our grandchildren and how good they have all been this year.  He asks us to remind them that they must continue to be good with Christmas getting

closer.

We could visit the reindeer in their summer paddock up the back of the Village, but it was quite expensive at €40 per person!  Because we had seen reindeer in the wild as we were travelling to North Cape recently, we decided not to see them penned up here.

There are displays of Christmas from countries from all over the world and we are reminded that there are elves living under the floors who can send naughty and nice reports back to Santa at any time.

We can just imagine this place in the winter months - it would be so

special wrapped in a warm blanket of snow.  A few souvenirs bought, Santa's Post Office visited, the Iitala factory outlet visited (no purchases as we would have trouble getting them home).  Coffee and cakes later, we head for the car and our drive back to Riikka and Runo's home in Jyväskylä - 653 kms to the south and a drive of 6 hours and 35 minutes.  We make one stop for fuel en-route and drive in and out of rain, promising Riikka that we are bringing the sunshine back to them.

We finally arrive (slow weekend traffic and intermittent rain slowing) just before 7:30 pm.
Runo has smoked a salmon for us and Riikka prepared the tiniest new potatoes and salad and an amazing creme fraiche and dill sauce.  It was SOOO delicious - forgot to take photos sorry.  Dessert and coffee followed. The boys are happy we are back - dessert again - twice in the week!!

We semi-plan for the weekend.  Riikka is coming with us to Helsinki - I am so excited to be able to spend some girlie time with her and Donna.  We will first visit the timber Petäjävesi Old Church that we had hoped to see the other day, but didn't so that we could get to Jyväskylä at a reasonable time.

Riikka and Runo are visiting Australia next March and loose plans are made for us all to catch up in Sydney.