Hi Land!
This week homework title is "12/11 Post your photos of your favorite past vacation! #throwbackvacation"
And, as I'm very likely to get some vacation sickness, I'm very glad to join!
My very last vacation was my trip to Elba Island last summer, it was a very intense last minute trip where I enjoyed the island's cristal clear waters and high hills, which I highly recommend!
But the trip that really makes me nostalgic is the one to the Finnish Lapland I did in the end of last January. I totally left a huge piece of my heart there! It was magical and I keep dreaming of getting back there ❄️
The people are so welcoming and friendly, I felt like I belonged there, they never made me feel unwanted or joked, they were very talkative to and I keep memories of everything they shared with me about their lives.
Temperature never got higher than -19°C and the lowest was -33°C, but with the right clothes it's pretty enjoyable!
Tips: of you see some tree-free space which is not a road, it's a frozen lake.
The trip started in Sallatunturi and the very first day we went for a ride on the snowmobile in the forest
After the ride we stopped in a free shelter where the guide set up a fire and made us some Finnish coffee and warmed up some berry cake pieces:
He served the coffee in a traditional cup called kuksa
After that, we went for a reindeer sled safari in the night hunting for the northern lights (which we didn't see 😭), and I cannot describe in words how much stars and how beautiful the sky was, I feel in love!
We also stopped for a dire and some warm drink, this time they were giving hot berry juice and some biscuits, the guide then told the traditional Finnish story about how the lights are created.
The day after we went for a walk with snow shoes into the forest, and that's the thing that I loved the most. Being free in the forest, surrounded by snow and animals footprints, with the guide so enthusiastic about her job and reveling every secret about that nature was just incredible.
After the walk we had lunch on the fireplace in a free shelter with the guide, who shared her life story and made me envious.
That night we decided to try the sauna in our cottage and also the Finnish way to enjoy it: rolling into the snow outside, totally naked at -23°C
This was mystic and I want to do that forever!
We spent a day traveling from Sallatunturi to Ivalo, on the Inari lake, and we stopped at Santa's village in Rovaniemi
That day in Ivalo the temperature was insanely cold, si I had to celebrate it with a picture:
We were staying in a hotel and the day after we started the biggest adventure: 2 days trip on a sled (4 tourists and 2 guides, each of us had their personal sled to drive freely) with dogs.
Dogs were enthusiastic and super cute, they let me pet them without questioning, the musher also runs in competitions so his dogs were real warriors ❤️
Also, riding a sled is exhausting, the dogs will always follow the musher's sled ahead, no matter if you're on your shed our not, they don't even notice, si you'd better not fall!
The day was pretty cold, around -30°C, so we had to keep moving our legs and hands and feet while on the sled running, but the view and the solitude, the silence broken only by the paws running and the sled sledding on the snow were priceless.
Here we were at the guesthouse, a few minutes before leaving
We stopped for lunch on a little island on lake Inari where we had a fireplace, but no shelter. We all left our scarves and balaclavas by the fire with the hope to melt the ice that formed on them for to us breathing, but our wishes never came true.
According to Google maps, the red point is the guesthouse and the blue Man is where we had lunch. I don't know if the path we went through is the same showed here, tho.
Then we eventually got to the chalet, where we then slept, which didn't have running water and wasn't heated before our arrival.
The musher, Juha, showed us a clear water well almost in the musher of the frozen lake, and we took water for the dogs, or water was in the sleds together with our food and some light personal luggage.
After that, Juha showed us how to prepare the dogs' food and we all helped, while he was coming our dinner. If you want to see this part, check my saved stories here.
We were all exhausted and happy to discover that the huge and gruff, but lovely, Juha was an excellent cook.
The next day, I woke up to this ❤️
We had breakfast and then got back on the sleds to reach the guesthouse and the end of the trip.
Fun fact: temperature when we arrived at the cottage on the lake were around -32°C and I got used very quickly, the next day I went out of the cottage to reach the toilet (outside, no running water, no heat) I felt surprisingly warm: we were back to -22°C.
Here's me and my leader on the way back to his home ❤️
What about your most loved trip out vacation? Where do you want to travel next? Are you a sea person or a snow person?
I'd love to see @penny @missy @lemon answers too!
