Our First Full Day!

Saturday 21st July 2007

After retiring to bed around 12.30am, I found that I was that hyped up that I couldn't really sleep. I closed my eyes and dozed for a while and then took a quick look at my watch as the light was quite bright through the curtains, It was 2am. After a few more times of doing the same, I decided to get up and take a walk (3.45am) while the wife and kids stayed in bed. Firstly i walked down the lane from our cabin in the general direction of the two restaurants, Jullis and Pipola and towards the supermarket. Upon reaching the end of the lane, I had a great view of Lake Akaslompolo and decided to walk down to the waters edge. On route, I took a few pics to show how light it was at this time of morning (pic taken at 4.18am) and have included one of these as shown. Next I reached the Pipola Bar/Restaurant, and it appeared that it was turning out time (4am) as there were many people staggering back to their houses/cabins and hotels as well as a couple of taxis coming and going to take people home. Next stop was the supermarket where I checked the opening times so later we could stock up on supplies and the clock outside said the temperature was 5 degrees. After a few minutes I decided to head back and continued passed our lane and down towards the Destination Lapland office (again to check opening times) and the Akas Hotel (Snow Elf). Finally, after about an hour or so of fresh air, I returned to our cabin and back to bed where I stayed until about7.30am.

Once the family was up and about, we visited the supermarket to stock up on supplies and spent the rest of the day exploring the local area, taking a few more pics like the one here of a roaming reindeer and looking at the Souvenir Shops, Ski Shop and Post Office before stopping off at Jullis at about 3pm in the afternoon http://www.jullis.com/ for our first local meal of a specialist Jullis Burger and Chips (with hindsight, I really should have taken a photo of one of these as they're really for those with a Hearty appetite!! Enough said, I scoffed the lot!!) . Following this, we took a short walk and then returned to our cabin for the day to familiarise ourselves with it, take a sauna and enjoy its surroundings.

Please check back for details on day two of our summer vacation in Lapland.

We're back safely!!!

After our two week vacation in Lapland, I'm now going to get back down to business and write about all the things I said would on my return. Firstly, i'm going to spend the next couple of weeks running through the things we got upto on a day to day basis and then will expand on all the good bits and provide as much details as possible. Again, any feedback or questions would make this whole process so much more interesting and fun so if you want to know anything, please get in touch.

Friday 20th July - Journey and arrival

Having travelled down to an Heathrow Hotel on Thursday 19th, we got up all fresh in preparation for our depature time of 10.30am for our flight to Helsinki. Heathrow was somewhat busy but it helped pass the time and before we knew it we were boarding ready to go. Once on board, we seemed to be taxiing on the runway for an eternity before the captain announced that all northbound flights had been suspended due to the severe thunder storms. Maybe some of you will remember the amount of rain that came down that day! After some 1 hr and 40 mins delay, we were on on our way and although it was rather turbulent for a while, we were soon arriving in Helsinki. Luckily, due to the forward planning of Finnair, our connecting flight was also delayed so we were able to board right away on arrival in Helsinki and after another 40 minutes delay on the runway we were heading for Rovaniemi.

By the time we arrived in Rovaniemi and picked up our rental car, it was 8.30 in the evening local time but the 3 hour drive in pleasant sunshine was a welcome change to all the rain depression we had been suffering from back home. Once we had got out of the ever so slightly built up area of Rovaniemi, we were onto the open road up to Akaslompolo in the north. The journey was awesome through the unspoilt countryside with the company of another car every now and again but more often the company of a reindeer. Finally at around 11.30pm, we arrived at our cabin and was welcomed by our neighbours who we had spoken to many times previously but had never met until then. Many thanks to them for making us so welcome after a fairly long day in getting there!!

After about an hour of chatting etc, we retired to our cabin at around 12.30am (now Saturday 21st July) in broad daylight!!! For those of you who have never experienced Lapland in the summertime then it's really something to behold!!! With the midnight sun and all, the next two weeks were spent in daylight with it never once getting dark. The closest it actually came to getting anywhere near was on one of the two days when we had rain but otherwise, it was light all of the time.

As I want to detail as much of the vacation as possible, I will wrap up there for today and tomorrow will post more details about our first full day Saturday 21st July and will post the first pictures too.

Any questions folks, please drop me a line!