The rest of my week in lapland was extraordinary. After my husky ride I had an arctic tour, which last one day, a ski/sledding day, a reindeer sleigh ride, and of course, the northern lights. On the arctic tour we crossed the border from Finland to Norway and spent a few hours in a small town on the beach. Here we got to swim, if you were brave enough, eat some homemade salmon soup at the church and walk around. The ocean was absolutely freezing but they had a sauna so all the crazy tourists that want to swim in the arctic ocean can not die of hypothermia. I guess I'm classified as a crazy tourist. After this we got to peer out the bus window for reindeer roaming the mountain side, view a bunch of magnificent scenery, and shop at a local store on our way back. I bought myself some nice Scandinavian mittens so my fingers wouldn't freeze off skiing the next day, good thing I remembered to bring gloves from home.... Anyways, skiing was incredible.
They have awesome snow here considering it snows blizzard style almost every day. The powder was great and renting gear and a pass really wasn't all that expensive. I have some pictures from skiing but it will be a little while before I can get them from my Belgian friend to post. After skiing we went on the longest sledding hill in Europe, a 1.5 km long hill! Although going down on a one person sled with two people wasn't all that smart, it was still a blast. Walking back up the hill really wasn't that fun so I only went down a few times :)
The very last night we were there we got to see the northern lights from the top of the hill (the picture is the best one a guy in our group could manage).We had our Italian physicist with us to explain what was happening with the ionization of the molecules so that was also very helpful. The northern lights were such a crazy/amazing thing so see, but the stars were equally as cool I thought. We were in a town near no other towns so there were no lights, no pollution, and we were directly under the northern star.
After we checked out and left our mountain villa, we traveled to a reindeer farm where we got to enjoy a nice sleigh ride in pairs. We picked the one with the biggest antlers because he looked awesome.. he turned out to be their meanest reindeer at the farm, go figure. After the sleigh ride, we went into a traditional style Saami house (the people of Lapland are called Saami people) and had sausages cooked by the fire, some tea, and learned about the reindeers, Saami culture, and got to hear the lady sing a traditional Saami song. It was all very fascinating. From here we ventured to Helsinki, toured the city and the national history museum and then headed to Copenhagen. After a long 27 hours, we finally made it home!
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