We had our taxi pick us up at 6:45am for our mammoth trip to Arctic Finland - it took 2 flights and a 2 hour coach journey to get to Luosto in Finland, which meant we spent 11 hours door to door travelling! Our first flight was to Helsinki, where we literally got off the plane, went through security, and then dashed through the airport to the gate where our next flight was already boarding - we literally had time to go to the loo and that was it - and then we were on a way to Kittila in northern Finland. When we got off the flight at Helsinki it was 'only' -2 and felt OK, but the cold really hit us when he got off the plane at Kittila - it was -8 with a very cold wind blowing - we were only out in it for about a minute but were very glad to get on to the coach!
We arrived at the hotel at about 8pm local time and was told to go straight to the dining room so that we could have dinner as they usually close at 8 so we dashed to our room, threw our stuff in the room and then off to a dinner of Reindeer Stew, mash potato and fish similar to whitebait - half way through our dinner someone rushed in to say that the northern lights were happening so everyone left their dinner to go and have a look - we, of course, didn't have our coats with us and it was freezing but as we stood outside the hotel we could see them! They were quite faint - a pale green colour - but you could see them swirling in the sky - they would probably have been more spectacular had we been away from artificial light but it was good to see all the same - we then all trundled back in to finish our dinner.
After dinner, we went to inspect our room properly - its quite basic, with twin beds, but were expecting both so it was no great surprise - our room is over looking a wood which has a walkway down to the frozen lake which we hope to go and see tomorrow once we are given our thermal suits.
We are very excited to be here, and are looking forward to the adventures to come!
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