… we got off the number eight bus in a rush when the bus turned in the opposite direction of our hote and I left my two yuan pompom beanie on the bus. I guess it did pretty well to make it through a Canberra winter and then on to Lapland. Perhaps it will find a new home and live out its days on the head of a Rovaniemi local. Most likely it will end up in landfill. The worst part was it was 4pm in the afternoon, pitch black and about  -9 degrees. Not the optimum time to be walking from the bus stop to the hotel. Thankfully, as Rovaniemi is a pretty small town, the walk was only about ten minutes or so. We checked in and headed straight out in search of a new beanie. Unfortunately, as it was Finnish Independence Day, there was hardly anything open. Our first stop was a hardware store – they had what appeared to be a very plain black beanie for 50 Euros. It transpired this was because the beanie had earphones wired in. Our next stop was a supermarket – alas another dead end. Everything else appeared to be closed until we cam upon this sports warehouse type of store. The prices weren’t warehouse though. There was a spectacular pompom beanie with ear muffs that matched my scarf perfectly and would have kept my head toasty warm Problem was it cost about 60 euros. In the end I went for a snow motifed number from the bargain bin for 15 euros. Not much of a bargain and not as effective at keeping my ears and the sides opf my face warm as the two yuan hero. The search for a proper replacement continues. Something a bit more stylish for the effortlessly cool destinations coming up – like Stockholm and Berlin for example.

Hat purchased, we headed into Lordi square so Dan could use the bank machine and for a bit of a look. The square includes a Christmas tree and a kids luge – not very metal at all. The bank trip wasn’t successful  and required some remediation on the bank’s website. We were pretty cold by now so decided to head to the coffee house just off the square. My first stop on my trip here four years ago, Coffee houses are an essential part of life in these parts – somewhere warm to sit for a while and enjoy afternoon coffee and cake.

We took a bit more of a stroll up to the McDonalds – the world’s most northern McDonalds, where Dan took pretty much the same shots I had four years ago – of the McDonalds and the adjacent snow covered freeway. Then it was back to our room for a bit of respite before heading out for dinner. I was happy with anything, except pizza. All we seemed to be able to find though were pizza restaurants. I was even happy to do the kebab meat on chips thing again but we couldn’t really find that either.

Eventually we happened upon a French country kitchen chain we had seen in Helsinki – Fransmanni – but here they also offered a Lappish menu. And it was reasonably priced by Finnish standards.  We chose a tastes of Lapland platter – a blin. Salmon pastrami, smoked reindeer and roast reindeer. It came with a pickled red onion salad, with a mushroom salad – cream or cream cheese with small pieces of mushroom and lots of time. We didn’t get one of our four choices – I think probably the salmon pastrami, but the smoked reindeer was exception al and the roast reindeer prettygood too. The blin is a sort of pancake made with yeast and fried in butter – it looks like a potato cake and tastes wonderful. For mains, I was tempted by the salmon soup but decided on the same choice as dan – sautéed reindeer atop potato mash and garnished with ligonberries and dill pickles. Yum. The reindeer meat was basically small pieces of meat that had been sautéed in butter. The flavour wasn’t at all gamey and probably predictably had a more subtle taste than venison. It was awesome with the ligonberries. For dessert we shared a clafoutti with cloudberry sorbet. I like ligonberries, which are fabulously tart more than the subtler, sweeter cloud berries. Dinner consumed, washed down with a Kiwi Pinot, we wandered back to the hotel to kip before we got up at sparrow’s fart in order to catch the 7am train.

I still haven’t quite got the sleeping thing under control (Tip – make sure on that first day you just push through. Never, ever take the nap option or you’ll have trouble getting out of the habit).  I woke at about 3:30am so was easily able to get up at 5:30 to start getting ready. We packed and headed out into the freezing morning. Dan had one more go with the bank machine – success! Then we started on our 25 minute stroll to the train station. Not that it is anything but dark most of the time but it was also a balmy -22 degrees out for our stroll. It’s true what they say – once it gets past -10 it makes no difference. Fortuitously our journey took us past the cluster of public buildings designed by Alvar Aalto, he also designed the town when it was rebuilt after it was destroyed by the retreating Germans in World war 2. The major streets form the shape of a reindeer’s head and antlers.

The train was at the station when we arrived so we found our carriage and got on. Because we are over 25, we have to travel on a first class Eurail pass. It has some advantages. For most of the journey home, we had the carriage, on the top deck of the train, to ourselves. It also came with bottomless percolated coffee, water, butter cookies, power sockets and free wj-fi. The food was the same as Everything you need to settle in for the 10 hour journey back to Helsinki. It sounds like it would be incredibly boring but Dan had his tablet, I had my MP3 player and blogging and there was plenty to look at out the window. As Dan commented, everything looks more interesting  with snow. Even the junkyard and I was just mesmerized by the never ending Christmas card shots of farmhouses and Christmas trees. Lots of Christmas trees. The food was the same as the first journey but I finally enjoyed a Karelian pastry the way it was intended – warm with a buttery egg filling. It was a great discovery.

Christmas themed activities – 3 (eating Rudolph doesn’t count)  War museums and model shops – 0