Oh dear, another rather gloomy day in Menesjärvi, but at least it's not still twenty degrees below zero; it's positively mild at only minus 3°! After breakfast I wrote up some more of our Lapland adventure and Bernie taught himself how to upload our videos to YouTube and then how to add the links into our travel blog. He has added video footage of us snowmobiling on Lake Menesjärvi at the end of the entry for the 11th of December and footage of our fabulous dogsledding experience at the end of the entry for the 12th of December. About 11.00am we geared up again and went out for a snowshoe shuffle along the track through the forest. I thought that we were going to do the short hike that we did with Toni on Friday night, ... read more

Aaahh, the first of our three extra days to do as we wish. This morning we farewelled our English companions who flew up to Ivalo with us on Tuesday. They were dressed again in their civvies - no more onesies for them! - in preparation for their flight to Helsinki and then on to London. Sophia and Matt then have to drive up to Nottingham and won't be home until about 8.00pm so they have a long day of travel ahead of them. We hadn't put all of our gear on to wave goodbye but, even so, we decided to walk quickly down to the lake for a quick look. Bernie had the Sony camera with him so tried out its panorama function again. It really does make it super easy to take awesome panoramic photographs ... read more

After breakfast this morning we piled into the Ford Transit for our visit to the Siberia Husky Farm that is owned by the local dog whisperer, Tinja. We were really, really looking forward to going dog-sledding. We tried to go dog-sledding when we were in Alaska, but bad weather conditions prevented us from being helicoptered up onto the Mendenhall Glacier from Juneau to the dog sledding venue. Today the weather was quite good and the husky farm was much more accessible as it can be reached by road. When we arrived all of the dogs started going crazy with excitement, sort of like - the tourists have arrived and we are going sledding!! Tinja welcomed us to her farm and started introducing us to the dogs. We were told that all of the Siberian Huskies and ... read more

Brrr, minus eight degrees at Helsinki Airport this morning ... and minus 16 degrees in Ivalo which is where we will be heading later today. Well, actually, Ivalo is just the airport that we fly into. Ultimately we are bound for the Hotel Korpikatano in a remote place called Menesjarvi. There we will spend the next seven nights watching for the Aurora Borealis and our days dog sledding, snowmobiling, ice fishing and going on a reindeer sleigh-ride (when will we sleep?). I use the term 'day' very loosely here because the sun will not show itself above the horizon while we are inside the Arctic Circle!! So it will be either twilight or dark for the next week. A new experience for us; we have been in Alaska in July and seen the midnight sun - ... read more

This morning we had breakfast in Elizabeth and Sven's dining room overlooking rooftops lightly covered with snow. It was lovely to look out onto from the warmth of indoors! We weren't sure it would be quite so lovely when we headed off to catch the bus because the temperature outside was -9°. Fortunately we didn't have to wait too long for the No 76 bus. Bernie flashed our Stockholm Cards at the driver and he nodded us through. We disembarked at Skeppsbron believing that we could take the ferry from there to Djurgärden to visit the ABBA Museum. But no, the dude on the ticket booth said the card wasn't valid. So we went back to the bus thinking that it is a flaw in the system if you can only validate the Stockholm Card at ... read more