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Published: December 17th 2013
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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, but Bernie had other ideas. We walked through the forest in a big loop that had us coming out on the main road beyond the Menesjärvi town limit!! As we hiked back to the hotel it started to snow; light, gently falling snow again which is much easier to deal with than nasty, wind-driven pellets of ice.
We arrived back at the hotel
just as this morning's winter fishing group returned on the snowmobiles. They didn't catch any fish, but retrieved two from the net under the ice. We just had time for a quick toboggan run each before lunch. There is some more video footage of us trying out yet another winter activity to be found at the end of today's blog entry. My verdict is that tobogganing is really hard on the backside!
White fish soup for lunch today followed by some blueberry pies that were our best dessert yet. The outside was more biscuity than pastry and just melted in your mouth. The food is not what could be described as gourmet, but we have enjoyed some really delicious home-style cooking. This has made it much more authentic anyway which we think is great. There are a couple of Aussie girls here at the moment, Kerry and Emily, so we have been chatting to them a bit at mealtimes. Kerry lives in Coburg and has come here with Emily who is currently living in Stockholm with her Swedish partner.
We had another lazy afternoon. After it was dark we started popping our heads out the front door periodically
to check what the cloud cover was doing. Hanging around determinedly unfortunately. Every time we went out of our room there was a mouthwatering smell of cinnamon in the air. Yum, it had me wondering what was being made for our dinner tonight.
At 7.00pm we went down to the restaurant for our last dinner which was reindeer stew again. Who knew there were so many different ways to cook reindeer? It was berry soup for dessert. This was another slightly weird not quite jam, not quite jelly concoction that consisted of red berries floating in a red 'soup'. It tasted OK, but the consistency was strange. Again it would have been better accompanied by something - say some sponge fingers or ice-cream. And the cinnamon we could smell during the afternoon? The cook had whipped up a batch of the traditional cinnamon and ginger Christmas biscuits in the shape of Christmas trees for the guests to have with their tea and coffee.
Another evening of reading in our room with occasional forays outside to check the sky. The cloud cover has steadfastly refused to budge all day so, unfortunately, no more aurora for us. On our last
check at about 11.45pm I slipped slightly on the icy driveway. I didn't go over, but I gave my left quadriceps muscle a really good pull. I guess I shouldn't have been out there in my polar fleece slippers with no tread on the soles?! With midnight approaching, we gave up on the sky clearing and went to bed. We were just being greedy anyway, hoping for a third viewing of the aurora.
9,614 steps / 6.55 km. Weekly total = 68,615 steps / 45.51 km
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Tot: 0.655s; Tpl: 0.024s; cc: 31; qc: 127; dbt: 0.2656s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.4mb
Caroline Brunner
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Go Tracey!
Loved the video clip. Poor Bernie, I think he should have been given a 'man-size' sled instead of that min-sized excuse for a sled!! Well done Tracey, you really are enjoying every crazy minute of this adventure. Wish I was there too. Caroline