Kirkenes to Saariselka

I had a good night’s sleep overnight, but SB felt a bit woosy during the night. Thankfully it seems to have passed. After breakfast we head back to our cabin for a final clean up and out by 8 so that we then head up to the 5th floor lounge area to wait with D & G until we dock at Kirkenes where we will collect our suitcases on the pier and make our way to our coach IN —22 DEGREES! And I meant to put the temperature in capitals! Our ship has been slicing through ice this morning and visibility is poor.

Whoever said it was minus 21 degrees lied! It is minus 31... Kelli told us that as we were spending most of the day on the coach, we didn’t need to put all the layers on. Well she was bloody wrong about that. I thought my legs were going to snap off just walking from the ship to our coach. Welcome to Finland.

When we are all loaded on board, we head off to the control point into Russia. This is actually a detour from the route we need to be on, but it is so relatively close that it was a nice diversion. There was even a little souvenir shop there, but as it was Sunday was closed. I can’t see that it would get much trade at all.

Even though there was snow everywhere, the scenery was absolutely gorgeous.

We were thrilled to see a moose, and then every so often we spotted reindeer so that was exciting to us.

We hada late lunch stop at the SIIDA Sami museum and then went through the museum. It was really interesting as I had never heard of the Sami people before. We are now in Finnish Lapland.

Amazing scenery from sunshine through the clouds to dark in a matter of moments and it is only mid afternoon. We arrive at our hotel for the next two nights, Santa’s Hotel Tunturi. SB hasn’t said that the hotel gets it’s name because Santa Claus stayed here as yet, but I know it is only a matter of time! Our hotel room is really nice and has it’s own sauna! We are on the first floor and have our own little balcony, but it is covered in snow so we probably won’t be out on it much at all.

Dinner was buffet style in the main dining room. My legs once again almost snapped off from the cold just by walking the 100 metres outdoors to get to it. I tried reindeer which was okay, but as there was no tomato sauce or sweet chilli sauce to go with it, I thought it was a bit boring. Apparently there was some lingonberry jam that you were supposed to eat with it, but I wasn’t keen on trying it. A brisk walk back to our room where we gathered up a drink from our stash and went downstairs into the lounge room to meet D & G for a night cap. A nice end to our day, then back upstairs to our room. I had a lovely hot shower to thaw out and then to bed. Big day tomorrow that I’m really looking forward to...