After an epic travel day and night where we had flown onboard one of Finnair’s flagship Airbus A350s in Business Class and then boarded the Santa Claus Express to travel overnight through Finland, we work up on day 2 of our Nordic Nomad adventure on our way to the Gateway to Lapland, Rovaniemi. Enjoying a relax morning travelling along the forest lined railway from Kemi, we had breakfast on the train and arrived into Rovaniemi just after 1100. With some photos of the train taken and our hire car collected, we were ready to head into the city just before lunch, making our way to our first stop, the Arktikum. You can read the other posts from our Nordic Nomads adventure here and here.
The Arktikum is a combined history and science museum covering the arctic region and the history of Finnish Lapland and is worth allowing plenty of time to visit. One half of the Arktikum is a science museum all about the climate of the arctic, the role it plays in the earth working as it does, and the animals that live within it. We spent a good couple of hours looking around this half, and could have easily spent longer, although we were dodging around a group of kids that seemed to always be where we were. The other half of the Arktikum is the Regional Museum of Lapland, which looked really interesting, but which we decided to give a miss as we were both ravenous and unfortunately the Arktikum café isn’t open on Saturdays. Entry to the Arktikum is €22 and your ticket allows you to come and go all day, which had we arrived earlier and had longer in Rovaniemi, we would have probably spent a full day exploring.
After leaving the Arktikum we headed into the city centre to find somewhere for a late lunch and, after a bit of fun trying to park, settled on Café & Bar 21. This was a lovely café a couple of minutes’ walk from Rovaniemi’s Lordi Square and seemed to be very popular with the locals. Both of us went for the red shrimp Skagen (essentially a creamy prawn salad), Beth’s on a jacket potato and mine on some waffles, and I’ve got to say it was some of the best prawn salad I’ve had. It was wonderfully fresh and whilst waffles might not be the traditional base, it definitely worked and sated my hunger! With lunch done and us having had a late night on the sleeper, we decided that it was time to head to our accommodation (via a supermarket for supplies) and have a relaxed evening to re-energise for exploring the following day.
For our first full day in Rovaniemi we actually decided to head out of the city and drove just under an hour south-west to Ranua Wildlife Park. The second northernmost zoo in the world, and the northernmost in Finland, Ranua Wildlife Park has approximately 150 animals of 50 different arctic species, including lynx; wolves; and Finland’s only polar bears. Marketed as Ranua Resort, there is also accommodation and multiple restaurants on site, and we started our visit with lunch at the self-serve Wild Arctic Restaurant. Here, for the bargain price of €15.90, you can get an all you can eat buffet lunch, which consisted of fish soup, meatballs, roast game stew and mash. The price also includes basic drinks of tea, coffee, squash or water, and a basic fruit salad for dessert. All the food was delicious and in all honest, I’m still shocked at the bargain price!
After filling up on lunch, we headed into the wildlife park itself, with entry costing €26.50 or €24.50 if you buy online. I thought the park was very well laid out, with the enclosures seemingly being around and part of the native forest, rather than it being replaced with fake habitats. With the park focusing on arctic animals, there are plenty you won’t see in the UK including brown bears, moose and lynx and for the geologists amongst us, the trail around the park takes you past a rock formation that was an early shoreline of the Baltic Sea some two million years ago. There’s also a petting zoo style ‘domestic animal yard’ that is only open in the summer months and a children’s playground, so plenty to do. If you do visit, make sure to wear some sturdy footwear as although most the paths were wooden walkways, there are some decent slopes and gravel paths at points.
After driving back from Ranu, we were back in Rovaniemi mid-afternoon and so headed to the Koivusaari Nature Trail which is located on an island within the Ounasjoki River flood plains. The nature trail is easily accessible from the free car park at the Venesatama Ounaspaviljonki marina on the other side of the river, with a footpath on the side of the motorway bridge connecting the two. Around the nature trail, there’s a circular walk with duckboards, along with a spur to a bird watching hide, although during our visit some of the walk was still flooded and some of the duckboards rotten (understandable given they spend Spring under water) and so our walk ended up being more of a Y shape. Even though we didn’t get to see the full circuit of the nature trail, it was nice to see a different bit of the Finnish landscape, especially given the drive to and from Ranua had just been endless pine forests on both sides of the road.
With this being our final evening in Rovaniemi, we decided to have a mostly chilled and relaxing evening, although I did pop out to watch the southbound sleeper arrive across one of the river bridges, giving me the opportunity to see another part of the stunning landscape in the long evening light. The following morning we had a slow start getting ourselves packed back up ready to head back south the Helsinki that evening and headed into town for brunch after checking out of our accommodation. After popping to see the Old Train station which became redundant in 1934 when the railway was extended to Kemijärvi, we headed back to Café & Bar 21 where we both went for waffles with Skagen and Salmon as our choice of toppings. We also treated ourselves to some very nice cheesecake and macaroons before heading off to what is possibly Rovaniemi’s most iconic attraction.
Santa Claus Village is a about a 10 minute drive from central Rovaniemi and is located near to the airport to the north-east of the city. Whilst the village was mostly closed due to it being the off-season, you can still visit Santa Claus himself and pay a visit to the shop, from where we bought letters from Santa for my young sisters. We also visited Santa’s Pets, a small animal park, where you can see reindeer, alpacas and donkeys, along with sheep, goats, rabbits and various poultry. Entry to Santa’s Pets is €10 each and you can also buy bags of moss to feed the reindeer for €5. After spending about an hour pottering around the bits of Santa Claus Village that were open, including getting photos at the well signposted Arctic Circle, we jumped back into the car to head a bit further out of the city to the Arctic Circle Hiking Area.
The Arctic Circle Hiking Area is one of Finland’s seven national hiking areas and has a number of signposted walks and trails both circular and linear in nature. After initially heading to the ‘Arctic Circle Hiking Area’ pin on Google Maps, we ended up moving the car another couple of miles up the road to ‘Vikaköngäs Accessible Trail’, which seemed to be the starting point of the circular Vaattunkivaara Nature Trail. This 4.5km trail takes you to the peak of Vaattunkivaara hill and is a mix of gravel paths, boardwalk, duckboards and forest trails, with lots of rocks and roots and a few soggy patches especially on the way down. At the peak of Vaattunkivaara hill there is a viewing tower which gives great views out to the south, although the shape of the hill along with the forests that cover it stop you from seeing the river and rapids at the car park.
With our time in Rovaniemi drawing to a close, we had time for one final meal in the city before we needed to head back to the station and so went for dinner at Arctic Restaurant, located a couple of streets away from Lordi Square. Starting with a very creamy Crayfish Soup, I then had Braised Reindeer Neck for my main whilst Beth went for the Pasta with Crayfish Sauce and King Prawns. Despite all this excellent food, we still had room for pudding and so I went for a white chocolate mousse with Beth having the ‘Arctic Signature’ which was a set white chocolate mousse with a caramel centre and came on a base that looked like it could have been food but was describe by Beth as “disappointingly inedible”. Whilst the meal wasn’t cheap by anyone’s standards, it was all excellent food and a delightful way to bring our time in Rovaniemi to a close.
When we had decided to head to Rovaniemi in the middle of May, I was a little sceptical that we’d have little to do outside of the winter peak season, however I was gladly proven wrong. Whilst the ‘classic’ attractions such as the Santa Claus Village weren’t at their strongest, we had a great time exploring the great outdoors and enjoying nature. Ranua Wildlife Park is a must visit, although a little way outside of Rovaniemi, and we had a wonderful walk in the Arctic Circle Hiking Area. What we did find, both in Rovaniemi and elsewhere on our trip, is that we were a couple of weeks too early for the ‘summer season’ to have started and so areas such as the Koivusaari Nature Trail will be more accessible as the year gets older. However, we have vowed to return to Rovaniemi again in the future, both in summer and in winter, as it does seem to be an excellent year round destination.
