While we feel a bit of sadness when packing the car to leave the Loma Vietonen area it is tempered by the fact that the rain has caught up with us. It is a drizzly cold morning reminescent of our Turku morning and we hope that maybe, just maybe, we can outrun it again this time going south.
Before leaving the area though we stop at a nearby bird tower – Finland is full of them and we already learned the Finnish name for it so we can stop whenever we see a sign pointing to lintutorni. The rain picks up however and there are no birds to be seen so we move on to Rovaniemi the capital of the Finnish North and self proclaimed home of Santa Claus. And on the way we see the bird we really wanted to see but didn’t see we would be able to, a capercaille, right next to the road. It flies away but not before us taking a photo of it, mission accomplished.
When we get close to Rovaniemi we find out that there are actually two Santa Claus related sites. We stop at Santa Park first which we discover is an amusement park which charges for entry. We do not have time to visit it in depth but walk to the entrance which is completely different than we expected – a barely lit tunnel excavated inside a mountain while sounds of wolfs howling play all around us. It feels more creepy than cheery and we wonder if we didn’t enter an alternate reality where Santa Claus is actually a bad guy similar to the animated science fiction series Futurama.
Moving on just a couple kilometers down the road is the second site, Santa Village, a sprawling shopping complex close to a rest area dedicated (mostly) to Santa Claus. After arriving first we use the post office where letters written from around the world to Santa Claus are received and where you can send letters stamped in the Santa Claus office so they arrive to you on Christmas Eve.
However the main attraction is the Arctic Circle which is clearly marked throughout the complex and attracts everyone to take photos along the line. After taking some pictures ourselves and visiting a few of the stores and even buying a few mementos we decide to move on, we are hungry and still have to visit a few more sites today.
