Join us for a special bonus episode as Gunnar recaps his recent trip to Finnish Laplan. Gunnar walks through his exceptional experience in Finnair Business Class, some lessons learned flying with his infant daughter overseas for the first time, and he gushes about the stunning quiet, serenity, and “cozy-maxing” of Northern Finland. Plus, he recounts an overwhelming day at Santa Claus Village and talked about what he would do differently next time around. Join us for a trip to the North Pole!
Join us for a special bonus episode as Gunnar recaps his recent trip to Finnish Laplan. Gunnar walks through his exceptional experience in Finnair Business Class, some lessons learned flying with his infant daughter overseas for the first time, and he gushes about the stunning quiet, serenity, and “cozy-maxing” of Northern Finland. Plus, he recounts an overwhelming day at Santa Claus Village and talked about what he would do differently next time around. Join us for a trip to the North Pole!
Read our full breakdown of the trip on our website, including links and more details!
00:00 - Why should (or shouldn’t) someone take a trip to Finnish Lapland?
02:30 - Finnair Business Class: How to book it & what it’s like
14:30 - A stopover in Helsinki: Hotel Kamp and Christmas markets
17:30 - Flying to the Arctic Circle’s Ivalo & experiencing polar night
20:00 - A special Airbnb stay on Lake Inari & and watching the Northern Lights from a hot tub
22:45 - Inari: the Janiskoski bridge hike, Sami Museum & a day trip to Saariselka
26:00 - Rovaniemi: the capital of Lapland with another lovely Airbnb stay
30:00 - Santa Claus Village: an overwhelming experience & what Gunnar would do differently next time.
35:00 - Ice skating on frozen Lake Inari!
37:00 - Northern Lights travel & is Finland really that cold?
40:30 - On the Spot: One insight Gunnar will take forward in his travels
Produced and edited by Sylvia Thomas
Video editing by Kyle Thomas
Show music: “All That” by Benjamin Tissot
Yo, welcome to the show. I get to kick this one off. Uh, I'm Kyle Thrifty, Traveler's Executive Editor, and I'm joined as always by Gunnar Olson, across the table. Gunnar. How does it feel to have the roles reversed? It feels like you've ripped my livelihood away from me. You took away my yo and, uh, you're hosting today's show because I'm gonna be doing a lot of the talking, but it's, it's good to hear your voice to start the show for once my dul sit tones.
Yeah. Today's show is, uh, is all about gunner's recent trip to Finland and, uh, Finnish, Lapland. So to start, gunner, I need to find something out from you because honestly, we, we haven't talked a whole lot about your trip since you got back because of the holidays. So I want to know why should someone or shouldn't someone take a trip to Finland like you did?
Yeah, I, I really loved this trip. That's, uh, no spoiler alert. I wouldn't be podcasting about it if the whole thing went horribly, horribly wrong. But, um, this is not gonna be a 40 minute podcast of you ripping on Finland. Yeah, it wasn't all perfect and I'll definitely get into that, but, um, just. Sitting in a hot tub at an Airbnb in Finnish Lapland, watching the Northern Lights for like 90 minutes.
Way too long to be in a hot tub, but just like, just an incredible moment. Just seeing my six month old daughter play in a pile of snow. For the first time and just this like light, airy blower snow, and then just like, it's, it's just so quiet and so cozy. In finished Lapland, the, the constant twilight, 'cause it was polar night, just how dark it was and how serene it was.
And there's just always fires going. It's just like cozy maxing, you know? And it was, it was just really special, especially around Christmas time. So that would be. The reasons why I would say that you should consider a trip like this. Alright, I'm sold podcast over. I'm coming to Finland Today on the show, we're diving into gunner's points and miles fueled business class journey to and through Finland.
From the Christmas markets of Helsinki to Santa Claus Village and everything in between. Grab yourself a cup of hot cocoa or a Cafe Carlson, which I recently Googled and learned is the Scandinavian equivalent of a coffee with Bailey's. Google says all that and more. Can you say, welcome back to the Thrifty Traveler Podcast?
No. Okay.
All right. Welcome back. Uh, that voice you heard and that. Beautiful face you saw on your screen if you're watching on YouTube, was not Gunner while Gunner was there, but more importantly, his uh, six month old daughter Emery was there to help us kick off the show from Finn Air Business class. What a lucky kid.
I know she had That was a a pretty amazing first. Flight to Europe. I flew, uh, my daughter business class to meet Santa Claus for her first Christmas. So she's not impressed when your dusty son wants to take her to Vegas someday. Yeah. Well, I, my favorite anecdote about this is that your six month old daughter flew international business class before your mother-in-law did.
Yeah. One, exactly. One day, day on the same trip. Yeah, exactly. One day beforehand. It's amazing. So, big picture, how did this trip come together? Where did it start? You've been talking about going to Scandinavia, which important caveat, Finland is technically not Scandinavia. Maybe we'll get into that. Yeah.
But you've been talking about going to this corner of the globe for as long as I've known you. So what started this? Yeah, I, I mean, I've been to Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, actually all in the winter. Uh, and so obviously Finland, we had to do the same in the middle of winter. But this started with, uh, thrifty Traveler premium deals after Fin Air.
Um, released or came out with this new a three 50 business class, which I'll talk a little bit about later. It's like super unique and apparently very cool. And our, my coworker John, uh, our chief flight deal analyst flew it and reviewed it for us. We have an awesome review on the site, but he said it was just like really cool and I've always wanted to go to Finland too.
And so for a while. In the months leading up to when it was bookable, I started talking to my in-laws like, Hey, Christmas 2025, which felt like so far away. Uh, we should go to finish Lapland. Like apparently it's amazing around Christmas time, we'll go to Santa Claus Village. Um, and we knew this deal was gonna come around because it's pretty, it's been pretty evergreen.
Booking Fin Air at the end of the calendar, so like 10 and a half, 11 months out, you're able to use Fin Airo to book. Fin air business class, you can get two seats. Um, at the time, Americans had to use this little funny workaround to, uh, select your location as Finland in order to see the two seats. But I knew this was coming, so I primed everybody.
We all got our points and our ducks in a row and we're ready to book when it happened. But it happened because the. The premium deals we sent for the first, you know, a few months before that I said, oh man, this is looking like it pretty much stacks up perfectly every time. This is a classic example of what you've talked about repeatedly on the show, where like these alerts aren't just about like, I'm gonna book this right now.
It's more like. Plants a seed and shows you how to do it so that you can prepare and then get ready. And to your point, like you clearly started talking with your family. Like, are we into this idea? When are we gonna do it? Can we do this over Christmas? Um, which is a really cool, it's a, it's a different wrinkle on kind of following the deal, which we talk a lot about.
It's like following the deal, but laying the groundwork a little bit earlier. Yeah. And, and Finnair, you know, Finnair specifically. Has been releasing these seats regularly. So it was pretty easy to plan around some, you know, some airlines like Japan and airlines business class, you're not gonna find a pattern.
It, it just happens or it doesn't, and you gotta be ready. But, you know, for, uh, airlines like Finnair, the release is so regular that we were able to plan ahead and, and get it all done. And, um, they only release two seats at a time. So we had to book on consecutive days, but that didn't matter. It gave my wife and I and Emery a, a night in Helsinki, which was awesome too.
So before, before you get to Helsinki, you're flying Fin Air business class from DFW Dallas to Helsinki, uh, nonstop. And it was 63,000 fin airo each each way. Okay. So, um, we transferred most of those from Capital One, uh, and the rest from. Which is a direct transfer partner, so Capital One, one to one, straight to Finnair Avios.
And then we transferred the rest from American Express to British Airways, which we then transferred to Finnair as well. Yeah, really importantly, um, Finnair, British Airways, Iberia Air Lingus. And Qatar all use Avios as their mileage programs, which means if you can transfer one points currency, like Capital One or American Express to British Airways, you can then fan them out to wherever you want to go to get the best deal.
And in this case, for Finn Air paying 63,000 avios each way. Is significantly cheaper than what you can book through any of those other programs. Yeah, definitely. It's, it's the best deal by far. So we booked nonstop DFW to Helsinki for the outbound, and we wanted to do a round trip, but for the way back we actually tacked on Romy Helsinki to Dallas, which is the same price.
So if you, if. Depending on the length of the connection on Fin Air, they will not charge you extra for the connection. It's still 63,000 fin air obvious each way. So we just tacked on ro Yemy 'cause we knew we wanted to go there eventually. This was, you know, more than 10 months out. So at that point, we didn't know exactly what the itinerary was gonna look like.
We didn't even know our daughter's name at that point, or that she was gonna be a daughter. Uh, so we, we didn't know much about the trip. We just knew. Start end points and we said we can figure it out from there. And we did. How are the taxes and fees both ways? The taxes and fees. Oh. I forgot to write them down.
I think they were somewhere in like the two hundreds each, uh, like per person. Okay. Um, I, I remember it being not very egregious. And then, uh, for Emery, we added her afterwards. And I don't know if we just got a good agent because on their website they explicitly say that. Infant tickets should be 10% of the cash value of the flight.
And after I read that, we booked it a long time before I read the policy and then I read the policy and thought, oh my gosh, I'm gonna go in the hole really big here trying to get Emory on this flight. And we might, I don't know what happened, but we got an agent who just tar charged us the taxes and fees and I just.
Took the money and ran. I said I got the, I got the deal of the century, uh, whoever this guy was, kudos to you, sir, for saving me lots and lots of money. I don't know if that's a new policy or if he just had the authority to do it and, but all we did was pay Emory's taxes and fees. But I remember it not being terrible.
I should have looked it up. We're doing it live. Yeah. All right. Two quick things before you head over to Helsinki. How did you get down to Dallas and then spell out the lounge situation before your flight over to Finland? Yeah, we just used Sky Miles to book. A Delta flight from MSP to Dallas. Very simple.
We left ourselves a very long. Almost eight hour layover in Dallas, which we knew wouldn't be a problem because we could access some lounges there. And we just really didn't wanna be rushed because the changing terminal situation in Dallas stinks the bus that, uh, you have to transfer terminals, especially when you have a, a car seat and a bunch of big bags.
And, um, it was, uh, it was a long process, but the, uh, the flagship lounge at DFW is is really nice, very crowded, like all. Uh, long haul international business class lounges are in the US right now, but, uh, we had a, we got a shower suite, which was crucial because, uh, Emory went through about five outfits on that day.
Uh, just it was a blood bath out there. How many did you go through? I maintained the same outfit all the way through. Wow. Yeah. Very proud of me. But, uh, that was a good launch and we had a nice time, uh, leading up to our flight. All right. Early, early evening. Mm-hmm. You board that plane. Tell me about the flight.
Um, the flight was just really lovely. Uh, we were seen with an infant and were helped really quickly by the flight attendants. They were great. Uh, boarding drink. Uh, right away it was champagne or blueberry juice. Um. Which is Finn Air Specialty or a little mixture of both? I saw a few people doing that. Uh, and then they, you know, they get, you started the, um, they take infant seat belts really seriously in Europe.
So, and Emory had to be seat belted to our seat belt in the suite or in the, the big business class seat. But if you haven't seen these, uh, Finn Air business class seats, they're, they're really different. They don't recline. So there's no like reclining button, right? They're just a big. Comfy shell. It's like you're sitting in like a, almost like a big futon almost.
Um, that doesn't, futon is not selling. That doesn't really do a credit. No. So we'll put up, if you're watching on YouTube, we'll put up some photos and maybe video of this. Mm-hmm. Just to make it clear. But it's like this big, comfy, cozy, and they give you a couple of pillows so you can like, kind of create your own recline situation and you have a regular seatbelt and then you have a sleeping seatbelt.
But the seat is just incredibly wide. It was almost as wide as. A NA, the room, um, it, it's just so big and the, the bottom part, the bottom section kind of comes out like a footrest and that's the only mechanical piece. And then there's one more little fill in piece, and it just becomes a huge bed. It's probably the biggest bed I've been in on a plane before, uh, when it's fully done.
And it was great having Emery because I would just put her at my feet, which I'll, I'll put a photo or video up there too. I'd, I'd make the bed and just put her at my feet and then I could sit in the back and still watch a movie and eat. And she was kind of in the foot. Well. Side area, just playing with her, uh, her toys and gabbing a bunch.
And, um, but it was, it was kind of perfect for having, uh, another little human in my seat with me because it's so spacious. Uh, and it, if you're, if you're worried that like the recline isn't comfortable, I, I never felt uncomfortable once and it was actually kind of nice to be able to sit up and put my feet straight out or kind of lean back a little bit, like lounging style.
I found it just really, really comfortable. And it was also great for, for eating too. 'cause you could sit upright as much as you want, but still be relaxed. Uh, I found it really, really nice. Uh, it was a good, very good airplane seat. Food and service, quick food was also really good. I was a little nervous.
Scandinavian food isn't always my thing. Uh, but it, it was, you wouldn't know it by the color of your hair. Yeah, it was, yeah, exactly. It was very tasty. I had a good, uh, perch on the way there. Um, and then, uh. The service was really good, like. Typical kind of Scandinavian, understated, not effusive, but efficient, super friendly and kind, kind of like our whole experience at Finland, honestly, everybody's is more or less the same.
No one's gonna shower you with praise and it's not, you know, it's nothing like that. But, uh, food and service. Excellent. Okay, so this was your, not just your first time flying business class with Little Emery, but also your first long haul international flight with your six month old daughter. How did it go and how nervous were you about.
Either aspect of this, going into it, I was pretty nervous. I would've been way more nervous if we were in the back. Uh, I just think being upfront just kind of, uh, relaxed us a little bit because we knew the service was gonna be good and we knew that we'd have extra space. And, um, you know, everyone's got big over your headphones and everyone's got a screen to look at.
And I, you know, nobody was bothered by Emory. She was a little loud in the first hour of like every flight that we took the entire time. But, and then she, you know. Settles in falls asleep. They gave us a bassinet on top of the suite. So not only do we have all of this space, but there was also a bassinet, like on the top.
We were in the first row, uh, and they gave her her own little life, flat seat in the sky as well. So, um. It went, honestly, it went great. She was, she was a trooper and um, by the end, I, she was pretty tired and her sleep schedule was all mangled, but she was still very sweet most of the time. Any, any particular tips that you, you guys use, especially on this long haul flight to, to make sure it went as smoothly as possible?
I mean, it just, you can't really over feed her, you know, just keep 'em fed and, uh, I think that was, that was helpful to us. I don't know. I, I can't really give out tips. I think my little girls. Just very sweet most of the time. And I think getting up and walking around, it helped at one point, just people like to see her, so, uh, you know, people don't smile at each other on airplanes that much, but when you've got a, a.
Uh, little infant in your arms. Most people do. And the flight attendants were also more than willing to help us. Like Megan asked for them to delay her meal service a little bit, uh, just like the end of the meal service. We didn't ask like, Hey, we'll, we want it in a few hours, but she was like, we, I just need a little bit of time.
Uh, so that my husband could finish and then I'll take my food and they said, no problem. So, yeah, it's very good. All right. So what, 10 ish showers later Make it to Helsinki. Yep. First impressions of Helsinki. Uh, it was the people in Helsinki were apologizing 'cause the weather wasn't great. It was rainy and like 40 degrees, so they were like, it's not, they were sad.
It wasn't very Christmasy. Um, but I think Helsinki is, is a very cool town. It's, uh. A little bit Stockholm in that it's very charming and seems very old, but you can also sense like a li you know, a little bit more of that eastern European influence. Maybe even kinda Russian Soviet influence in like the architecture and things like that.
Um, but very cool, right on the water, uh, our hotel was the hotel comp, which was, uh, fine hotels and resorts booking that we made with my Amex platinum card, which got us $200 off the, the rate, which was somewhere in the three hundreds, uh, for the night. And it's kind of. Typical old school, five star hotel luxury, like a top hatted doorman greeted us.
And, um, the concierge, you know, called the room right away when we got up there and was trying to get us, uh, to, you know, make some reservations and things like that. And they gave Emery this, like the cutest little, uh, cot in our room. That, and, uh, everything like that. So it was very like, you know, old school luxury.
I liked it a lot. We almost changed it and stayed at the new. Waldorf Astoria that just opened in Helsinki that we, we sent a premium hotel alert about, uh, but I decided to keep the hotel comp 'cause it looked really, really fun and it's in the perfect spot. So the. The darkness when we got there was weird and I didn't realize how much weirder it was gonna get as we went further north, but the sun went down at about three o'clock, uh, the day we were there, it was, you know, late December.
So it's the darkest time of the year. Yeah. Um, but the sun goes down, the Christmas markets fire up and the town had a ton of energy from like three to eight o'clock. And then at eight o'clock the entire Christmas market shut down. We're like, that's the night folks just like, pull the plug. Yeah. Lights off everything.
Yeah, we're done. Go home. Yeah. It was, go back to hotel com. It was pretty funny. It was kind of an early retiring. Uh, city from what I saw, I'm sure, uh, if I wanted to get out there and really find some nooks and crannies, there were people partying into the night, but it wasn't gonna be me that night anyway.
And it seemed like kinda the main central city all shut down around eight o'clock. So like after five hours of darkness, I think everyone was pretty much done. I don't think for most people and surely will get emails saying I'm wrong, that Helsinki is the place that people go to. It's a connection point to go up to Lapland, to go elsewhere, anywhere in Scandinavia, even continue on onward into Eastern Europe.
All right, so one night in Helsinki, where to next? And how'd you get there? So we went, we went up to ilo. Um, so ILO is. Probably about as far north as you can fly in Finland. Uh, on Fin Air. Uh, we booked it with Fin Air Avios. Again, the cash price was over $200 per person, so we booked it for 6,500 Fin Air Avios each, just nonstop Helsinki to Avalo on an A 3 21.
Um. A very quick and easy flight for the most part, just about an hour 20. Um, and it was full, like packed full of people. And uh, you get there and they let you off onto the. Uh, the runway and it was very cool. There were a ton of people on the plane, especially a bunch of little kids for whom that was their first time ever seeing snow.
Wow. So like kids getting off on the runway, trying to make like snowballs with like the salt and grime packed snow. And I was like, oh, just wait. Kids. Just wait. Please go wash your hands. Yeah. But it was like, it was a pretty cool moment, like hearing a little girl scream when after we landed there's snow.
And so I, I, I mean there were a lot of people from all over the world there. I mean, Helsinki's a huge connecting point. So a lot of people flying in to see snow and experience real winter for the first time, that was not us. Uh, we, we flew from someplace, it was even colder. So, uh, but Val is. L what the, a lot of people refer to as like the real Lapland, like the heart of Lapland.
The, the capital of Lapland is Roven. Yemy, where we did go eventually, and that's because it's a big city. But, um, ILO is. So, so far north and uh, it was full polar night there. The sun does not come up, uh, during, basically all during the month of December and into parts of January. Instead it's like twilight most of the day.
Um, so from about. Uh, nine 30 to like 2:30 PM It's just like the sun is rising or the sun is setting and that's all you get. And, and so it's, it's this beautiful kind of magical feeling. And I might overuse the word magical because the snow is so light and fluffy 'cause it never gets warm and it's, uh, the sun never really comes up.
And so it's always pretty there and it's just incredibly cozy. I, I get the coziness part. Yeah. Especially because you are an unabashed winter lover. Yeah. Did that make it harder to adjust for the time difference in jet lag at all, do you think? Or was it just like, so, so great, you just powered through and you were fine?
Honestly, it, it just kind of made it, we didn't, we almost didn't adjust. There were several days where we all slept until like 10 or 11:00 AM because it just never got. Do, you know, sunny out. And, uh, the, the light was weird. Like we all slept weird. We all had nights where we were up just in the middle of the night, just up.
Um, and then Emory, you know, has never slept well until this last week. So that was her, her last week before sleep training. And so, but that she was, uh, you know, just sleeping what she could and we all kind of were, and it was weird, like the, the polar night. Made for some strange sleeping and, um, yeah, it was kind a little bit hard to adjust.
Hmm, for sure. So where'd you stay in Ival or did you immediately head off and what'd you get up to? Yeah, we, so we, we actually picked Avalo because of an Airbnb. Um, we, we were looking at where we wanted to go from Helsinki up into Lapland and we were just on Airbnb looking at some places and we found this.
Wood cabin. It's like a very modern log cabin. It's right on Lake Inari, which is this massive sprawling lake for Minnesotans. You, you know, lake Minnetonka, how it's just kinda like spiders out into various little coves and everything instead of just one big mass lake in is kind of the same, but it's, I think it's like eight or nine times as big.
Um, but it was a little pricey. Worth every penny. It had a hot tub where I said before I watched the Northern Lights a few nights. Um, it had a big woodfire sauna that it also came with sets of snow shoes and sleds. Um, two bedrooms, one bathroom. Pretty small, efficient, Scandinavian. Design, you know, uh, not a lot of frills.
It was heated, but everything, every room had its own fireplace as well. And we just, we had the fires going all the time, and they told us to. It's just, it just makes the, the environment so good. And they also rented us a car. Uh, they had an Audi. That they rented us for about 200 bucks a day, which, uh, we may have been able to do a little bit better, uh, through, you know, a Turo or a rental car, but it just, they had it dropped off at the airport when we got there and they let us drive it to RO in Yemi afterwards.
Oh wow. And leave it there. So they were very accommodating. I suspect that they lived in Ro in Yemi. Yeah. Which is why they let us do that. But anyway. Excellent. Airbnb, I'll link to it in the show notes if you're ever interested in booking something similar, but it was, uh. It was pretty idyllic. Uh, we, we couldn't have imagined anything better.
Yeah. I mean, you've sent some of the photos to the team of the Northern Lights up in nearly as far north as one can go in Finland. Yeah, it looks pretty incredible. If you're not watching on YouTube, you're gonna want to check it out because we're gonna have plenty of photos in video there for you. How, how long were you in ILO and, and then where to next?
So we were in, we were in ILO for four nights. Um, so almost five days. So basically in Avalo, uh, ILO is the main town. That's where the grocery stores and the gas stations are. And they, they let you know that on the signs, uh, don't, don't venture out very far without filling up with gas. But, um, ILO itself wasn't like the coolest town.
Inari is the town that's about, um, it was about 55 minutes. Uh. Straight west of elo and you go up there and there was we, we went there for one day. We did this awesome hike, and we started the hike. We got a little bit of a late start. We started the hike at like one 30 and the sun was just going down already, but the entire trail system was lit with like, like very low.
Like, uh, dark sky safety lights, you know, uh, the ones that like face the ground and they're very low, but all the trails were lit and we walked across this beautiful suspension bridge. And in, uh, Lapland, they have all these kind of lean two shelters everywhere that just have fires going all the time. And then people just grab more wood and keep 'em going.
And, um, so that was really cool. We had a lovely experience there. We went to the Samami Museum. Samami are the indigenous peoples of Lapland. Uh, they're the only indigenous peoples in Europe. Uh, that still remain. And they have this museum that was Europe's Museum of the Year, 2024. And it was a really cool place.
It taught us a lot like just about the area and about those people and how they don't, they don't believe in Finnish, Lapland and Swedish, Lapland and Norwegian Lapland. They just know of Lapland as their land and yeah, very cool. Like a amazing, amazing museum. Definitely worth a stop if you're in Anari.
And then we had a. A big, uh, five course extravaganza meal. That was the, the big splurge of the trip at, uh, wilderness Resort Hotel Nagu. Um, there are about a hundred wilderness resorts there, so make sure you go to the right one. I took us to the wrong one. Oh, no. Yeah, I took us to the wrong one. The guy, the guy was like, the buffet doesn't star for 30 minutes.
I was like, uh. We signed up for you said, signed the five course extravaganza. Um, he's like, you're at the wrong wilderness hotel buddy. But in was a very cool town. And then we also spent one day in Ska, I think that's how you say it, it's about 45 minutes south of Avalo. And it's a resort town. It's like a ski resort.
And um. They have, it's the entrance to Erco Kanin National Park, which is really beautiful. It's just kind of, it just, basically, it's the same beautiful finished landscape. It just gets a little hillier. It's a pretty flat place. Uh, but they, they had a ski resort there that was, um, I wouldn't say the skiing was good, but it was.
Wild experience to ski in the polar night. And they have, they have like, it's, it's all lit because obviously their winter season is very long, but they don't have very much light. Uh, and the lights were all different colors, so it just felt like you're, uh, uh, I don't know, skiing in a disco. They also have a big long toboggan course, so we rented toboggans as well.
And um, I think it was like a hundred bucks for a half day of skiing, including rentals. And the tobogganing was like 60 bucks. But the tobogganing was very cool. A little rowdy. Just letting anybody up there tobogganing down a ski hill. I can imagine. Uh, there were some people, um, you know, who I'm sure got pretty mangled, pretty hurt on that toboggan track, but, uh, it was really cool.
Very fun to go to Saraka as well. I recommend stopping in. Alright, so anything else to cover in an and val before we head south? No, we, we packed up the, uh, the Audi and, and drove south to Ro Emmy, which is. Uh, a little over three hour drive. Um, we made a couple stops along the way because of infant. Could you have flown either from Ival to Ro Emmy or just flown straight from Helsinki to Romy?
Yes. You can fly from Helsinki to Ro Emmy. Um, we would've had to connect back in Helsinki. Sure. And it was only three and a half hour drive and they let us have the car, so we were like, let's just do it. Um, just one, one note on the driving. If you're comfortable driving on snow, and this is not like, uh, you know, nasty ice and slush packed roads like you'll find here in the north, uh, this is just all snow packed roads, which actually makes it a lot easier to drive.
But if you're at all comfortable driving in snow, it's not that hard to do. The driving's pretty simple. Um, we, we did see a few. Few tourists, uh, who had their cars and ditches and were getting, getting towed out, which I'm sure is a big nightmare. But, um, we were all pretty comfortable driving in the snow, so we just decided to go ahead with it.
Otherwise, there are tons of tour operators who will take you around. Yeah. Um, but we made the drive down to Rovin Emmy, uh, where the sun does come up for about an hour and a half. Uh, so we, we drove three and a half hours south to see Rove in Emmy. And honestly, uh, we also, we found a good Airbnb there. Um.
It was just like a $400 a night sub. It wasn't suburban, it was in the city, but it was, you know, a relatively easy, uh, Airbnb. Nothing like spectacular or special about it, but it was close to downtown, really close to Santa Claus Village. It had a sauna, very friendly host who, who checked us in, and I was very excited to see us too.
So, uh, I'll link to that one as well. A great value. I highly, highly recommend that. But we drove into the town of Roven Yemy, and after being in just like the dead quiet of. Lapland for so long it felt like we were in Midtown Manhattan. Just, it was just overwhelming. Like there were people everywhere, lights everywhere, and we all had a moment where we were like, uh.
I think we need to, we need a second to decompress. It was just too much like this, this tiny little city in the middle of Finland. But it was definitely like a city, you know? Yeah. And, and so just to clarify your fe the juxtaposition between Val and Romy, I just looked up the population of Romy 65,000 people.
Yeah. So, uh, that just goes to show you how sparsely populated Evol and that far up in Finnish Lapland is. Right, right. But I, we, Romy was cool for a few reasons. Um. We had two really good meals there, uh, one at this place called Gustav's Kitchen and Bar, uh, in downtown Ro Emmy. And they're like, they have like a, a walking mall down the middle of Romy that's very Christmasy, all decked out.
Um, Santa was there. Uh, so we met Santa there for the first time. He told Emory he was expecting her, which was very sweet. Oh, that's really nice. Uh, and then, um, and then they charged, they tried to charge us $45 for a photo, so we bailed. Uh. But it was, AMI was great, the food was great. Uh, we also ate at, uh, Kota Hovi in Santa Claus Village, which was also an excellent, excellent meal.
But that night, the first night we got there, we of course went to a professional hockey game 'cause I really wanted, as one does spread my wings and branch out a little bit. Do something new. Yeah. How many, as we're talking, how many hockey games have you been to within the last seven days? The last seven days?
Uh, including this game? No, I won't go in the last seven days alone. Just during the world Junior Championships. Uh, I went to five. My little brother was in town. I think he went to 14. So, uh, we're big hockey fans. Nice, nice to see a hockey game, you know? Yeah, it's nice. But we went to see, uh, Roki, which is, I'm rocking their swag right now.
Roki HC played Tuto in a pro hockey game at the Lapi Arena. Uh, $20 per person. It was really fun. And what we found was that's where all the locals were. Mm. And so that's kind of a fun environment. They were singing their songs and chanting, and, uh, they have, uh. Like European beer rules where you're not allowed to have beer in view of the rink.
So during the intermissions, everyone just pounds into the bar and everyone shug beers, chugs a beer, and then comes back out. It was pretty cool. It was, it was a, a good atmosphere, a good environment. Um, there are a lot of tour operators who will sell you. Going to a hockey game. Um, clearly the other than the minor league, can we call it they were or is it Tier two Pro.
Okay. Yeah. So they were like, when you get relegated from the top finish pro league, you go down to the second league. Yeah. So other than tier two finish hockey, the main draw revenue Emmy is Santa Claus Village. Right? Yeah. And that's why you guys went. Yep. That's why we went. It's, you know, you've seen it on Instagram probably.
Uh, and you know, we wanted to go and, and have Emery meet Santa Claus, the real Santa Claus at the North Pole for her first Christmas. And so we went, we basically dedicated a day to go to Santa Claus Village. Um, and, uh, it was super overwhelming, man. Like I was, I'm pretty disappointed by Santa Claus Village.
Uh, it was kinda like the cornerstone of this trip. Like this was gonna be the thing that we remember this trip by and ILO blew us away. To such a degree that Santa Claus Village maybe didn't stand a chance, but it was also just like, it was way, way too much, too many people all the time. It was just, you know, sponsors and ads everywhere and like this kind of magical billing it got, it just didn't, it didn't feel like that.
I. We waited for 90 minutes to get our photo with Santa Claus, and they told us it was gonna be like two and a half hours. Oh. And it was luckily less than that, but they were also, they were selling a cut the line pass for like 400 Euro. I was gonna ask if there's like a Disneyland comp here, and clearly if there's a cut, the line pass, there is no, there is.
And it's free. So Santa Claus Village is free to enter, so there's not, you know, it's not Disney in that way. But we were there on December 21st. It's probab. It was a Sunday, probably the busiest day of their year besides the 23rd. They do like a sending off Santa with the reindeer thing. Um, but it, it was like.
Just complete chaos. It was, you know, we talk about it in airports all the time. There are those, it's my first day on earth kind of people just walking around with no awareness of their bodies or where they are. And there were just a lot of people just running into each other and people everywhere. And, you know, thousands of people lined up for the same photo on the, the Arctic Circle runs through the middle of Santa Claus village and they have it marked out with like lights and stanchions and just like.
So many people angling for the same photos and you know, reindeer rides and everything's an upcharge. And after dinner we were all just kinda done with it. Ready to go. Yeah, yeah. Done with the people. And I mean, there were at least a hundred tour buses in the parking lot when we got there. And, and we should have maybe, maybe I should have known better, but it looked so much different on Instagram.
And you're the first person who's ever said that. I think, yeah, that something looked different on Instagram. So I don't know. I, I think maybe if Emery was of the age where she could understand a little more of the magic, maybe it would've worked better for us. Uh, but it, for four adults and an infant, we were pretty.
Disgusted by it in the end. Uh, I was thoroughly unimpressed, which I, I brings me no pleasure to say. I, I, I thought this was gonna be like, this is what we planned the trip for. So it was bu it was a bummer. Yeah. So, hypothetical situation, I am planning a trip to Finland and I come out to you and you say, no, I say it.
No, you don't get it. We're going to Santa Claus Village. What advice would you give someone who like that is the tent pole of their trip? It is going to happen. How do you, like, you've already set expectations, I think. How do you help make that better? What do you wish you would've known going into it?
Yeah. A few mistakes we made. We went in the afternoon. I think if we would've gone in the morning, we wouldn't have had the crazy weight for Santa, which kicked off our entire experience and then just kind of made us tired and sad. Um. I mean, I think we would have, I would've had better expectations for just like the cost of everything in there.
Uh, it was pretty expensive. I mean, just, they wouldn't let you take your own photo. With Santa, you had to buy theirs, and it was started at 40 euro and then if you wanted a digital copy, it was like, it was even more than that. We ended up paying, like for a few pictures, we ended up paying like a hundred euro for photos with Santa.
They were adorable. It was a good memory, but man, that's so expensive and. I, I would've gone way earlier. Um, made some more time for like the activities like the Husky, you know, the, the Husky rides, like the dog sledding rides and the, um, the sleigh rides and the Reindeer Farm and the Snowman Village. I would've made more time for the stuff that's kind of on the outskirts of it.
And, uh, yeah, but man, it was in the afternoon on December 21st, it was. Kind of a hard place to be. It was just so packed. Maybe go at it off peak time too. I mean, they're open all year round, so there's no saying why you can't go in like January after the magic is worn off. I was gonna say it hits a little different in June maybe.
Yeah. But, well, let's, let's zoom out then. Mm-hmm. What still stands out? What do you wish, what else do you wish you had done differently in Finland as a whole? Differently. Um, I mean, yeah, you said like the order of the trip probably differently. I would've spent a little more time in Aval, even if we could just because we, I mean, we had one day that was very quiet.
We ended, Megan and I ended up going ice skating, which was very cool. I, I actually didn't even talk about, yeah, we need to take a, a second to appreciate. Yeah, we'll put up some video. In a previous podcast like a couple of weeks ago, I referenced a photo of you and Meghan flying a and a's the room as the happiest I've ever seen you, and I have to now correct myself because this video of you skating in Finnish Lapland, where by the looks of it, it's like negative 14 degrees, I have never seen you happier than like skating on what appears to be an endless river in Finland.
Yeah, it was awesome. This guy on Lake Inari just plows starting when, uh. The ice freezes like two months before the snow flies there, it freezes in like October. And then he just keeps a track like winding through the islands of the lake, plowed all winter long. And then he sells you access to it and rents you skates and helmets and things like that.
And so, um, my wife and I went out for a skate and then, uh, she let me do a fast lap by myself. Uh, but our, our host was great. He was awesome. That was like a really special moment, but we had just a very quiet day. At the Airbnb where we just kind of snow shoot around and we made a bunch of fires and I was sitting by the fire having a hot cup of loogie.
They're kind of mold wine, they're hot mold, wine, they love there and reading Harry Potter and I was just, man, that was, that was heaven for that. Blist out those few moments. Yeah, just so cozy. Everything was just incredibly cozy there. But yeah, I think just more time even. Even a slower trip. Would've been great.
Um, we were dead set on going to Santa Claus Village, but in, in hindsight, I, two more days at that Airbnb up there would've been just perfect. So that would bring you to maybe 14 ish days total. I think you were gone for 11? Uh, no, it was somewhere in that neighborhood. It was about a week. It was, I think it was eight days total.
Okay. So a week and a half at least. Yeah. Would be good to budget. Yep. What else should people know who are trying to recreate some version of this trip? Um, I think so like. The Northern Lights, planning a trip around the Northern Lights is hard because the Northern Lights don't come out every night.
There are good apps and services that you can use to track them. That still doesn't mean you know they're gonna deliver them to you. It just means that you are, you have a better chance of knowing what nights maybe you should stay up. Uh, this especially for finished Lapland, this app called Northern Lights Alert.
Um, is a good one to just keep checking. If you're staying at one of the high-end resorts that offer like Northern Lights tracking, you get an access code and then they give you like push alerts to your phone when they're shining. If you're not staying at the resorts, like we weren't, you can still access the app anytime.
You just don't get the alerts. So I would just go on and check and be like, Hey, there's a resort. You know, uh, five kilometers down the road, their camera is showing the Northern lights right now. Let's pop outside. And we did, and we did that a few times. Same thing in Rove, in Nemi, where we also saw them on our last night of the trip.
We saw 'em on our first two nights and our last night, three out of six. S seven total nights in Finland. Wow. So, I mean, that is probably low. They said that that's, you'd probably expect more than that on average. Um, but I mean, it was, it was stunning the first few nights, but that I, I'm sure that's why a lot of people are going and the Northern Lights are not hard to see there.
And so, okay. So if, if I were to go home and tell my wife, like, next December, next January we're doing it, we're going to Finland, she would say, you want to go? In December or January, somewhere where the sun is up for two hours a day at maximum, and it's God knows how cold. What's, what's the counterpoint?
Well, the counterpoint is that, especially if you're worried about the cold, which I understand if people are. I, I run very cold. I'm always cold. I'm always wearing big sweaters and everything. I'm, I'm cold all the time, but life up there is prepared for this. Like every house, every hotel, they'll rent you and give you a big parka and snow pants and boots.
Our, our Airbnb came with like four full kits of everything, including headlamps and hats and, you know, uh, big snowmobile suits and everything. So like. The people up there, everything that happens is prepared for this darkness in this cold. And it's actually like kind of special and unique, I think. And just as far as, you know, uh, maybe a, a trip that's a little different than your, your annual trip to Mexico or the Caribbean, just, I mean, it's not like you're sitting up there freezing everything is.
You're in the sauna or you're in front of the fire, or you're in this big snowmobile suit. And yeah, the tip of your nose might get a little frosty from time to time, but it's kind of all part of the magic for me. And it wasn't horrendously cold when we were there. They said it was a little warmer than normal temperatures, but it was between.
10 degrees and 25 degrees Fahrenheit the entire time we were there. Um, of course, that's all below zero and Celsius, so when you see the bank signs, it's always a little like, woo. All right, we're getting down there. But, um, I think the one morning we went skating, it was like five degrees out and that was the coldest that it was the entire time.
Um, and it was also the prettiest. So I, I, I'm not terrified of the cold. I know some people are, but the, they're not gonna let you freeze up there. No, this is fun. Thanks for sharing. All right. Last question for you. Mm-hmm. We always put each other on the spot. It's not changing this episode. What is one thing, one insight you learned from this trip that you're gonna take onto one of your trips in 2026, which will be very different because as you've covered before, you're gonna be going to Hawaii and then Italy sometime later this year.
But what's something that you picked up? One insight. Hmm. Could be about booking, it could be about how you plan out your travels a, a way that you'll travel differently going forward. That that's, thanks for that prompt. That's actually, I, I could tell you were struggling. Yeah. No, that's, that's actually exactly it.
We, because we had Emory, because we was a six month old, I unplanned this thing big time, and especially in the avalo part of the trip. We, we slowed things down so much that it just felt like so relaxed the whole time, and we just had a lot of moments of sitting around in the snow or like. What should we do now?
Or you know, and then, you know, just quiet, lovely moments where we're just stoking the fire and those. That was really cool. And you know, some people might say, I could do that at home. Of course you can, but it does not look like that at home and you didn't get to do what, you know, you don't get to do that, the things you do during the day and go on those hikes.
And, um, it was really special, really good unwinding time. And I think just slowing things down for me is gonna be, uh, really hard to do. Probably won't. So your takeaway was, I can't do that again. Yeah. All right. Thanks for the advice, gunner. Yeah, of course. Alright. Thank you so much for listening to this bonus episode of the Thrifty Traveler Podcast.
Rate us five stars in your podcast platform of choice and like, and subscribe to the show on YouTube to see all my photos and videos of the Northern Lights and all things Finish Lapland. Send this episode to someone you know who needs to take this trip with you. If you have feedback for us, send us a note at podcast@thriftytraveler.com.
We'd love to hear from you there. Kyle, tell us about the team. This episode was produced by your favorite host who takes his reindeer steak, medium rare Gunner Olson. It was produced and edited by Sylvia Thomas and edited on video by Kyle Thomas. Our theme music is by Benjamin Tissot. See you next time. See ya.