The Christmas buffet coma is slowly releasing its grip on us after days of continous feasting on meatballs and ham and we've made our way even further up north to Haparanda for a visit.
We arrived yesterday noon after driving through a bit of a blizzard and hardly even took our shoes off before we were out the door again to go burn some energy and calories at the Candy World playland. Ethan has been once before but that was a year and a half ago and you can definitely tell that he enjoyed it even more this time around as he could be more independent and go nuts on tougher climbing structures, taller slides and even ride the tricycles by himself.
Once E-Machine was played out and had accepted our bribe of a visit to the adjacent Candy World shop we swiftly moved on. Ethan got his usual 'Pim Pim' godis box and Shaena found a slice of home when she stumbled upon a bunch of 'American' soda pop cans so we filled a tray with Mountain Dew, root beer, Dr Pepper and more... oh, and we also scored a nice bottle of Cars kids bubbly for New Years!
Afterwards; 3 Swedes, 1 Canadian and 2 Swenadians drove across the river to Finland to pick up Chinese food (most likely made by a Turkish dude) and went back to the house in Sweden and shared this tasty dinner with Ritva, who is from Finland. How very international, eh! ;)
Today's adventure turned out to be something really special and we've had a fantastic winter-themed day! We decided to drive up to Rovaniemi in Finland located pretty much right on the arctic circle and visit 'Santa Village'.
We visited Santa Village last time we were here as well but that was in the summer and this place is just soo much cooler when it is dark and wintery (no pun intended). The whole Santa-theme just works better in the winter! ;) All kidding aside; they had done a fantasic job with creating an atmosphere with amazing lighting, Christmas trees, huge snowmen, ice sculptures, icy slides for the kids to play on, reindeer rides, a Sami camp complete with... well, Sami people, and warming camp fires. The only thing we missed out on was an audience with the Big Guy himself as he had a constant 30-40 minute queue to his lap, so we decided to skip that.
All in all; another very good day out!
Santa Village, Rovaniemi Finland:
Where to next?
Ethan and mommy on an ice slide
Santa lives in the main house in the back
Santa's sled, waiting to be deployed
A white reindeer on 'Christmas World Road'
Sami people by a camp fire
A classic self-photo by a camp fire (notice Shaena's antlers!)
Santa's reindeer after a long day at work
Frosty
Winter wonderlandCandy World, Haparanda Sweden:
Ethan on a bouncy slide thingy!
Ethan and Grandpa on the big boy slideOn the agenda for tomorrow: A visit to great-grandma Linnea!
No comments:
Post a Comment
Hey, don't be shy... drop us a line!