Wednesday, June 23, 2010

Day 14 - Let's head south to the sun!!

We headed north to experience an aspect of the sun that was strange to us ... the phenomenon of shining brightly at midnight.    Now we are heading south to experience an aspect that is strange to people up here ... the phenoment of feeling the strong warmth of the sun on your skin ... albeit for a limited number of hours per day!!

So we will change direction, change currency (Finland Euros briefly, then Swedish Kroner SEK), change weather (reported to be good even just a little way into Sweden), change underwear, change socks, etc.

More later ...
... ok, so now it's later and we're basking in warm sunshine in the garden at the Gallivare B&B!


Bye bye Tromso ...


Hello Sweden ....

How can it be so different?   But it is.  The terrain is completely different.   The weather is completely different.  The atmosphere is completely different.  But what's unbelievable is that we're still within the Arctic Circle and it's sunny.  So we stand an excellent chance of seeing the midnight sun tonight.  So much for Lofoten and Tromso.  Gallivare has a ski-hill nearby and we can see the sunset, or more accurately the sunnonset, from the top.

We expected the journey from Tromso to Gallivare to be a simple transport leg. 


But it had a few major highlights.  Firstly, we spent more than 100 kms in Finland, which our planning had not detected.  


Karen's initial instinct was to go in search of Kimi Raikonnen, but after a short debate, she accepted that we could not check all of the bars in Finland.   And besides, we were not just in Finland, ut in the Lappland part of Finland.  So the excitement about meeting Father Christmas took over from Kimi.

This was a much more successful approach, because soon we saw several reindeer on the side of the road.  Imagine, seeing reindeer in their home country, Lappland.   Karen was convinced if we stopped the car, turned the engine off, and waited a while, we'd also see Father Christmas (probably heading home from the bar). 


All logic went out the window when we got to Gallivare because Karen discovered that the Father Christmas Games are held in Gallivare each year.   Oh no!  guess where she wants to be next November!!

PS:  Special mention must also be made of Marita at the B&B and Saeko at the Tourist Office in Gallivare, who have been following our blog.  We are honoured to have our 15 minutes of fame, especially in Lappland.





Finally, for your rally fans out there, yes, Finnish roads are largely straight with yump after yump after yump ... the photo doesn't do it justice because by then our little camera was giving up the ghost ... and the ones in the photo are only littl'uns.





And finally, today's course ....


Day 14 - Alps to Arctic


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2 comments:

  1. I hope we don't see you eating Rudolph!!!

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  2. We did pass a place in Lapp part of Finland that served Elk, Reindeer, etc. But we just got the petrol and pressed on. However, we would have eaten Rudi but not his diseased nose!

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