Lapland, it's so "cool".

9:00 am

Meh. This midnight sun thing sucks. The sun was out at midnight, and 2, and 4, and now....ugh. Didn't sleep a wink. Yesterday we went to the Arctic Circle, Santa Park, and a great restaurant called Rosso. Yes, Santa Park and Santa's Village were kind of hokey (for a group of adults), but it was still fun and charming. They had a little dancing elf show, some fun kiddie things to do, and an ice bar. It made us feel like we were little kids again, until of course we went to the ice bar and had some Finlandia strawberry vodka.

The ice bar was awesome...one of the coolest things I've seen so far in this country, no pun intended. It was basically a large room that was cooled like a freezer. It's kept at -5 degrees Celcius (hmm, about 25 degrees Farenheight), and the walls, floor, tables, shelves, bar, glasses, sculptures, etc are all made of ice. The only thing that wasn't ice were the bottles of drink and some reindeer hides that covered the seats (made it a lot better to sit on). It made me consider visiting Finland again in the wintertime and staying at the Ice Hotel.

Hmm, after long searching that night we found the restaurant called Rosso in the main part of Rovaniemi. It was kind of Italian/American fusion food, very good stuff. I had grilled salmon bernaise, someone had risotto, and I think steak and chicken also made their way around. Relatively inexpensive for European standards (entrees ranged from 11 euros to 25 euros, most in the 13-15 range) and good food, the only bad part is that the salad area sucks. They were one of the only places still serving food at 9:30 pm, most of the other places had switched to bar service. Man, those Finns can go at it! The bars and street bar/cafes were already beginning to get packed and it was still early.

9:20 pm

Went to see Husky dogs, shopping, sunday sucks! Saw a huge reindeer by accident at the Husky place. It was at least six feet tall and was just wandering around the woods. They told us that in the summer, all the reindeer farmers just let them wander all over the area. Then when the snow starts falling, they round them up again. All of the reindeer have a marking system on their ears with distinctive cuts to tag each owner. There are only a few farmers - I think 7? No more than 10. Then we boarded the train again and went home.