The ski resort we stayed at over Christmas is called Levi, and is situated right up in the Arctic circle in Finnish Lapland. It’s a small resort by Canadian standards, but fairly large for Finland, and even hosts the Alpine Skiing World Cup. We spent four days in this gorgeous, snow-covered destination; here’s a few of the things we experienced while we were there:
Christmas markets – these were open every day and mostly sold woollen clothing, fur hats and accessories, food and reindeer pelts out of small wooden huts:
The quaint and charming Levi Christmas markets
We decided to try some Finnish cuisine: Hesburger. I can’t really tell you anything exciting about our Hesburger experience. It was fast food, and not particularly Finnish:
Surprisingly, greasy fries are the same all around the world!
Whilst shopping for some glögi, we spotted plastic sleds for sale and decided to buy a couple to try out later that evening. They were also a convenient way to carry groceries back to the apartment! As I stopped to take this photo of Shannon, a small Finnish child jumped into the sled with the glögi; we laughed, thinking he was just being cheeky…but it became apparent that he had no intention of leaving the sled and actually wanted a ride…awkward…
Who needs a trolley when there are sleds?!
The views were stunning whichever way we looked; for me, there is nothing like a gorgeous, snow-dusted forest outside my window at Christmas time, and that’s exactly what we were treated to:
Breathtaking scene
We ventured outside on most evenings to get out of the lights of Levi in the hope of spotting the Northern Lights. We found a lake nearby that was frozen (we felt pretty confident walking on the ice after seeing a snowmobile venturing across the lake), which we spent some time on, looking into the sky for the elusive Aurora. Unfortunately, we didn’t see any sign of the spectacular lights, but we did see some stunning scenery:
View from the middle of the lake
Of course, we had to try our sleds, so a few of us took them to the ski area late one night and had loads of fun sliding down the small sledding-slopes. As should only be expected, the boys had to show off their daring, so they walked almost to the top of the piste and sledded all the way down…from where we were standing, it looked like they would fly right into the village, but thankfully there were only small injuries, and a crazy amount of laughter:
The ski slope that the boys conquered on sleds
Brendan getting sled-happy
There was a lot more to see and do in Levi than what I’ve shown you here, but these were some of the highlights (but not all of them – I’ll write about snowboarding later) of our time there. Have you been to Levi? What was your experience like?
