Day 269 Wed 11 Jul 2007 Rovaniemi to Inari, Finland

Rovaniemi isn’t the end of the world place we imagined from its Arctic Circle description but a slightly grey town with department stores and pedestrian plaza. It has a splendid Arctikorium with displays of Sami culture and a separate section about the arctic with an impressive slide display on the northern lights.
One of the great things we discover about being at this latitude is that we can mess around for much of the day and start heading to our next destination 500km away late in the afternoon and not have to worry about finding it in the dark. So after the Arctikorium we go to Napapiiri actually on the Arctic Circle where Santa has established his official headquarters. It’s a little bit tacky but quite fun, particularly the post office where they are busy dealing with his mail and a nearby Sami tepee where we eat baked salmon roasted over a wood fire and served on a wooden board. The queue to sit on Santa’s knee is a bit long so we get back in the car and drive north to Inari, on the shore of a large lake which we reach around 10pm.
It’s a bit more frontier-like than Rovaniemi and as the hotels are full we settle for a cabin on the campsite. Once the mosquito hoards are eradicated it’s quite cosy.