Lapland 2

Lapland photo album:

Lapland album

The morning started off with breakfast in the restaurant. It was a typical Finnish breakfast with cheese, vegetables, and cold cuts for open face sandwiches, pickled herring, and cereal with yogurt.
 
This day was called our free day. Just like summer camp, we could pick whichever activity we wanted for the morning and afternoon period. I did cross-country skiing and ice fishing. I never realized that my years of marginal skiing in Paulington Va would make me a pretty proficient skier in ideal conditions. I soon got bored with waiting in the traffic jam of skiers and did exactly what they told us not to do and went off on my own. Much better!

Next up was ice fishing. After a quick lesson from the mother, we set off with our rucksack to drill some holes. This took FOREVER.

Then you lower your line until it hits the bottom, pull it up about a foot, and wait. And that's all you do. There's no casting, no moving to a different spot, no trying different lures. You can't even see anything! The only thing you can do is scoop the ice out of your hole with a spoon every now and then.

We soon realized that this would take at least a bottle of wine and a few beers. We lasted about an hour and a half before we got so cold we had to stop. Needless to say, I didn't catch anything. I don't think I'll be in too much of a hurry to try ice fishing again.

After that we sat around the fireplace in the cabin drinking wine, eating chocolate, and knitting. A lovely way to spend Valentine's Day!






Dinner that evening was salmon with potatoes and cheese, green beans, homemade pickles, bread, and salad.

And dessert was a berry crumble kind of thing.

After the now routine sauna and ice swimming, I hung out for a little while in the "party room" of the sauna house, listening to bad pop songs recorded in Finnish and feeling slightly like I was on an episode of The Real World Finland.