28 Mar 2023 - Austin Shen
After a week to rest and recover in Helsinki, Ruby and I went north to Rovaniemi to see the Northern Lights. Sam was able to join for most of the trip too! You would have seen from the thumbnail that we were in fact able to catch them. However, we were only able to see (or imagine?) flashes of green. The long-exposure images on the camera were able to capture them more clearly. Hopefully we’ll get even luckier another day with stronger activity. That ended up being a little bonus at the end of an already awesome trip.
It is the coldest place I’ve ever been, with temperatures as low as -20 degrees. We made the most of it by enjoying some ice skating, snowboarding, and ice lake swimming. Then to warm up we drank lots of hot chocolate, cooked ourselves in the sauna, and sat around fires in Lappish Huts. We met Santa a few times at his home in the Arctic Circle too!