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We arrived home today at about 12:30 A.M. Eastern. It was a long day... over 24 hours in transit from Nina's house. We are sad and glad to be back. Now just have to back post about 100 pictures. Keep checking here for more great pics of Finland!

Homeward bound

We are leaving out from the hotel in about 19 minutes. Now we have about 23 hours of travel until we reach GSO. It is going to be a long day...

Farewell Finland...

last day in finland

we are starting our last day in finland. currently christa and i are sitting around in a busniss center at our hotel waiting to get last minute confirmation of our flight plans for tomorrow. later this morning we are headed out to see a fortress on one of the islands surrounding helsinki. pics to come.

Tin Tin Tango

hungry and in need of some nourishment, we decided to find a local cafe where we could get some decent sandwitches. what we found, with the help of the hotel coneseur, was the Tin Tin Tango cafe & bar. A nice little shop serving some awesome sandwitches and croisants... as well as beer and some sort of holiday drink with nuts, berries, and insane amounts of vodka.

Don't mess with Texas

Sometimes there are things so big that they can't be contained... even by thousands of miles of water. Here, in the heart of Helsinki, we found a little part of Texas.

helsinki... again

We just got off the train from Jyväskylä to Helsinki. the train station is in the heart of the city and is the end of the line for all trains headed this direction. we will be spending the rest of the afternoon touring the city and shopping for last-minute souvenirs.

Train to Helsinki

The train ride to Helsinki was fun and relaxing... mostly. We had a lot of luggage, and carrying it up and down flights of stairs and through crowded rail cars wasn't fun, but did teach me that I should pack less or work-out more. In any case, Christa snapped a lot of photos on the way. (pics to come)

A sad farewell...

We left Nina, Janne, and the kids today. Nina drove us to the travel center in Jyväskylä and we had a tear-filled parting followed by a long train ride to Helsinki. We will miss our friends dearly.

Returning home...

We finished the last section of our tour to Lapland and arrived to a warm welcome home from Janne and the kids. Little Jimi just kept saying "Itti, Itti" (mommy mommy!). After some food and talk, we finished packing and lay down for our last night in Muurame.

Bells

Nina stopped for a short break at a small restaurant that just happend to be a small museum of bells. They had a few hundred bells ranging in size from hundreds of pounds to the size of a small thimble. Christa practically froze to death trying to get good pics. (pics to come).

A view of the frozen sea...

Today we awoke to snow falling heavily in Olou. After a quick breakfast, we headed out to see the frozen sea. (pics to come) After enjoying the view, we saddled up and headed out of Lapland.

Arctic Circle

After a day and a half of travel, we finally made it to the Arctic Circle! To celebrate, we all got our picture taken in front of an Arctic Circle sign... and a 20-foot tall snow-man!

Nina "Double-Dog-Dared" Ryan to take off his two coats, hat, and gloves for a picture at the Arctic circle in the dead of winter. Of course there was no way to avoid the Double-Dog-Dare. So here you go!

I wasn't pointing at the Arctic circle sign... my arm was frozen!

Seriously... this monster snowman was about 6 meters high.

Santa Park

We visitied Santa Park in Roviname. It is located under a mountain - one has to travel through a long corridor cut in the stone to reach Santa Claus. We found him to be quite the guy. At first we were quite stunned upon meeting him as the elves tricked us into thinking that Santa was only speaking Russian this day. Nina was initialy devastated at the news as she had driven us all the way to the arctic circle in order to have an audience with a guy that even she could not speak to. Eventually the little elf girl could not take it any-more and revealed that indeed Santa could speak English and Finnish. Santa mysteriously knew that we had traveled from North Carolina, that we had a dog named Otto, and knew all the towns in Finnland to which we had travelled. It was fun. :)

Negative 15

The big question we knew we would get when we got back to The States was "Was it cold?" Yep! And here is proof - check the reading on the thermometer... NEGATIVE 15!

Frozen Smiles

We stopped by a small park on the way up to take some pictures and stretch our legs. It was quite chilly... we snapped these picures and jumped back in the car. If our smiles look a bit strained, it was due to our lips being frozen to the front of our teeth!

Reindeer Roadkill

While driving through Lapland we saw several reindeer. They are tagged as they are hearded & semi-domesticated. Some were clever and sniffed out grass from under the snow. Others were roadkill waiting to happen.

Lapland

Today we headed out to travel through Lapland. Lapland is the large norther territory of Finland. Like the rest of the country, it has lots of trees, lakes, and snow. One thing it has unique is Reindeer, Arctic Circle, and Santa Claus.

Happy New Year!

The new year has started in Finland! (7 hours ahead of you East Coasters! & 11 hours ahead of my dear Hawaiian friends!) Ha!

It went off with a bang here. Unlike NC, anyone can buy big rockets here. So come new years, the whole city lights up with fireworks from nearly every house. Janne & Nina got a pack of the big ones and we blasted them into the air. The kids also had fun with their sparkels, bottle rockets, and cherry bombs.