Lapland Activity Break for ADULTS!

On the 30th January 2025, we took a 4 day trip to Finnish Lapland.

Our break was part of a 4 day set trip for a Northern lights adventure, staying for 3 nights at the 4* Davvi Arctic Lodge Hotel in Karesuando

Karesuando is in a stunning “wilderness” location in “true Lapland” right on the border of Finland and Sweden, in fact it’s that close it’s only a 10 minute walk to cross the border!

We took our Enter Air flight from Manchester departing around 10am, after a short diversion en route to Norway (due to too much snow in Enontekio airport) we eventually landed into Finland around 3 hours late

The resort of Karesuando is approximately a 50 minute drive from Enontekio airport, but we still arrived on time for dinner, having had our welcome meeting on the transfer coach and checking into our lovely accommodation.

The Davvi Arctic lodge is a rustic hotel in a wonderful location in the Boreal (worlds larger) forest. We had chosen to stay in a one bedroom cabin with bathrooms and sauna, there are fourteen of these within the grounds mostly one bedroom with two, two bedroom options, plus four Aurora House rooms, two and three bedroom Fellhouses and hotel rooms in the main building.

On the first day of our activity trip we had booked a full day excursion to the Ice Hotel in Sweden, around a two hour drive each way from Karesuando but well worth the visit, we learned about Ice Hotel 35, built every year from scratch with snow and ice or “snice” for short, and renumbered each year. It has a wedding chapel, multiple ice rooms at minus 5 and 12 “artist” rooms where over 150 sculptors, artists and pitch each year to design the artist rooms they are crazy, quirky and stunning, all rolled into one!

The other Ice Hotel 365 is as the name suggests open all year round, and kept cool to minus 5 by literally being in a huge fridge. The ice rooms here are stunning and the entrance and ics bar each year are changed to a different theme, this year it was a “space” theme with rockets, astronauts, planets, drinks are served in glasses made from ice and there’s an evacuation slide in ice as a quirky way to leave the bar?

Our first evening after the Ice hotel visit, we had a wonderful forest trek at night with guides into the Boreal forest, learning about customs. Cultures, wildlife, drinking glogg and as we knew there was a fire pit we had taken marshmallows and our own retractable toasting forks too. We ventured off the path into the snow on the way back down and ended up waist deep in snow!

On our second full day, we had a wonderful husky ride experience across a frozen lake, we drive our own sled and had a chance to meet the beautiful Alaskan husky’s for a stroke and a cuddle afterwards. That evening was our Northern Lights snowmobile safari trip around 11pm, the lights had been spectacular before our trip but as we’d had very mild weather between minus 1 and minus 5 and fresh powder snow for three days, the cloud cover was too much, this did not detract from a wonderful two hours spent driving through forest and frozen lakes

On our final morning we had a visit to a reindeer farm, to take a reindeer sleigh ride and to learn all about reindeer in Finland. This was a truly magical experience and a great end to our four day trip.

Our stay at Davvi Arctic lodge was full board, the value for money for this Northern Lights activity trip to true Finnish Lapland with accommodation meals and four activities included was just fabulous

This really was a “trip of a lifetime” the only problem is, I want to do it all over again!