This review is part of a series about our experiences of our first ever package holiday – a trip to Lapland. You can find out more about our trip here. This section is written by MrsTravelFreak.
On the second day of our trip we took a 20 minute trip to a huge woodland area. When we arrived, we followed our own guide and the groups passed around various activities. We did tobogganing first. Although this was basically sliding down a hill, it was very well organised, a man was there to help everyone on the sledge and give them a push. Everyone got at least a couple of shots and the queueing didn’t appear substantial. The kids all played in the snow while they were waiting and Lee (our tour guide) encouraged them to have a snowball fight with him.
We then split our group, half of us went to reindeer sledging and the other half went to a traditional arctic ceremony. We were in the latter.
A man dressed in traditional finish dress led us towards him over some animal hide, marking our faces and explaining to us that the traditional belief was that this ceremony allowed us to come back in the next life. He suggested this may be as a reindeer or similar….I think i’d need a very warm coat….!
We then swapped with the other half of our group. We went reindeer sledging. We get in the sledge, biggest at the back, kids in front. The reindeers pull the sledges. Ben and I were fortunate enough to have a reindeer right beside us, it was very cool to have a reindeer so close! We went allowed to touch them but it was still cool! The reindeer too us around in a circle and we got off, we didn’t go too far but it was still a fun experience – especially for our reindeer obsessed son!
Not all of the views were quite as magical though:
We then went for some husky sledging which I liked best; the huskies were just so fast! MrTravelFreak prefered the Snowmobiles which was the last event we completed here. I have to admit, they were pretty cool!
There were fires (like this) to keep us warm and because we were doing exciting stuff, we didn’t notice the cold.
Click here to find out more about our trip.
