Heading for North Cape

Only for the last 2 or 3 years have I had this fixation with reaching the extreme north of continental Europe, North Cape, but everyone does nothing but repeat how expensive Norway is, not to mention the distances. So I had another idea, which in the end turned out decidedly affordable: we flew to Rovaniemi, a city in northern Finland, and from there, with a rental car, we reached North Cape and came back. We arrived on Thursday at 6 pm, with Finnair (change in Helsinki), having spent €540 from Rome for 2 people and having booked at least back in January. For the car, with Hertz, another €246. From home I had booked the first night in a Hytta with a private sauna on the hills of Akaslompolo, 180 km north-west of the arrival city.

The night at North Cape we left to adventure, while I had booked a second Hytta, again with sauna, on Lake Inari, on the way back, and the last night at the Scandic Hotel in Rovaniemi. The Hytte are these wooden cabins in all colours, but preferably red, equipped with everything and... above all with a sauna! The first one we stayed in was very beautiful, inside there was great care for the details and the part devoted to the sauna, made up of 3 rooms, was very spacious: rather, the little bedroom was smaller! If we had gone straight to our goal, the distance would have been barely 700 km; obviously we wandered much more, just to get an extra idea, especially of northern Norway, totalling 1900 km in 5 days.

On the other hand, this time the goal of our trip was this: ON THE ROAD! We basically followed the border with Sweden to head north, we entered Norway south of Alta (at Skibotn) and from there we followed the coast up to Nordkapp, we came back south perpendicular to the cape, leaving the sea behind unfortunately, and then following route 92 to Rovaniemi. What can I say? Finland is beautiful, but Norway is spectacular. But now let's think about Finland. The inhabitants number just over 6 million and these far-northern areas are dotted with little wooden houses, but they often seem uninhabited and it happens that you don't meet a single car for many kilometres.

Often, both here and in Norway, we found it very hard to find places to eat because we were told that for them the season starts after Midsummer's Day, after 24 June...! The average temperature was 13 degrees and the climate was very changeable. The scenery changes suddenly too: great coniferous forests, shrubs, tundra and countless peat bogs, but the ruler is water: continuously, in rivers, lakes, puddles, ponds, and soaking the ground as it thaws. We didn't see any elk, but reindeer are seen continuously, then pheasants, a fox, a red squirrel and quite a few mice and birds, and if you think we were only there for barely 5 days, you can imagine what incredible wildlife there is. In Finland, food and more costs more than in Italy: we managed to eat reindeer in various ways and it is very good. We respected the speed limits with great care, but we were checked only twice.

Moreover, we managed to visit 3 museums too: the Sami museum in Inari (beautiful), the Tankavaara, a gold-mining museum, rather disappointing, and finally the Arktikum in Rovaniemi, very nice. Santa's Village seemed to us just a collection of souvenir shops, so we didn't go in to have our photo taken with Santa (as they call him), and without too many regrets. Overall, although Finland seemed to us less beautiful than Norway, this trip was a great experience and returning to civilization was something we minded particularly. Another dream would be to go back to see the Northern Lights and the great winter darkness, given that in these days, at these latitudes, the sun NEVER set!