Christmas in Northern Europe 2023 – Part Three: Munich

To get from Lapland to Munich we had to fly back to Helsinki and then after a four hour layover catch a connecting flight. It was -28c in the morning when we left the hotel to catch the bus to the airport. Amazingly it was so cold that we didn’t need to deice the plane before departure – as any liquid in the air would have already been frozen. On all our flights with Finnair we found their service to be excellent, we also very much enjoyed the taste of the Northern Blush cocktail.

In Helsinki we were allowed to leave the airport, so we caught a train back into the city centre, went for a quick walk in the -15c midday sun. Initially this felt “warm” compared to our previous few days, but after a while our faces were again frozen. We returned to the airport, departed for Munich and by the time we arrived at our friend’s house it was 9.30pm.

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Christmas in Northern Europe 2023 – Part Two: Lapland

I didn’t know much about Lapland or what to expect when I landed at Rovaniemi airport. I knew we had to get a bus into the city, I also knew from Google maps that the city was small, but I didn’t know how easy it would be to get around or even how well I would survive doing activities in the cold weather.

Fortunately, my worries were overblown. Yes it was -8c when we landed and that was the warmest day we had in the next week! Yes it was dark 22 hours of the day because we arrived less than week after the shortest day of the year but there was still easy to get around on the public buses and there was plenty we saw and did.

One thing we quickly learned in Rovaniemi is that you need to ensure you have dinner bookings made ahead of time. We didn’t and we spent a lot of time going from restaurant to restaurant until we eventually found a place which was able to accommodate us.

On our first full day in Lapland we headed to the Santa Claus Village. We arrived as it opened and fortunately the lines to visit Santa were short at that time. The visit with Santa was very quick but still very fun. After visiting Santa we went on a reindeer sleigh ride. It was cold and slow but still very enjoyable.

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Christmas in Northern Europe 2023 – Part One: Arriving in Helsinki

In December 2023 I travelled to Europe to explore parts of Finland, Germany, and Ireland.

Our trip began by departing a hot summer’s day in Sydney. In typical Sydney summer style, the hot day developed into a huge afternoon thunderstorm. Lightning, thunder and rain poured down on our plane as we pushed back from the gate. We didn’t make it very far, the plane stopped for over two hours waiting for the storm to pass.

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