Lapland with Kids: Day 1 - Baptism by Snow

What a day.

When planning this trip, we made a very deliberate decision to avoid Rovaniemi. Don’t get me wrong – it’s magical, but it’s also the epicentre of Santa Park, tour buses, and TUI package holidays. Instead, we headed 2.5 hours further north into the Arctic Circle to Levi, chasing quieter forests, deeper snow, and a more authentic slice of Lapland.

The snow delivered, the initial logistics, less so.

Despite landing on time, collecting our hire car went spectacularly wrong. An inexplicable 2.5-hour queue meant we didn’t actually get on the road until midnight. We were seething – no apology, no explanation – just three young kids standing in a boiling, narrow corridor for 150 minutes, well after bedtime, alongside 200 other exhausted travellers desperate to leave.

With only three hours’ sleep the night before, and temperatures sitting at –17°C, the drive through snow and darkness was, frankly, sketchy at best. Still – baptism of fire (or snow?) and all that – we arrived safely at our Levi Airbnb at 2:45am, utterly exhausted and quietly cursing my “lust for adventure” on what was meant to be a relaxing and relatively easy trip (well, as much as driving through the arctic circle ever is I guess).

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Top Tip (Learn from Our Pain)

If you’re hiring a car from Rovaniemi: one of your party must RUN to the car hire desks immediately after passport control. It would appear that because Green Motion is significantly cheaper than every other provider, the world and his wife book with them –  and Green Motion themselves seem far more interested in upselling extortionate excess cover than actually handing over cars. One desk. One stressed teenager. Chaos.

The knock-on effect was immediate: no supermarket run, no proper food, and the knowledge that the next morning we’d somehow have to persuade three very excited children to go shopping before playing in the snow. A challenge, to say the least. It also left us with a rather unfortunate first impression of a country we’d always revered as efficient, happy, and impeccably organised.

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But then… morning came.

Waking up in Levi was utterly unreal. That deep, muffled quiet that only exists when everything is blanketed in snow. The light. The stillness. The sense of being somewhere completely other-worldly. It was worth every sleepless hour.

The local supermarket turned out to be no more expensive than home (small victory), and we stocked up on everything we needed for our Finnish-themed meals for the days ahead. Mission accomplished.

Then came the part we’d all been waiting for: a full day of nothing but play.

We sledged straight outside the cabin, built a snowman, launched snowballs at one another, rolled down three-metre-high snowbanks, wandered through silent snowy woods, and walked across a frozen lake as if it were the most normal thing in the world. It was the kind of day where time disappears and nobody checks the clock.

We finished things off at the Levi ski slopes, confirming my well-researched (but still barely believable) fact that the nearby hills are perfect for free sledging and snow-tubing. Completely free. No queues. No tickets. Not even a parking fee. Just laughter, speed, and cold-pink cheeks. We absolutely loved it.

The Great Kota Failure

One planned highlight didn’t quite go to plan: the kota.

Kotas are traditional, round wooden huts built around a central fire pit and chimney, usually stocked with logs, bins, fire pokers, skewers, and seating. They’re largely free to use – when you can find one that isn’t inside a ticketed area. Aside from Northern Lights spotting, I’d considered the authentic sausage-and-marshmallow roasting experience the most risky part of the trip – and, predictably, the thing most likely to blow up in my face.

Information on locations, access, and opening times was surprisingly hard to come by. The only one I could find reliable details on was a popular woodland kota between Zero Point at the base of the Levi ski slopes and the “Kids Land” adventure area. I could almost picture leading the family away from the slopes in the dark with promises of hot sausages and buns (we’d brought mustard, ketchup, crispy onions, BBQ sauce, skewers, marshmallows, and chocolate digestives from home)… only to fail spectacularly.

And fail we did.

Kids Land had recently (and inexplicably) shut, and we arrived to find the cute wooden hut padlocked and deserted. Sad times.

Determined not to give up, we remembered spotting a map on the side of a ski lift marked with little teepees and drove ten minutes out of town to try another. This one was also shut, though at least it came with a sign claiming it was open “during restaurant hours” (though god knows what restaurant it was referring to, as we were in the middle of nowhere!) a small ray of hope, but one for another day as we were all very hungry by this point.

Defeated, we schlepped home and pan-fried our sausages instead (still pretty damn good, to be fair), and happily the day ended exactly as it should: curled up on the sofa, warm and shattered, watching the greatest Christmas film of all time — Muppets Christmas Carol (obviously).

A bit of chaos. A lot of cold. A hint of exhaustion. And absolute magic.

Lapland, you’re already delivering.