We have just returned from a once-in-a-lifetime trip to Finnish Lapland, motivated in part by the horrendous few months we had endured and the horrors yet to befall us. My dad collapsed following a few weeks of feeling ill in October – emergency surgery to save his life from a catastrophic bowel blockage resulted in a terminal pancreatic cancer diagnosis (age just 66). This followed our housemate of 20 years, and very best friend “Jebs” being diagnosed with stage 4 stomach cancer diagnosis in July (aged just 38!). For both, I became their full-time carer, from finances and welfare to healthcare and emotional punching bag. Providing end of life care to two of the most influential men in my life, at the same time, is an unrivalled pain I can't describe. I was getting desperate to leave the drizzly depressing nightmare, and rapidly approaching my 40th birthday (December), I decided to get on with planning something to look forward to among the shitshow that was our lives. It was time for a holiday before it REALLY kicked off. Knowing we were about to face two heartbreaking bereavements soon after Christmas, I wanted to give the children something they would remember forever.

I’ve never been on a winter trip. There was the naïve/ignorant trip to Berlin in February 2005, aged 19, where it was -11 and I rocked up in a hoodie. And then there was the freakish -25 in the remote countryside of north-eastern China in January 2010 (where I at least had a thermal base layer planning for around -15, but it was one of the coldest winters on record and one of only a handful of occasions where it even snowed on the forbidden palace in Beijing!). Either way, this was different; a specific wish to spend a few days playing in the snow. I had always wondered if it were similar to the easy and care-free days playing in the sand – effortless fun, relaxing and not having to actively “do” anything, but without the sand in the bumcrack and the sun lotion smeared on everything?!

There were a few aims – guaranteed snow, few tourists (peace and quiet), authenticity, cheap and a new country (life is too short to go back to places!) So, where? We looked at Zakopane in the Tatra Mountains (the highest part of the Carpathian Mountains), forming the natural border between Poland and Slovakia - with stunning alpine scenery, glacial lakes, and popular hiking spots like Rysy, the highest peak in Poland. Perhaps a Christmas market on the way from Krakow? Cheap, but sadly, several feet of snow doesn’t usually appear until February. How about the snowy peaks of the Alps? Never been there. Austria? Switzerland? Hmm, too expensive.

OK, so the obvious choice then – Lapland. Hardly cheap though. Lapland had sat stubbornly on my bucket list for years. Like so many families, I'd always assumed it was one of those once-in-a-lifetime holidays that simply wasn't realistic. Every time I looked into it, the prices seemed astronomical. At first glance, a classic Tui package trip is anywhere from £5,000 to over £10,000 from “specialist” Lapland providers like Canterbury Travel for a family of five in December. These tend to go hard – elves on the plane, check-in desks dressed up as “Santas flight” which I’m sure floats many boats, but I’m not sure I would spend that much on anything less than 6 months or a boat to Antarctica tbh. Santa experiences often cost hundreds of pounds for just a few hours, and the thought of buying specialist Arctic clothing for a family of five felt daunting before we'd even booked a flight.

I wasn't looking for luxury. I wasn't even looking for Santa. I simply wanted deep snow, peaceful forests, a chance to play together, and a few days where real life could wait. So, as with every Mudie Method adventure, I began researching. Could we do Lapland independently? Could we avoid the expensive tourist traps? Could we create an unforgettable family holiday on a sensible budget?

The answer, as it turned out, was a resounding yes!

Over four nights in December we travelled to Finnish Lapland, based ourselves in the ski village of Levi, chased the Northern Lights, rode behind a team of huskies, dug for two-billion-year-old amethysts, wandered through silent snow-covered forests, roasted marshmallows in traditional Finnish kotas and spent entire afternoons doing nothing more complicated than sledging and building snowmen. Many of our favourite memories cost absolutely nothing.

This guide brings together everything we learnt while planning our trip, along with the lessons we only discovered once we were there. Hopefully it'll help you decide where to stay, what to pack, how much to budget and, perhaps most importantly, where you can save money without sacrificing the magic.

Throughout the guide I've linked to our detailed day-by-day blogs, which include much more information about each activity, our accommodation and exactly how we spent our time. Sorry - its my longest one yet!

Why Finnish Lapland?

There are several different "Laplands". The Arctic region stretches across northern Norway, Sweden and Finland, while a small part also reaches into Russia. All three Scandinavian countries offer many of the same iconic winter experiences: huskies, reindeer, snowmobiles, Northern Lights and endless snow-covered forests.

So why did we choose Finland? Like most of our trips, the decision came down to finding the best balance between experience, logistics and cost.

I’m DESPERATE to get to Norway. I made loads of excellent Norwegian friends on my yearlong solo backpack around Asia and I’d love to see them. But it was just too costly for now. Sweden is only marginally cheaper. Finland consistently appeared to offer the best value accommodation, excellent road conditions for winter driving, and plenty of family-friendly activities without quite the same price tag as neighbouring Norway. We also loved the idea of visiting the home of Santa Claus while still being able to escape into genuine Arctic wilderness.

As luck would have it, the BBC series Scandinavia with Simon Reeve aired just as I started researching the trip (love him!). Watching Simon explore frozen lakes, endless forests and traditional Finnish culture completely sealed the deal. What a country – the happiest in the world for 8 years in a row, well educated, developed and with good infrastructure but also steeped with natural beauty as well as friendly and easy to get around.

Finland became our next adventure.

Choosing Where to Stay in Finnish Lapland

One of the biggest decisions you'll make is where to base yourself.

Finnish Lapland is vast, and while many destinations promise snow and magic, they offer very different experiences depending on how touristy, remote, or activity-led you want your trip to be. For us, this had to be decided in conjunction with narrowing down the activities and seeing where we ended up. One thing was certain, for this trip I couldn’t stomach moving from place to place and opted for a one location trip rather than packing up and moving between locations overnight.

The Facebook group “Lapland on a Budget” is 99% posts of people asking the same questions that have already been answered 100+ times…but it was a good place to start.

Here's what I discovered:

Rovaniemi – Convenient but Commercial

For most visitors, Rovaniemi is the obvious choice; the epicentre of Lapland tourism. It's home to Santa Claus Village, Santa Park, the famous Arctic Circle line, huskies, reindeer, snowmobiles – everything is close together and easy to access from both the town and the airport. Everything is incredibly convenient, with most attractions less than fifteen minutes apart by car.

However, that convenience comes at a cost. It's also the busiest, noisiest and most commercial part of Finnish Lapland.

During December, coach loads of visitors arrive throughout the day, attractions are crowded, and accommodation tends to command a premium simply because of its location. For families wanting a smooth, package-style trip it makes sense, but it wasn’t the atmosphere we were looking for. Instead, we visited on our final day before flying home. I'm really glad we did, because it confirmed exactly what we'd suspected during the planning stage.

Rovaniemi is probably worth seeing. It just wasn't where we wanted to spend our holiday.

Saariselkä – A Paradise for Skiers

Saariselkä is a beautiful, more northerly option known primarily as a ski destination. If skiing or snowboarding is the main reason for your trip, it deserves serious consideration. It has a lovely village atmosphere, excellent slopes and plenty of winter activities. While it offers stunning scenery and reliable snow, much of the town and its infrastructure revolves around skiing and ski resorts. As we weren’t planning a ski-focused holiday, Saariselkä felt like it might limit our options outside of that world, and require much more travel there and around.

Ranua – A Great Choice for Wildlife Lovers

Ranua almost won. It's home to the famous Ranua Wildlife Park, where you can see polar bears, wolves, lynx, wolverines and many other Arctic animals. The accommodation also looked excellent value and it appeared far quieter than Rovaniemi. However, it sits further south, which slightly reduces the reliability of deep snow, and there are fewer snow-based activities and wilderness experiences within easy reach. It felt better suited to a short zoo-focused visit rather than a full winter immersion.

Levi – The Perfect Balance

In the end, Levi ticked every box. Situated around 170 kilometres north of the Arctic Circle, it sits roughly 2½ hours north of Rovaniemi Airport, immediately giving it a quieter, more authentic feel.

The village itself is compact enough to walk around and easy to navigate with supermarkets, cafés, restaurants and equipment hire all within easy reach. Yet only a few minutes beyond the centre lie frozen lakes, silent pine forests and seemingly endless wilderness; exactly the compromise we were looking for. The ski slopes provide plenty of activity without dominating the resort, and there are countless free opportunities simply to enjoy the snow. Temperatures ranged from -15 to -25ish and snow was a meter deep, actively snowing about half the time we were there. We spent entire afternoons sledging, wandering through forests, crossing frozen lakes and building snowmen without spending a penny.

Perhaps the greatest compliment I can pay Levi is this: If we returned to Finnish Lapland tomorrow, we'd stay there again without hesitation. It offered everything we hoped Lapland would be. And very little of what we feared it might become.

Getting There

This was, once again, a trip being planned in the realms of "not too early OR late to get a good deal" - the realm of 1-4 months before you want to leave isn't the cheapest. Life was crazy - and yet - for £905.90 this seemed to be a very good deal on the just the dates we were after!! Booked late August, we got flights on a new Ryan air flight-path of Bristol to Rovaniemi mid December - a two hour drive at either side, but this looked fantastically budget and too good to miss. We decided to book checked baggage for this one - not something we always do, but had a feeling the equipment would require a bit more for such a short trip! Check out the cost break down here.

Getting Around

At the time of writing there were several options for buses/public transport from Rov to Levi, but it became clear quite quickly that these didn’t line up with the cheaper flight times at all. We found that OnniBus operates several services on the relatively fast Helsinki–Lahti–Jyväskylä–Oulu–Rovaniemi route OB43. This was around €143.50 for 5x tickets (and we found a discount code for 25%). It didn’t seem to go as late as 21:30, instead stopping around 17:10-ish . You also can’t book earlier than approx. 3 months in advance.

It became apparent that hiring a car was really the only option, and it indeed transformed the trip. It gave us complete freedom to explore at our own pace, buy groceries from local supermarkets, chase clearer skies for the Northern Lights and visit places that would have been difficult (or expensive) to reach otherwise. I am a confident driver, having driven all over the world in various states of potholed nightmares, but driving in this volume of snow and ice would be a new challenge – one I was prepared to give my all. There were indeed huge stretches where one couldn’t see the edge of the road which was pretty white-knuckle at times! The worst parts were when lorries were travelling towards us on the other side of the road but that was so rare. On our Luosto trip we barely saw another vehicle in two hours. We survived without incident – here is a video of the conditions from the Day 3 blog:

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/35f5f4_358372f1a90d449c894a889157ed09e5/1080p/mp4/file.mp4

One word of warning, however…

Top Tip: Learn from Our Mistake

We booked with Green Motion because they were considerably cheaper than every other provider.

Unfortunately, so did everyone else.

Despite landing on time, we spent two and a half hours queuing to collect the car, eventually leaving the airport around midnight. After just three hours' sleep the previous night, that made for a rather tense first drive through the Arctic darkness!

If you book with the budget provider, send one adult straight to the hire desk ASAP while the other collects the luggage. It might just save the first evening of your holiday (see this blog post for more detail).

Budget (and What It Really Cost Us)

One of the biggest myths surrounding Lapland is that it's only possible if you're prepared to spend the equivalent of a small house deposit.

It certainly can be that expensive. Finland is NOT cheap.

If you book a package holiday over Christmas, add multiple Santa experiences, snowmobile safaris, glass igloos, fine dining and private excursions, it's remarkably easy to spend £10,000 as a family. That simply wasn't an option for us.

Instead, we approached Lapland exactly as we do every other adventure: lots of research, careful planning, self-catering where possible, and spending our money on the experiences that mattered most to us.

For us, that meant prioritising the husky ride and the amethyst mine while happily skipping many of the commercial Santa experiences.

In the end, the total cost of our four-night adventure came to £3,557.34 for our family of five.

Was it cheap?

Not at all. Not considering the other 3-5 night European jaunts we’ve done for under £1,500 (Italy for a week in half term, Denmark including all Legoland and Lego House South of France in August etc – all less than £1,500)

Was it considerably cheaper than almost every package holiday we looked at?

Absolutely. Less than half the price in many cases!

AND somehow it came in £937.66 LESS than the budget of £4,500 - which feels like an extra and very unexpected win!

Below is the budget I originally planned compared with what we actually spent.

This jaunt represents the third most expensive trip we've ever taken. Sitting up above the slightly cheaper 6-night all-inclusive trip to Turkey just a few months beforehand, and below the two mega-maternity-leave trips to South East Asia in 2016 and Central American in 2022. But for what became one of the most memorable family adventures we've ever embarked upon, I think it represented excellent value.

What to Pack for Finnish Lapland

If there's one thing that puts people off visiting Lapland, it’s likely the expense and research around the clothing.

Like most things, there's a huge difference between wanting the latest premium brands and needing to stay warm.

After a lot of research we managed to outfit all five of us entirely from Vinted and Facebook Marketplace. I have consistently read that others have had great success with Aldi and Lidl during their winter promotions but firstly we had no time and secondly its not just cost, its sustainability so always second hand for the win!

The temperatures during our visit ranged from around –15°C down to –28°C, yet none of us ever felt genuinely cold.

In fact, the biggest surprise was how comfortable the dry Arctic cold felt compared to a damp British winter.

Our Lapland Clothing System

Everyone dressed using exactly the same basic layering system.

Base Layer

Merino wool or synthetic thermal top and leggings.
Avoid cotton wherever possible, as it holds moisture and loses its insulating properties.

Mid Layer

A fleece or lightweight insulated jumper.
This creates the insulating air layer that keeps you warm.
We also bought jogging bottoms for mid-layers on the bottom but I was the only one who ever wore them! Everyone else survived fine without.

Outer Layer

A good waterproof ski jacket and ski trousers. These don't need to cost a fortune.
Because Lapland's snow is incredibly dry, waterproofing isn't nearly as critical as it would be in a wet British winter, but windproofing certainly is. Andrew managed to get such a good Mountain Warehouse coat with a snow skirt etc that he didn’t wear his normal one at home for the rest of the winter, preferring the ski jacket!

Accessories

Don't underestimate these. Warm extremities make an enormous difference.

We packed:

insulated snow gloves
thin liner gloves (thin Primark “Magic Gloves”)
woolly hats
Balaclavas (we only wore these during the huskie ride but it was vital!)
neck warmers/snood/scarves
thick wool outer socks
inner merino wool socks
snow boots

I also highly recommend taking a second pair of liner gloves for children, or ensure your accommodation has a drier; snowball fights inevitably become soaking-wet glove fights even with snow/waterproof outer layers at times!

Willow's complete outfit
Max's outfits (age 10) - We got a Hype ski coat from Vinted as well
Willow's second hand boots!
This is the "liner" sock - the one with skin contact. Anything else goes over the top!
These were just onesies to stay dry in the cabin
Practicing her bandit look
Quinn keen to try it all on at home!
They quickly found modelling too hot at home in the UK
Clothing in action!

Buy Second-Hand Wherever You Can

This was probably our biggest money-saving success. Children grow so quickly that many ski clothes are worn only once or twice before being sold in excellent condition.

Facebook Marketplace, Vinted and local selling groups were brilliant.

Our total clothing bill ended up being only a fraction of what I'd originally feared.

Better still, we now own everything for future winter adventures. See below for the genuine costs.

Our Lapland Day Bag and Other Bits

Every morning we packed a single backpack before heading out. It contained everything we needed for the day, whether we were exploring forests, hunting for kotas or driving to an organised excursion.

We required a few bits of equipment but generally we had what we needed (head torch etc from years of Scouting!). I purchased dog tag LEDs which were a godsend to see each other in the dim light – we each got a different colour and attached them to our ski jackets so we could see each other when out on our northern lights walks, sledding and playing in the dark. We also got given some single use/disposable hand and foot warmers which I would loathed to use given the sustainability angle, but safety first and all that. Thankfully we only used one pair (and unbelievably it was me that needed them in my shoes at the mine!).

Here's what we carried.

Essentials

Mobile phones (and a little sock or similar to keep it warm - cold drains batteries!)
Portable battery pack (cold kills batteries)
Wallet
Camera (and tripod – never done this before but it was nice to get a few photos of all of us for a change!)
Small first aid kit

Cold Weather Kit

Spare gloves
Spare socks for the children
Lip balm
Hand warmers (sadly disposable as we were given some for free, but they only got used once (by me in the mines!)
Head torch
Dog collar lights (so useful to spot our kids among groups when sledding down slopes)
Sunglasses (snow can be surprisingly bright - we didn't actually need them but glad to have them anyway)

Food & Drink

Thermos of hot chocolate
Reusable water bottles
Snack bars
Fruit
Chocolate digestives
Marshmallows
Metal skewers

The marshmallows and skewers became something of a running joke after our repeated attempts to find a free kota, but when we finally succeeded, they were absolutely worth carrying around all week!

Self-Catering vs Eating Out

Always the budget-breaker, eating out wasn't really on the menu. And on top of choosing to self-cater, one of the easiest ways to save money is simply to take a few cupboard staples from home.

We packed:

herbs and spices
Andrews fajita seasoning blend
mustard
ketchup
BBQ sauce
crispy onions
marshmallows
chocolate digestives
reusable food bags
refillable drinks bottles

None of these take up much space, yet they allowed us to avoid buying full-sized bottles and spice jars for just four days.

Evening meals were simple, warming and deliberately chosen to include as many Finnish flavours as possible without requiring dozens of specialist ingredients.

Eating out was easily the biggest expense we avoided. Many restaurant main courses in Levi and Rovaniemi cost £35–£50 per person, meaning dinner for our family could easily have exceeded £200 before drinks or desserts.

Instead, we shopped locally and cooked almost every evening in our cabin.

Not only did this save a considerable amount of money, it also gave us relaxed evenings together after long days in the snow.

The only exception was our final day, when we discovered HelmiSimpukka service stations serve surprisingly good-value hot meals.

For around £50, all five of us enjoyed burgers, hot dogs or meatballs with drinks – less than a quarter of what we'd expected to pay in a town-centre restaurant.

Finnish Foods We Loved

One of our goals was to experience Finnish food without eating every meal in expensive restaurants.

Some of the meals we researched included:

Finnish meatballs with homemade brown sauce and lingonberry jam
Cloudberry jam on toast
Creamy porridge with cloudberries
Fat Finnish sausages cooked over an open fire
Mixed berry juice
Cinnamon buns
Karelian pies (Karjalanpiirakka)
Finnish cheeses
Rye bread
We considered reindeer steaks as well but the kids weren’t massively up for it!

If you're travelling independently, I'd thoroughly recommend this approach. It allowed us to spend our budget where it mattered most: on experiences, rather than simply feeding ourselves.

Meal Plan

Our full meal plan is below. Here you will find it integrated with our itinerary (which drove what and how we ate), and on the spreadsheet in the next section, you will find analysis of the several restaurants we considered for the last day as well as the food shopping list and food packing list.

Food Shopping

Before travelling, I'd read countless horror stories about Scandinavian supermarket prices.

The reality? It really wasn't much more expensive than shopping at home. Because we self-catered throughout the trip (and we had a strict shopping list/meal plan), our food bill remained surprisingly modest!

Prisma, K-Citymarket and Minimani are hyper markets with the largest stocks for food and everything else; clothing, equipment for activities etc. Citymarket has a better variety of some special products, Prisma is the cheaper option.

Next step down are S-Market and K-Supermarket with diverse stocks for food, but less stock for stuff like clothing or hobby equipment and such. There is a good S-Market in Levi, which is where we bought everything we needed on our first morning after arrival (popped back in a few times for more drinks and cheese but it was so convenient on our way in and out every day anyway).

Then the smallest ones are K-Market and Sale, basically just for groceries but still with quite a selection of different foods.

Download our shopping list here:

Things to Do in Finnish Lapland

There is so much to do in Finnish Lapland!

The downside is of course how expensive the excursions can be! If you're not careful, it's remarkably easy to build an itinerary costing several thousand pounds before you've even booked your flights.

We quickly realised that we couldn't do everything. Instead, we chose a handful of unforgettable experiences that are hard to do as well elsewhere in the world, and balanced them with plenty of free adventures. We deliberately left enough downtime simply to enjoy being somewhere unlike anywhere we'd ever been before.

Looking back, I wouldn't change that approach for a second.

Our Itinerary

Should You Visit Santa?

Let's get the controversial bit out of the way...

We didn't.

Well... not “properly”.

This was probably the biggest surprise of our entire trip planning.

Once I'd researched the different Santa experiences, I realised they were all remarkably similar – and no different to those we find at home in the UK!

Most include some combination of:

"Search for Santa" - a woodland walk, sometimes with fairy lights and curiosities in the surrounding area
Meeting Santa
Visiting his workshop or toy factory
Baking gingerbread with Mrs Claus
Elf shows and storytelling
Reindeer rides
Present making
Singing and performances

They're undoubtedly magical - They're also incredibly expensive!

For a family of five, many experiences cost £300–£500 for just a few hours, while some premium options exceed £300 per person.

"Christmas House" for example came in at a whopping €1,384.21 for our family of five! Jeez!

That simply wasn't where we wanted to spend our budget.

Instead, we visited the free areas of Santa Claus Village in Rov on our last day, explored the shops, crossed the Arctic Circle, visited Santa's Post Office and enjoyed the atmosphere without paying for the premium experiences.

We never felt we'd missed out.

In fact, spending several days surrounded by forests, snow and wildlife felt far more magical than standing in another queue – we can do all of the above at home, but we can’t slide down 2-3 metre high snow drifts in Berkshire!

Huskies

If there's one activity, I'd recommend splashing out on, it's this!

Our husky ride became one of the highlights not just of Lapland, but of all of our travels altogether. Gliding silently through frozen forests behind an eager team of dogs was unlike anything we'd ever experienced.

Originally I wasn’t sure; most operators were charging £150–£200 per person, which simply wasn't realistic for our family. Fortunately, staying further north in Levi opened up considerably cheaper options, and thanks to an incredibly generous birthday contribution from friends and family, we were able to make it happen.

It was worth every penny.

If you're travelling with young children, don't automatically book the longest ride. We chose a 5km route which took around 7 mins (rather than a longer 10km) because temperatures were hovering around –20°C, and with wind chill that quickly becomes uncomfortable for little faces.

It turned out to be exactly the right decision. One unexpected bonus was spending time with all the other Arctic animals at Levi Husky Park. The Arctic foxes were a particular favourite with our children.

Read more: Day 2 – Huskies and Kotas

Reindeer

No trip to Lapland would feel complete without meeting a reindeer.

There are countless reindeer farms throughout Finnish Lapland, many offering sleigh rides, feeding experiences and opportunities to learn about Sami culture.

We kept things simple.

Rather than booking another expensive excursion, we visited reindeer as part of our husky experience and were also lucky enough to see several wild herds wandering alongside the roads during our drives through northern Finland. You can also feed reindeer housed at the K5 hotel in Levi, and grab food for just €7 a pack. Seeing them completely unexpectedly in the wild somehow felt even more magical.

If your budget is limited, I'd suggest prioritising huskies over a dedicated reindeer safari - we felt it might be a bit slow for us anyway. There are plenty of other opportunities to get your reindeer fix during the trip.

Chasing the Northern Lights

Like many visitors, seeing the Aurora Borealis sat right at the top of our wish list.

Unlike many visitors...we didn't book a tour.

Northern Lights safaris can be excellent, but they're expensive and often involve late nights that don't suit younger children particularly well.

Instead, we relied on patience, weather forecasts and a little bit of luck.

Before leaving the UK, I downloaded two apps that became invaluable.

My Aurora – for Northern Lights alerts. This monitors and predicts solar activity or “Bz” rating.
Windy – for checking cloud cover.

Both are equally important. The aurora forecast alone isn't enough.

A strong solar storm is useless if it's completely overcast, so checking both together dramatically improves your chances.

We received almost daily alerts throughout the trip, but poor weather looked set to prevent any sightings.

Then, on my 40th birthday...the clouds cleared just fifty metres from our Airbnb, the sky began to glow. Within minutes, ribbons of green light were dancing overhead.

There was no coach.

No organised tour.

No crowds.

Just our family standing quietly in the snow outside our little cabin.

I genuinely can't imagine a better way to have seen them for the first time.

Top Tip

Don't assume you need to drive somewhere. A dark open space with a lot of low sky visible and patience are the only things you really need. Look north and if you're staying away from towns, simply keep an eye on the forecasts and step outside whenever conditions improve. You might be surprised!

Other Top Tip

During our research we noted that if you’re in Rovaniemi, you should be able to get an uber to Olkkajärvi which is about 15km from SCV. If it’s a clear night in Rovaniemi, it can be worth going there. The other option is Arktikum park which is a dark park a short walk from central Rovaniemi. Both these options can get quite crowded during peak season but good spots to see the lights without a tour!

The Lampivaara Amethyst Mine

In Luosto, 2-hours from Levi and 3-hours from Rovaniemi, there is an amethyst mine – I don’t think I’ve ever been to a mine, working or abandoned. Plenty of caves and underground tunnels but no gemstones! After travelling by an enormous industrial snowmobile to the top of the fell from the car park, the operators provide a tour of an hour before a mining session, digging through 2.6-billion-year-old bedrock using hand tools. This costs 96€/adult and 47€/child (3-15 years) - €286. There is a “family ticket option” where if there are 2 paying adults, every other child (3-15 years old) is free of charge. This means that when there are e.g. two adults and three children, one of the children is free! To arrange this, buy the tickets online for 2 adults + 2 children and leave a note to the “Additional information” point that there is one more child joining the tour as well. It is not open every day, so do check and build your itinerary around this (I would highly recommend it – more info found here).

Traditional Finnish Kotas

This probably became our funniest running joke.

Before travelling I'd become slightly obsessed with finding authentic Finnish kotas (traditional timber shelters built around an open fire) where families gather to cook, keep warm and socialise.

The plan sounded perfect.

Buy sausages.

Pack buns.

Bring marshmallows.

Find a free kota.

Live the dream.

Reality proved rather different.

We repeatedly found locked huts, closed attractions and misleading maps before finally stumbling across a blazing fire in a deserted woodland kota on our second attempt.

It ended up being one of our favourite evenings.

If you're hoping to use free kotas, don't assume every one is publicly accessible; many belong to restaurants, ski centres or paid attractions. And always have a backup plan.

Read more: Day 2 – Huskies and Kotas

The Best Free Activities

Really, I just wanted to test the theory that we could play for free and have the time of our lives building igloos, snowmen, sculptures and having snowball fights and sledding and skidding around, alongside peaceful walks through forests and over frozen lakes.

We had read that in Rov the best place to do this for free is outside Angry Birds land and in Levi there is “Zero Point” – the bottom of the main ski slope in town. It was better than we ever imagined, with free car parking right next to the slope.

One of the worries I had was the availability of sledges – you are often provided them in hotel or chalet accommodation in the main tourist areas. We had read on the Facebook group that people did tend to just steal any they came by, so we wanted to ensure we had our own (top tip: take a sharpie and write on them if you buy some!). Equally we had read that they are around £15 to purchase from all major supermarkets. We were happy to have a tube/donut and 2x sledges included in our air bnb (without knowing this in advance it was a great surprise!) and we bought two more when we got our food shop – we left these at the flat when we left after a dialogue with our host, checking this was ok and not “littering”!

We proved the theory correct in any case and so fun cost absolutely nothing.

Some of our happiest memories included:

Building snowmen outside the cabin.
Walking across frozen lakes.
Exploring silent forests.
Sledging on free hills beside the ski slopes.
Snowball fights.
Rolling down enormous snowbanks.
Watching wild reindeer.
Simply sitting in the sauna after a day outside.

In many ways, these became the defining memories of the trip.

Other Activities We Considered

There simply wasn't enough time to do (or write) everything. If we'd stayed longer, these were all high on our shortlist:

Snowmobile safaris
The "Secret cafe"
Cross-country skiing
Ice fishing
Snowshoeing
Fat biking
Ice karting
Ice climbing
Ranua Wildlife Park
Glass igloo stays
Ice hotels
Horse-drawn sleigh rides

Some of these looked incredible.

Others looked considerably less appealing once we'd seen the prices!

There are several ice hotels, snow castle, snow village type places with amazing sculptures to behold. Sadly, everything we looked at appeared to open Christmas week when in later winter it is much more reliably cold – so too late for us.

The beauty of Lapland is that there's enough here for several return visits.

If We Had One Extra Day...

I'd spend it doing absolutely nothing.

No excursions.

No driving.

Just another day wandering through snowy forests, building snowmen, roasting marshmallows and enjoying the peace.

That was the very best thing about this trip - and just what we needed.

Our Accommodation

Our cabin was one of the best self-catering rentals we have ever had!

All wasn’t super straight forward on that front though; we had booked one via Air BnB for £150 less than our budget, but it was cancelled with just 10 days to go! Obviously then, there seemed to be barely anything available left in our price range, which was incredibly stressful. However, we did find one on booking.com and I’m not sure it could have turned out any better!

We had an absolutely fantastic stay and couldn’t have asked for a better base for our Lapland trip. A frozen lake sat only a short walk away, with peaceful pine forests stretching beyond it in every direction. Snowmobiles come down every few days, clearing the roads, pushing the snow into huge drift piles several meters tall – which were super fun to sled down. The children spent hours simply playing in the snow, climbing huge snowbanks, making snow angels and building snowmen before we'd even left the local area. It felt like we'd genuinely borrowed somebody's home in the Arctic.

Even better, despite the feeling of complete isolation, everything we actually needed was only a few minutes away in the car. Supermarkets, cafés, restaurants, equipment hire and the Levi ski slopes were all within 10 mins easy reach, giving us the perfect balance between wilderness and convenience.

The host was excellent; very communicative, quick to respond to any questions, and check-in was smooth and straightforward, even with a late arrival. Loved the sauna too, as well as the central chimney stack which kept the flat warm from one firing the entire stay – exactly what you want after long days in sub-zero temperatures.

A peaceful, beautiful spot that gave us both comfort and incredible experiences. We would highly recommend this place and would love to stay again (rest assured; I’ve never set up any affiliate links and don’t get any referrals/commissions – this is a genuine statement – it was just that good):

https://www.booking.com/hotel/fi/petsukka.en-gb.html

Another Top Tip

Not tried and tested, but when writing this up months later and pondering what if anything we would do differently, I came across “Lomarengas” which is a Finland’s local version of Airbnb. The same accommodation that we were going to book on Airbnb in our failed/cancelled attempt was listed for £260 less, because residents of Finland aren’t willing to pay the tourist fees!

Would We Stay Here Again?

Without hesitation. In fact, I probably wouldn't even bother looking elsewhere.

Levi gave us exactly the Lapland we'd imagined while planning the trip. Peaceful. Relaxed. Snowy. Beautiful.

If you're trying to decide between Levi and Rovaniemi, I'd choose Levi every single time.

Visit Rovaniemi. For us, it was the perfect combination.

A boot drier is a must!
The snowpiles pushed up the driveway near the cabin
Sleds and a donut - a suprise inclusion!
Sauna just off the bathroom - incredible!

What We Learned

When I first started researching this trip, I worried Lapland might become one of those destinations that looked incredible on Instagram but left us wondering where all the money had gone.

I couldn't have been more wrong.

Yes, Lapland is expensive.

Yes, you'll probably spend more than you would on an equivalent 4/5 days almost anywhere else in Europe at that time of year.

And yes, if you choose every premium excursion on offer, the costs can quickly become eye-watering 5-figures.

But equally, Lapland doesn't have to be that holiday.

Some of our very favourite memories didn't involve tickets, guides or organised excursions at all. They happened walking across frozen lakes, listening to the silence of the forests, watching wild reindeer wander beside the road, building snowmen, rolling down enormous snow drifts, roasting marshmallows in a traditional Finnish kota, standing outside our cabin watching the Northern Lights dance overhead.

Those moments didn't appear on any itinerary; they simply happened because we gave ourselves time to enjoy the place rather than rushing from attraction to attraction. For a family who usually cram everything possible into a whirlwind adventure to avoid FOMO, budgeting time for “nothing” was a challenge at first, but I’m so glad we did.

That's probably the biggest advice this trip write-up has to offer you.

Would We Change Anything?

Very little (with the exception of checking out the Lomarengas website for comparative costs on accommodation). Perhaps we would add an extra day simply to relax, and try something we missed such as snowshoeing, cross-country skiing or Ranua Wildlife Park. I'd also love to return one autumn for Ruska, when Lapland's forests turn gold, orange and crimson beneath the Northern Lights. But honestly, if someone handed me exactly the same itinerary tomorrow, I'd happily do it all again.

Final Thoughts

Looking back, the trip has come to mean rather more to us than we could possibly have known at the time.

Within weeks of returning home we lost my dad, followed just 6- weeks later by the soul-destroying my best friend and housemate of 21 years, Jebs, to cancer. Life became consumed by hospitals, paperwork, family responsibilities and grief. Lapland didn't magically protect us from any of that – holidays never do – but those few days in Finland feel incredibly precious. They gave the five of us a wonderful little pause, and a bit of a recharge between two chapters of our lives and before we had our hearts, innocence and happiness stolen: space, laughter, perspective and uninterrupted time together.

And when I look back through the photographs now, it isn't really the itinerary, temperatures or driving that I remember. I remember Quinn shouting mushing commands at the huskies as though she'd been doing it all her life. Max proudly revealing the amethyst he'd secretly found. Willow disappearing into snowdrifts almost as deep as she was tall. Andrew ‘s mission outside the cabin waiting for the Northern Lights to appear while I packed lunches inside. The five of us laughing until our faces hurt as we tumbled backwards into impossibly deep snow.

Those are the memories that matter.

After travelling together through more than thirty countries, across tropical rainforests, deserts, volcanoes and coral reefs, Finnish Lapland has comfortably earned its place among our top 5, maybe even top 3 favourite adventures.

The very best adventures aren't measured by how much you spend or the duration.

They're measured by how they make you feel.

And few places have ever made us feel quite like Lapland.

We'll be back.

Why Lapland, and Why Now?