As you may have guessed from yesterday’s quick post, I have indeed made it to Rovaniemi where Santa Claus’ office is located. However, I will get to that… On Friday, we were all ready to set off for the 3 hour journey from Äkäslompolo south towards Rovaniemi. We had a little delayed start as the…

This evening (Saturday 23rd December) at 19:15 Finnish time Santa departs from his office at the Arctic Circle in Rovaniemi (he leaves a little earlier than Christmas Eve to make sure he is in position ready to start his deliveries what with travel time and all…). I’ll be there to wave him off, i.e. this…

Well, Lapland continues to be utterly magical. I am pleased to report that after my last post (Tuesday) I did embrace the ways of Finnish sauna-ing, sort of, in that I did get hot and then run outside (where it is very cold), but I did not roll in the snow. I was cold enough…

I have made it! I am now north of the Arctic Circle in Finnish Lapland. Our train arrived on time, and I was a little surprised when my alarm went off at 8am as it was still pitch black outside… This far north, the sun never actually rises (as it were), so although you get…

I landed 10 minutes ahead of schedule yesterday (Saturday), and it was a quick walk to baggage collection. As I am still in the EU (which came as something of a surprise to me earlier with my useless geography) no border, so no passport stamp which saddened me as I was hoping for something Santa/reindeer…

I feel I have seen a lot in the past 2 weeks, but in many ways, I have done a rather quick spin through some of the cities of Northern Italy. I wanted to start with a clarification, a couple of people asked why I skipped some of the main tourist stops such as Florence,…

By reaching Turin, I am the closest to home I have been this whole trip. As the crow flies, I am 570 miles and 9 travel hours (by train via Paris) from London. I am also in waving distance (174km over the alps) from Geneva. So, at this stage, I could be heading for home…

Having arrived in Genoa yesterday, it was easy enough to cross the road to check in to my hotel where I have evidently been given the disabled room – but I am not complaining as this means the room is huge! I started with what I thought was going to be a quick and easy…

I shall open this post with a learning point (potentiallly for us all) do not visit popular Italian cities during bank holiday weekends/in December. Bologna (and the train on route there) was probably busier than Verona if you can believe it? Maybe it is because I have been travelling for a while in less “known”…

Yesterday (Friday) morning, we caught the 10.10am train to Verona, and it was absolutely rammed! We spent sometime trying to work out why, and apparently Friday was the Feast of the Immaculate Conception which is a bank holiday in Italy (and therefore workplaces and schools are closed) and evidently Italians are making the most of…