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Weekend Travels - Kemi

Cat
Mar 24, 2017
4 min read

It's hard to put the beauty of Kemi into words...though winter wonderland is one phrase that comes to mind. In northwestern Finland on the coast of the Gulf of Bothnia, Kemi lies about 50 miles south of the Arctic Circle. It is in the region of Finland known as Lapland: home to reindeer, huskies, Santa Claus, and the gorgeous white snowy landscapes you often see depicting the country on social media.

Although we have not yet been to other cities in Lapland, we plan to. Kemi was our first experience this far north, and it was magical. There was about 4' of snow on the ground, more than we had seen since moving here - everything was covered in a powdery blanket creating an ethereal feel to the entire town.

We arrived by train late Friday night and stayed at a chain hotel in town. Nothing to write home about, although the breakfast buffet was a good one. On Saturday morning, we packed up and walked about 2 miles through snowy trails to our destination for the night and the main tourist draw to this town - Lumilinna (the Snow Castle).

On our walk, we found two disc golf courses, a snowed under goofy golf course, the marina with all boats dry docked for the winter, Santa's Seaside Village, and the winter swimming hole. The Gulf of Bothnia (not a small gulf) was completely frozen over and even though we have walked on frozen lakes in our own town, this was a sight to behold.

We toured Lumilinna (the Snow Castle) after checking in and dropping our bags in the luggage room. Lumilinna is the world's largest snow hotel, rebuilt every year with a different theme. There are typically only about 20 rooms built in addition to a chapel, dining hall, bar, library, vestibule, meeting room, labyrinth, etc. Outside the castle from the roof you can grab a tube and slide down the luge.

The castle itself is amazing. Not as elaborate as you might think a castle would be, but the sheer fact that this is handmade in snow every year is really incredible. Inside, it is a constant temperature of -5 C, regardless of the outside temp.

We had dinner in the ice restaurant - reindeer steak served in a foil-wrapped stewed package with vegetables. It was very good. We had most of the restaurant to ourselves, with only two other couples dining at the same time. The same was true of the hotel - only about 7 couples were at the safety orientation that evening.

Yes, I said safety orientation - to spend the night in a hotel. Yes, we paid (dearly) for our hazardous experience in the snow hotel! We sat through a 15 minute orientation outlining the proper clothing to wear to bed, not to bring any electronics with you into the room (too cold), how to get into the sleeping bags (there were two - a fleece liner bag then the outer Arctic bag), how to zip them and close them around so the only thing exposed was your face, and what to do in the middle of the night if you had to use the restroom (get out of the bags, get fully dressed, walk 100 yards outside of the castle to the reception building), and what to do if you gave up in the middle of the night and needed to sleep in the lobby.

We were told that we needed to be extra cautious since we had a three year old and they did not have child bags. We were to check him constantly to ensure no part of his body wriggled out during the night. After nervously (and excitedly) listening to the staff member, we went to the luggage room and dropped off everything we could (I snuck my phone in so I could check the time throughout the night if needed, and I also wanted to get a few photos) and headed to the room.

At first, it was actually quite warm, the sleeping bags were comfortable on the snow bed and we were able to get to sleep fairly quickly. The air was cold and fresh in your lungs and felt very nice. But it didn't last. Adam and I both got up once to use the restroom. I woke up about 100 times checking on G to make sure he was fully encased still. Several times his arm had come out of the bag. I gave up and felt a little more comfortable when he burrowed completely into the bag around 4 am. At 5 am, my fingers and toes started to get numb despite being in the bag. At 6 am, we got out of bed because we couldn't take it anymore. We showered and got dressed then headed to breakfast. We noticed the other couples looked as rough as we did, and everyone nodded to each other with a knowing smile. We got the feeling this is an experience people only do ONE NIGHT of, and don't do it again.

Had we booked two nights, I would have begged to pay anything for a room with heat.

Did we have fun? Yes, we did. It certainly wasn't miserable - I am really glad we experienced it and I think everyone should do it once (had we not had G, I might have actually slept a little sounder). That being said, I won't book a room in a snow hotel anywhere else in the world again. Why bother? I've been to the world's largest one, it's been checked off the list.

Have you ever slept in a snow hotel? Was your experience similar to ours?

We went snowmobiling Sunday morning before catching the train back home. It was a nice excursion, but we don't recommend using the sledge (you have to if you bring children under a certain age) as it was ROUGH riding in it. I had to ride with G in the sledge due to his age. Luckily, he fell asleep 2 minutes into the ride so he didn't notice how bumpy it was, but I had a tough time. It was fun riding on the frozen gulf and cutting through islands.