Vicky & Alex spent a nice autumn weekend in Rovaniemi, and wrote a travel diary from their experience on visiting Santa Claus’ hometown in September.
You can read the article in German here.
Arriving at Santa’s Hotel Santa Claus
There’s a particular kind of quiet that settles over Rovaniemi as summer tips into autumn. The tour buses have thinned out, the light turns golden a little earlier each evening, and the first hints of colour appear along the river. It’s our favourite time to travel, when a place feels like it belongs to the people who live there again, and we arrived right in the middle of it. Santa’s Hotel Santa Claus sits in the heart of the city, which is exactly where you want to be for a weekend like this. Everything is walkable, the river is minutes away, and after a long day out you can be back in your room without a second thought. We dropped our bags, took a breath, and let the trip begin.
An autumn dinner at Gaissa
That first evening we ate at the hotel’s own restaurant, Gaissa, freshly renovated and warm in that way that makes you settle in for the whole evening. The menu leans right into the season, and we couldn’t have timed it better.
Vicky went for the roast reindeer, tender slices with a rich blackcurrant game sauce, parsnip purée, beetroot and Lappish potatoes. It’s the kind of dish that tastes like the North in autumn, earthy and deep. Alex had the breaded pike-perch, an autumn catch from the northern lakes, golden and crisp, with Parmesan-seasoned potatoes, root vegetables and horseradish sour cream. Two very different plates, both of them saying the same thing: this is what Lapland tastes like when the season turns.
Morning light and the Arktikum
The next day started the way every good travel day should, with a proper breakfast. The spread was full of local Finnish products, and it’s a good reminder of how much of Lapland’s character comes down to what grows and is made here. A perfect start. From there we walked over to the Arktikum, and it turned out to be exactly our kind of place. We’re travellers who’d rather experience something than read our way through it, and the Arktikum is built for that, interactive, immersive, the Arctic explained through things you can see and feel rather than long panels of text. The building itself is worth the visit alone, a long glass tube reaching down toward the river.
Afterwards we followed the water for a while. The autumn colours were just coming in, the light was soft, and we took our time along the river, past the famous bridge that’s become something of a symbol of the city. Some of the best moments of a trip are the unplanned ones, and this was one of them.
We ended the day back at the hotel in the sauna. It’s free every evening, and there’s really no better way to close out a day of walking, warm, still, and completely unhurried.
To the Arctic Circle
On our last morning, after another good breakfast, we headed out to the Arctic Circle and Santa Claus Village. It’s genuinely easy to reach, local bus number 8 runs straight there from the city, more or less from the hotel’s doorstep, so there’s no planning required. You cross the Arctic Circle line, which is a small thrill no matter how many times you’ve travelled, and the village has that year-round Christmas feeling even under a late summer sky.
Back in the city, we made one final stop, and it might have been our favourite. Roberts Coffee, right downstairs in the hotel, served us one of the best cinnamon buns we’ve had anywhere in Finland. Warm, soft, exactly right. A perfect way to end a weekend that got the balance just right: good food, easy days, autumn light, and a city that felt like ours for a couple of days.
Rovaniemi in late summer or early autumn, quietly one of the best times to come.
The Travel Diary was written by:
Victoria Langer
@_moment_collectors_
on Instagram
The calm atmosphere of the season, nice local food, a visit to the Arktikum museum and a delicious cinnamon bun left Vicky & Alex in a Good Mood.
