Every year many tour companies offer packages to whisk you over to Lapland, see Santa and perhaps some huskies and then fly back, sometimes in as little as 24 hours. The cost of these trips can be close to what you might normally spend on a one week holiday, but you can plan it yourself and be in less of a rush.
So here is our plan and how we organised it with a few tips and pointers based on our experiences. Our trip took place in December 2023.
Itinerary
- Day 1: Fly to Helsinki
- Days 2 & 3: Explore Helsinki
- Overnight: Sleeper train ‘Santa Claus Express’ to Rovaniemi.
- Days 4 & 5: Visit Santa and explore Lapland.
- Day 6: Fly back home from Rovaniemi.
If you have more time you could definitely spend a couple more days in Helsinki and Rovaniemi. If you have to choose one I would go more for time in Rovaniemi.
Helsinki
We flew to Helsinki on Finnair from Heathrow to start our adventure in Finland, we booked this as a one-way ticket since we were planning on flying back straight from Lapland at the end of our trip.
Helsinki is a lovely city and the kids loved seeing the place blanketed in snow in early December. Depending on your interests there is a lot to see and do, with various museums and activities. We used the Lonely Planet guide to Finland to choose what we wanted to visit.
We did come across a Christmas market, which had a free carousel for the kids to ride on and seemed popular with locals and visitors alike. The market was located in Senate Square right in front of Helsinki Cathedral.
The hotel we chose was the Hilton Helsinki Strand, where we could get a family room for 2 adults and 2 children.
Sleeper train to Rovaniemi, capital of Finnish Lapland – the Santa Claus Express
This part of the trip was probably the second most anticipated by the children (top of the list being the visit to Santa of course). For planning train travel I will always recommend the excellent website seat61.com for the latest information. There is also information on the website of the Finnish railway vr.fi
To book these tickets I kept an eye on the News section of the VR website. There they announce in advance when tickets for each season go on sale, and for December 2023 the tickets were to be released on 27th April that year. I made a note in my diary and that morning headed to the website to secure our place. The website was a bit unstable and prices kept going up and down, with attempted bookings failing to go through, causing me to panic a little that all the seats were being booked up. In fact it turned out to be IT problems rather than heavy demand and with a bit of patience the website settled down and the prices actually got cheaper.
You can have standard sleeper cabins with no en-suite, but with the option for them to be connecting – or premium cabins with en-suite shower and toilet. We opted for the premium en-suites and chose cabins next door to one another. The price for all four of us (2 adults & 2 children) in two private cabins was €125. The journey is almost 12 hours, we departed at 19.29 and arrived in Rovaniemi at 07.20 the next morning. Great value since you will not need a hotel room for this night on your trip.
Taxis were waiting at the station to take you to hotels, which with children and luggage in likely heavy snow and freezing temperatures is advisable!
Coming soon .. part 2 – Visiting Santa at his Lapland home in Rovaniemi.