Three days exploring Helsinki Monday 17th Jan This morning I hopped on the Audio Tour Bus, where you can choose to listen to the tour in one of 10 different languages. They really cater for tourists. I am amazed continually at how many languages people from European countries can speak. The tour took just less than 90 min and showed us and explained the different buildings, history, markets and Olympic buildings. It was quite good and gave me the orientation ...

Sunday 16th Jan - A Day to follow my intuition A shower sitting down was unusual to say the least, but it was great to wash my hair. There was no hotel restaurant, nor did it have any laundry facilities - I'd have to hand wash some things to get me through until I got home. I spent the day walking around Helsinki, going with the flow and not referring to the map much. I found the Helsinki Cathedral and when I entered (after reading a sign outside that informe...

Saturday 15th January - A Day of Travel I woke naturally at 6:30am and pulled my clothes from the end of my sleeping bag where they'd ended up. They were a little cold, so having them up around me for half an hour warmed them up nicely. The next stage, taking off my thermals and putting on clean thermals and clothes was an interesting experience within my sleeping bag. What? No way, was I getting out into -4degrees to get dressed!! Collecting up my things and...

Beautiful, freezing Kirkenes - Friday 14th January A lovely way to start the day with the goal of disembarking very shortly, as well as being joined by Sue and Shakti for breakfast. They're heading off back to England today and Sue was a little jealous that I was going to be staying at the Snow Hotel tonight. Once packed and my luggage was in the luggage storeroom, for the next 45min, I chatted with Sue and Shakti on Deck 4 looking out the windows to the changi...

Snow Hotel Back at the Rica Arctic Hotel, I was picked up at 6pm to be taken to the Snow Hotel. I had with me what I would need for the night and would collect the rest of my luggage tomorrow from the Rica. Kat and Michelle were already in the bus and we were joined by a few others - they'd be 9 of us staying at the Snow Hotel tonight. We began in the warm room with information about the clothes we could borrow (snowsuits, boots, gloves, beanies, wool socks, ...