Salla - December Blues
In paid collaboration - Visit Salla - Koronaexit -project
Salla is a beautiful outdoor destination located in Eastern Lapland. Its diverse nature and great services makes it a perfect environment to enjoy a special getaway all year around!
I got an opportunity to take a few of my friends and go have a fun long weekend in Salla. The activities on our visit would take us to enjoy parts of the new National Park area. The days are quite short this time of the year, so we needed to plan the activities wisely. Good thing about winter though is that it doesn’t really get dark at all as the snow illuminates the nature. Some activities are a lot better in daylight, but some are possible to do in the dark as well. More on them later…
Time of the visit: Mid December Weather: Cloudy/Snow Temperature: -1 to -9 Length of stay: 3 days
4 Activities in 3 days
E-MTB (electric mountain biking)
This year the winter has been a challenging one due to the unusually warm start. Most of the longer trails for biking weren’t open yet. We ended up staying on the trails close to the ski hill which still served the purpose and we definitely had a fun time. E-MTB’s are a fun and fairly easy way to get to the nature even in the winter. I highly recommend trying them!
More about the bike trails here!
Skinbased
Next on our list was Skinbased-skiing to the top of Iso-Pyhätunturi. I’ve done this quite a lot the past few years and it’s always as fun. There are a few things to take into consideration when it comes to the routes and it was nice to have a guide with us along the journey, showing the best trails to go on. We made it to the top and had a quick cup of coffee before skiing back down to the starting point. It’s good to bring your head lamp to provide more contrast when it gets darker.
Starting point: Itäkota-Cafe Distance: 4.6km Elevation gain: 140m Time: 2h
Winter Walking
Nice relaxing walk in the woods is amazing for the whole family. Salla has really nice maintained winter walking trails with beautiful scenery and good places for a bonfire. Definitely a good option for an easier day in between harder activities. The trail was nicely marked and well maintained. No need for snowshoes on these trails! Remember to bring your headlamp also for this one as most of the winter walking trails are not illuminated! We only ended up doing a 4km trip including a nice bonfire stop at Kontiolampi lean-to.
Starting point: Salla Reindeer Park Stop 1: Kontiolammen laavu (950m) Firewood: Yes
Cross-country skiing
Salla has really nice cross-country skiing tracks that partly enter the future National Park. There are tracks that are illuminated in the dark, so we had to give it a go. The terrain was fun and had a good variety of uphills and downhills. It was really nice to get some kilometers in before the sauna.
See more on the tracks here!
Resources for Salla
For dinner - Restaurant Kiela
For lunch - Keloravintola
Groceries - 10 km in downtown Salla
Rental equipment - Salla Ski Resort
Cabins - Pan Village
Other things to do or visit
Salla Reindeer park
Kaunisharju - Viewpoint
Napapiirin Safarit - Snowmobile safaris
Salla Ski Resort
Scratching the surface in the City of Angels
Paid partnership: Finnair
Los Angeles is place that requires time to explore and see the many sides of the city. We did a very brief trip to cover few of the many things to do in the city and some weekend getaway destinations to consider for your visit. Now with the new direct route from Helsinki to LA with Finnair, you can easily create your own story.
Our story started with a few days of exploring LA’s some of the most famous “to see” locations for anyones LA trip. We kicked off the trip with a hike around Griffith Observatory, where we were able to witness a nice sunrise and see the Hollywood Sign. What a nice way to start the day! The morning continued on with a nice breakfast at Alcove Cafe & Bakery, which I think we all can highly recommend for your visit! As a coffee addict I picked up a coffee to go from a nearby coffee shop called Maru Coffee, which I also highly recommend. The day went on with some other sightseeing and shopping and a helicopter flight over LA for the sunset! What a way to start the trip!
The next day we started with some fun activities in Venice Beach as the Yes Girls wanted to do some rollerskating at the board walk. I chose to be the camera guy and have a little laugh from a distance as I could tell it wasn’t so easy. I know the girls are good on ice skates… but these were very different! Definitely worth the try! From the Venice Beach we made our way to Abbott Kinney for a dinner. There’s a restaurant called Gjelina, which blew our minds. Super nice venue and their pizza was even better! For the sunset we ended up in the Santa Monica Board Walk. Very nice as most of the crowd has left the area. Such a nice place to enjoy the sunset! You can even catch a roller coaster ride there if your day has not been exciting enough!
1000 miles in 3 days.
Our idea was to head to Big Sur straight from LA, but surprisingly for Southern California the weather for the first evening looked bad on the coast. We had some plans earlier to visit Joshua on the trip, but ended up changing those plans to Big Sur. Now with the bad weather we decided to squeeze in the Joshua Tree and Big Sur. Both places I would highly recommend for a weekend getaway, but definitely not our way of combining both in 3 days.
We made our way to Yucca Valley for the night, which is close to Joshua Tree National Park. As the first light hit the area we made sure we were up to see the beautiful sunrise and standing Joshua Trees. What a beautiful sight and I definitely want to come back and make a Joshua Tree trip on it’s own!
After the sunrise we started our long drive towards the Pacific Coast Highway. As many of the most beautiful sights are in a fairly short stretch in Big Sur, we decided to head all the way to Monterey for the night. We wanted to have a full day in Big Sur the next day. The drive was an experience on it’s own and it was an amazing adventure for sure!
We had put down a list of spots we wanted to stop, but as usual you end up stopping once in a while as the drive is amazing and there are nice viewpoints along the drive almost every mile where it’s easy to stop. Here’s a little list for the spots I recommend stopping by in Big Sur.
Point Lobos
Rocky Creek Bridge
Castle Rock Viewpoint
Bixby Bridge
Little Sur River Beach
Pheiffer Beach (Keyhole Rock)
McWay Falls
Salmon Creek Falls
Lone Cypress Tree
#feelfinnair #finnair #reasonstofly @feelfinnair
Trentino adventure through the film camera
I’m writing a more detailed post about my winter adventure to Trentino in a few days, but I just wanted to share some of my favorite moments that I shot on my film camera during the trip.
I was chosen to be the winter ambassador for the area and I got to have an awesome activity filled 2 weeks enjoying the different destinations and different activities the area has to offer. During my time I definitely got to do a lot, but it was still just a fraction of the possibilities there!
Right now you should head over and plan your summer trip there, but I hope you get some inspiration to start planning you winter adventure 2020 in Trentino!
I hope you enjoy these photos while I’m putting together the more closer look to my trip!
This trip was in collaboration with Visit Trentino, but as always, all opinions and reviews are completely my own and truthful.
https://www.visittrentino.info/en
