Europe

We were awoken again by the sound of the alarm this morning, which we had set for 7:00am to ensure that we had plenty of time to have breakfast, get our suitcases packed, and depart the hotel by 9:00am for the airport.

We got to the airport in plenty of time for our 11:25am departure to Kittilä in Finnish Lapland. We relaxed in the lounge for a while before heading to the gate and boarding our flight. We met a number of other people on the plane that we knew who were also on their way to the Porsche Ice Experience driving course that we were heading to. We were met by Porsche representatives at Kittilä Airport and they took care of our luggage as we all hopped onto a bus to head to our hotel in the nearby town of Levi.

The scenery on the way to Levi was beautiful. It was a magnificent day here today, with a lovely bright blue sky and no clouds. It was rather chilly though, although only about -6C so really not too bad.

We got to our hotel and had a very seamless check-in before heading to our room. We knew that we were going to situated near a ski resort but we didn’t know that our hotel was literally on the side of one of the ski runs! Keith couldn’t resist the opportunity to go skiing for the afternoon so he rugged up, rented some skis and boots, and headed out. Andrea decided to do a little exploring in the town, instead.

The skiing was amazing but gloves we had travelled with were not up the extreme cold at the top of the mountain, where the wind was blowing quite hard. This necessitated a quick ski back down from the top of the hill (which was quite a few kilometres from the village) to buy new gloves before heading out again. The ski runs are extremely well lit here, probably because daylight is in short supply this far north of the Arctic Circle.

Dinner tonight was an organised event and did not start until 8:30pm (to accommodate some of the driving course participants who were not getting in until later in the day). Just as we started on dessert an amazing show of the Northern Lights began and we raced outside (in entirely inappropriate clothing!) to watch it. We were told that we could get a better view from the top of the ski resort so we added a few layers of clothing and jumped in a cab for the ride up the mountain. We were incredibly fortunate to see an absolutely stunning display of the Northern Lights, something that had been on our bucket list for a long time.

We withstood the -12C temperature for as long as we could but eventually had to retreat to the warmth of the taxi and head back to the hotel.

It’s now 11:40pm and we are about to head to bed. Breakfast starts at 7:00am tomorrow and our mandatory driver briefing is at 8:15am. From there we head to the Porsche ice driving facility for the day.