Just a word about the pictures! Sorry that they were not included in the first version of this review, and sorry that they had to be reduced in size and quality for the site. They were all taken on the Olympus reviewed elsewhere.
1 Location ********* If you are looking for Levi on the map of Finland, there is a fair chance you will not spot it. I have a Michelin 1: 125000 map, bought this year, and it does show Levi, but not as a town or city, just as a mountain slightly north of Kittala. So for those as ignorant of Finland as I was before this summer trip, let me set it in context for you. Helsinki, the capital is right down South in Finland. If you drive about 800kms north, you will arrive at the Arctic Circle, somewhere around Rovaniemi, depending on which route you take. It might be Kemijarvi if you go more easterly or near Pello if you follow the Western route along the Swedish border. To get to Levi, you now travel a further 100 miles north, and pass through the airport town of Kittala. Another 10 miles north and you arrive in the ski resort of Sirkka, and that is where the Levi fell is situated, right in the heart of Lapland.
2 Arrival ********* There are several different ways to arrive at Levi. The easiest would be to own a helicopter and fly straight to the top of hill.! However, I have yet to find anyone on Ciao who owns their own helicopter, so I will sketch the alternative routes. During the winter, when this area is one of Finland's major ski resorts, you can fly direct from London to Kittala on a package tour flight. You can either hire a car there at Kittala, or use the coaches that the tour operators provide. In the summer, there are no international flights to Kittala at present. Talks are taking place with various international airlines trying to get scheduled flights into Kittala from other major European cities, but it is not happening as yet. You can use internal flights, and I assume that you can connect with any flight you may take into Helsinki or Tampere. Our arrival was by car. We had flown direct from Dublin to Tampere with Ryanair - to be highly praised in another review.! We had then driven to the east of Finland on the Russian border for our first week. The plan was to drive from there to Levi in a single day. It was a drive of about 920 kms - between 500 and 600 miles. While Finnish roads are good, very little of that route was dual carriageway, and none of it was up to UK motorway standards, and the speed limit is 100kph. We left at 6.30 am, drove through Joensuu, Kajaani, Pudasjarvi and Rovaniemi, stopping every couple of hours for breakfast, lunch, coffees etc, and managed to reach Sirkka at 6.00 pm Our return drive to Tampere, a week later, was split with a stopover in Oulu, and that route was not very different in distance, but I found the traffic a little bit slower and more leisurely - maybe because it was partly done on a Sunday afternoon!! Neither route was unbearable, and if I was going back, I would happily go the same way again.
3 Facilities ********* I will be concentrating on what we experienced in Levi in the summer in a moment, but this is really a resort geared up for the winter. It makes a confident boast of providing snow on the slopes from October until the end of May. In high season, you will share the town with 20,000 other holidaymakers, including many Finns. There are three hotels, 11 restaurants, a couple of nightclubs, a church, 2 medium size supermarkets, 2 petrol stations, one of which has another food supermarket attached, a handful of souvenir, sports, and general shops, and several property letting and sales offices. Not far from the centre, there is a golf course, and there are opportunities for fishing, walking and such like.
There are about 20 ski lifts, one gondola lift and another being built, about 50 slopes to ski on, and loads of tracks for cross country skiing and snowmobiles. It is a little town that is undergoing rapid expansion at the moment as it hosts another part of the World Ski competitions in November this year. In the wooded area surrounding the town, there are hundreds of log cabins and houses that provide accommodation for holidaymakers, and most are so well hidden among the trees, that you really maintain the felling of being in a tiny, remote spot in Lapland.
4 Attractions. *********** For foreigners, like ourselves, the attractions of Levi probably start with the typical Finnish landscape. Conifers, rivers and lakes keep appearing on every bend of the roads. There were times when we actually longed to see a piece of land free from that threesome - it does get repetitive.! But get home again, with photos of that landscape, and you realise just how fabulous it is. Reindeer are probably next on the list. The first wild one we spotted on the road approaching the Arctic circle, just about made us stop there and then for a photo. We just were not sure whether we might see any more or not during the week to come. We need not have worried. Every road we travelled in the following week, we met reindeer.! Part of the Levi slopes is open to the animals and you can see them in every possible colour, size and antler variety.! Go round the housing area, and you find the odd reindeer out for an evening stroll. And head into any of the local hotels and restaurants and you will find reindeer on a plate as well ! - more of that to come.! Levi in the summer provides enough territory to give you something new to see, all day for a couple of days walking. Not too far away, you can walk even more enjoyably through some of Finland's superb National Parks. There is opportunity for rowing, boating and fishing on the rivers and lakes in spring and summer, and ice-fishing in the winter. If Santa attracts you and postcards, figurines and pictures of him are your cup of tea, you will have plenty to amuse you !! (get a life ). The Arctic experience. Temperatures can drop here to the minus 30's regularly, and not far away we spotted a place which boats a temperature record of -55 C. within the past 10 years - probably a sign of global warming!!?? In midsummer, it never gets completely dark, and in midwinter, it gets light for only a very brief part of the day. The ski slopes are floodlit, because of the lack of winter daylight. The Northern Lights can put in an appearance, though I gather that there are no guarantees that you will have anything more than a postcard to prove it.!
5 Experience
Most of what is above is a personal recall of things we saw or read while at Levi this August. But what I want to do now, is give you a little package of a few of our personal experiences Summertime at Levi saw us walking around a town that was virtually deserted. For me, that is not a criticism - I was looking forward to peace and quiet. But more social folk than me could have felt that they had been sent to Siberia, or sentenced to solitary confinement, it was that quiet. Several of the shops, most of the ski lifts and several of the 'attractions' were not opened at all during our stay. I am not sure if anyone in Levi sells jeans!! - but reckon there were none being sold this summer.! Summertime in Levi was mixed weather-wise. Temperatures were a surprising 17 - 21 C, and we only had rain on part the last two days. It was quite windy at times, and we managed to pick a day for a gondola ride to the top of Levi, when the wind became strong. The cable car rocked a bit on the way up, but that was not a huge problem for us. After a couple of hours hiking round the mountain - its about 550metres high - we were looking forward to our descent with all its photo opportunities from the gondola. Imagine our puzzlement when we saw no movement on the gondola slope when we arrived; nor any personnel in the office, nor even a notice to explain what soon became obvious.! The wind had reached too high a strength to operate the cars and everything was closed down for the rest of the day.!! The only way back home for us, was a long trek by foot down the mountain!! Summertime in Levi is feeding time for half the world's mosquito population. I had been warned that mosquito numbers are quite high in Finland during the summer. I had fully equipped myself with the kind of repellent that had travelled to Kenya and Chad with us. It provides effective deterrent to mosquitoes for about 9 hours per spray. The problem seems to be that Finnish mosquitoes know their season is brief. They have sussed that blood can be enjoyed despite repellent. I watched the enemy airforce descend on my arm within 10 minutes of a liberal spray of the said jungle juice. The evening ritual became a tally of the number of bites, application of antihistamine, and a renewed determination that we would never, ever, ever venture into Finland in the summer.! We did see an item of clothing on sale that is supposed to answer the problem of the mosquito plague - it was a bit like an anorak and hood made out of fine netting, that covers the upper body a bit like a bee-keeper's outfit. I reckoned that it would be overly warm to wear in the summer heat, and I reckon those Finnish mossies have probably discovered some crafty way of getting through the mesh holes, anyway! Summertime in Levi seemed to be a time for special attention from the hotel and restaurant staff who were working.We were superbly served. We enjoyed wonderful food at very good prices. We had expected high prices for eating out, but found that was not the case. Lunch buffets, everywhere in Finland as well as Levi, are priced around 7euros per head. For that there were great salad assortments as starters, some soup, plenty of variety of bread, a choice of two or three hot courses, on a self-serve basis, and a simple desert to finish. Along with that, and included in the price, there was water, milk and home-brewed ale to drink with the meal, and coffee and tea to finish off. We enjoyed a Lappish meal out, with reindeer steak, freshly baked salmon and pancakes with cloudberry jam - great meal and good value at £12 each. Accommodation in the summertime is in the same log cabins that the ski fraternity use in the winter. For obvious reasons, we did not use the underfloor heating, nor the electric radiators, nor the massive wood-burning fire-place or any of the shed full of logs outside.! And while we parked the car at the door, we had no need of the power point there, by which you pre-heat your car engine in the depths of winter. It was nicely furnished, well-equipped and could have slept 5. We did use the sauna which is part of the showeroom, we did use the fridge and the freezing compartment to keep cold drinks on the go, and we had plenty of choice on the TV's digital reception. We cooked on the stove and found plenty of products in the supermarkets compatible with our usual eating habits and tastes. Alcohol is vary dear in the supermarkets and even more so in restaurants.
So that's about it really. We really relaxed, really enjoyed our walks and really enjoyed the peace and quiet of Finland - and I've finished the review without a single pun on Finnish!!
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