We visited Santa Claus

We really did. In Rovaniemi in northern Finland.

Rovaniemi is part of Lapland, which is an area at the Arctic Circle that is shared by Finland, Sweden and Norway. Santa Claus "lives" in Santa Claus Village and this is where letters and parcels addressed to the Man in Red will end up.

There is the Santa Claus Post Office where mail gets a special Santa's head stamp.

There is also the Santa Claus Office where one can seek an audience with the Man himself. At the entrance, an Elf showed us a catalogue containing a list of gifts we can purchase for Santa to present to the kids. We should be careful not to let the kids see us give orders.

Hmm... we ain't gonna pay €18 for a stranger to give a stuffed reindeer to our kids.

We then went through some exhibits and finally reached the Upper Room where the Old Man sat. After some small talk, we took a photo and said bye-bye.

Photography indoors not allowed. So we gave in to an 11R snapshot complete with Santa certificate at €25. No thanks though to €36 video footage.

Our kids were quite excited to see Santa Claus but they weren't so thrilled that they went speechless. We didn't bring any drawings or letters and the kids didn't have special requests. It was more like a "been there, done that" episode.

Estelle and Jules enjoyed Rovaniemi for 2 reasons.

Top of the list is the snow. They loved the snow slides. Jules started and ended each try with "Woo-hoo". Each of them went again and again.

They made snowballs and carried one each wherever we go. HG called them 七龙珠. They swept snow off fences and benches. They observed their footprints in the snow. Estelle sat on fresh snow and laughed at her bum print. We had a snowball fight while waiting for the bus.

The next best thing that we tried was the husky sleigh ride. It was a mere 500m but the speed and turns around corners were exciting.

We stepped into the sleigh with hesitation but the kids asked for more when we were done. Unfortunately, we ran out of money (cash only and €70 per ride for all of us) and the 2km route was inaccessible because snow was melting. It was 1ºC that day - too warm for the North Pole.

The kids loved the husky ride so much they chose husky stuffed toys as their souvenirs. Not elfish hats or Santa magnets, just huskies named Mini and Husky.