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| Ice Restaurant. The tables were made of ice too! |
This month I visited Fazer chocolate factory, SnowCastle, hunted for the Northern lights and dug amethysts in an old gold mine.
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| Fazer Chocolate Factory We had a formal tour that explained the history of the chocolate production. We were allowed to eat as much candy and chocolate as we wanted but we were not allowed to take any out of the building. |
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| Rabbit 12 feet high built with chocolate filled eggs. |
Fazer roots in Finland
"Karl Fazer was born in Helsinki in 1866 and discovered his love of creating taste sensations from a very early age. His parents, Dorothea and Eduard Fazer, had moved to Finland from Switzerland and started a family fur business before he was born.
Instead of joining the family business, Karl Fazer decided to become a confectioner against his father’s wishes. He studied baking in Berlin, Paris and Saint Petersburg before opening a French-Russian confectionery café at Kluuvikatu 3 in Helsinki on 17 September 1891.
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The public’s appetite for Fazer delicacies continued to grow as well as Fazer’s assortment. In September 1897 Fazer celebrated the opening of the company's new four-floor factory at Tehtaankatu in central Helsinki". http://www.fazer.com/fazer-since-1891/
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| All you can eat candy and chocolate |
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| All you can eat candy |
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| All you can eat chocolate |
I visited a SnowCastle that is built out of snow, ice and seawater. This artwork was built in Kemi that is located off the coast in Western part of Finland. This year’s theme is Animal Wonderland. The castle has a world’s biggest ice restaurant that can seat 200 people, bar, Chapel with Noah’s Ark and beautifully decorated hotel rooms.
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| Hotel Room |
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| Chapel with Noah's ark |
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| Enjoying hot chocolate at the restaurant |
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| Hotel room |
I spent Easter in Lapland, hunting for the northern lights and digging amethyst in old gold mine. I booked a tour to travel outside Rovaniemi away from city lights to see the Northern Lights. Maybe my eye captured a speck of light, but mostly I saw a full moon. Instead of standing hours in darkness, we started a fire to roast sausages and performed the Finnish traditional New Year’s “casting of tin”. A small horse shoe shaped piece of tin is melted over the fire and quickly poured in a bucket of cold water. The shape of the hardened cast is examined to predict the future events of the coming year.
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| Where are the Northern Lights? |
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| Rosting Sausages by the Fire |
I had better luck with rock mining. Because the mines are now in government land, we were able to take home only the rocks that fit inside our fists. I did not become rich but I had a nice piece of souvenir to take home.
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| Getting up from the mine |
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| I found a big amethyst! |
