CHRISTMAS TIME IN TALLINN (Part 2; Finland trip: The zoo)

As I told you some days ago, actually last year, my christmas time in Tallinn started at the end of November with the trip to Finland.

Last time, I wrote about our day visiting Helsinki. After it we took the bus. The trip was long enough to sleep. It took us 10 hours to arrive to a zoo close to Rovaniemi. I do not remember the exact name of the place, (it could be Ranua zoo) but I remember that we arrive early in the morning to a small place where they gave us some food to have breakfast.

Later we started our tour inside the zoo. It was huge and open-air, so it was a cold experience, due to the temperature did not exist, we found between 0 and negative degrees during our walk.

There were all kind of animals: polar bears, seals, reindeers, deers… It was difficult to see some of them, because they were hiden resting, however, there were other animals very easy to find and to feel really close. For example, we could touch a reindeer, it was nice and strange, I always imagined reindeers as soft texture animals (probably I was influenced by Santa´s reindeers´ image), but instead, their skin was hard and rough. I supposed it was necessary for protect their bodies of the extreme cold, but the sensation of touching a “Rudolph” was different as I expected.

We walked through the forest of the zoo while crossing wooden bridges and entering in different buildings.

The buildings contained different kinds of insects and land animals, some of them were camouflaged between the grass, but they were the least.

In our path we found different animals such as polar bears and seals. It was nice to see all the polar bears´ family, we stayed watching them for a while.

A part from visiting the zoo, it was also possible to take a look around the forest while driving a ski-mobile.

After the visit we went to the dining room where tipical north finland food was served, the main dish was reindeer meat. Everybody loved it, people said it was really tasty and nice.

Finally, we took some warm drinks before going back to the bus, which drove us to our next and, almost, final destination.

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