In time for this year’s Christmas Season in Rovaniemi, Lapland, the House of Mrs Claus opened for visitors.

I walked by the building of the house last spring and I decided then that this is something I really want to visit some day. And finally the day came that I had the opportunity to do a visit at Mrs Claus’ house.

You find the villa behind the reindeer place at the Arctic Circle. It is open only about three times a day and you have to buy a ticket in advance before entering the house. The ticket office is the same as for the reindeer drives or you can book on Internet on the homepage of santaclausreindeer.fi.

There has been a certain demand for meeting Mrs Claus at the Arctic Circle and that is the reason why she now has an own cottage there, where she can meet children from all over the world and show up, so to say. Until now Mrs Claus has been at home at Korvatunturi making porrige and gingerbread, while Santa and his elves have spent days at the Arctic Circle.

To meet with Mrs Claus you turn up outside the door with your already bought ticket. (Or you have to run back to the reindeer place to get one). Then a couple of Mrs Claus’ helpers turn up and open the door for you.

Inside you can leave your outdoor clothes in the cloakroom. There are also very neat toilets inside. And then you can enter Mrs Claus’ kitchen. After some entertaining from the elves Mrs Claus finally shows up. She greets all the guests and you will be showed to sit at a table for the upcoming serving of the special christmas porridge, which is served by Mrs Claus. The Finnish Christmas porridge is made of rice and at least the tourist who were visiting Mrs Claus’ cottage with me had never tasted it but found it delicious.

After the porridge Mrs Claus starts baking gingerbreads and the children can help her one by one to put on the different shapes of gingerbread.

While waiting for the gingerbread to get baked in the oven, Mrs Claus tells long (really long) stories about Lapland and the reindeer there. Unfortunately the story telling was this time in English and none of the children were speaking or understanding English and some of the adults did not even understand English. The small helpers are nice to look at and they run around making some funny things, that are better understandable by the children than the stories about Lapland.

Finally there is the signal for the gingerbreads in the oven. And Mrs Claus can take the gingerbreads out from the oven. After some cooling time all the guests can decorate their own gingerbread and eat it, too.

The visit to Mrs Claus’ cottage ends with the guests writing some christmas wishes and put them hanging in the christmas tree. And suddenly you hear an incredible noice coming up. That is suppose to mean there are hundreds of reindeer running by the house, but that part of the story unfortunately did not get to the children, because of the language difficulties.

You can take your own photos together with Mrs Claus and the elves and the elves are also very helpful and take photos of the whole family, if you want that. The photos are included in the entrance fee (that, by the way, is one of the most expensive entrance fee I have paid in my whole life….).

A visit to Mrs Claus’ house is recommended if you are really interested in learning how this mystical lady spends her days, but be prepared to pay a lot for the visit.

I am glad I made this visit, so now I know a lot more about Mrs Claus and I got to see the nice cottage from inside. I did not here reveal all the secret things happening during the visit. I left out some details you have to experience yourself in case you visit Mrs Claus’ house some day.