All the activities of the past few days have been rather tiring, so we decided to have a more relaxing day today and go for a stroll around Äkäslompolo. As we stepped out of the apartment, we could tell that there had been fresh snowfall again overnight. Everywhere looked brilliantly white.
This was the view as we stepped out onto the pavement outside the apartment.
We followed the pavement along towards the centre of the village.
We were heading towards Äkäslompolo's frozen lake. We could soon see it in the distance.
On the way we passed a thermometer which announced that today's temperature was - 12.
As we approached the lake, Tim caught sight of some animals in a nearby field.
Reindeer! These are the first reindeer we have seen in Lapland so it was quite exciting, although we could smell them from a considerable distance away so I didn't regret not having booked a trip to the reindeer farm!
We walked out onto the lake, which was completely frozen and criss-crossed by several cross-country skiing and snowshowing trails, same as last year. At least this year we realised that we were walking on a lake 
It was a nice clear day and so we had good views of some of the fells in the distance.
We set off walking along one of the tracks; technically it was for snowshoeing, but it was possible to use it without snowshoes as well.
Walking on the fresh snow was quite tiring though and I started to feel some sympathy for the huskies from the other day!
The lake is deceptively large and it took us quite a long time to make it to the other side.
Eventually we arrived at the far side and found ourselves in a little wooded area.
The trees looked beautiful in the snow
The further we went the deeper the snow seemed to be and the harder it became to walk through it.
It was quite easy to accidentally step onto a bit of snow which was deeper than it looked.
Ultimately we came to a hill slope which looked steeper than we were able to climb without snowshoes, so we turned around to retrace our steps back to the village.
The views were just as wonderful in the opposite direction.
As we crossed the lake again we could see that there wasn't much more daylight left.
It was about 2pm, so we decided to go to our favourite restaurant from last year for a meal. It was now open, although the pizza oven was broken so I had to have a burger instead. We had a table by the window which looked out onto mounds and mounds of snow, on what I think is probably the restaurant's terrace during the summer. It was a nice end to a relaxing day
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