Packing a bag, boarding a plane alone, arriving somewhere wholly new — not beside a partner or within the comfort of a familiar group, but simply as oneself, open and unscripted.
Nadine Paulo, Founder and CEO of The Solo Travel Collection, has built her entire life’s work around this act. “I created The Solo Travel Collection to inspire women to embrace the magic of traveling on their own terms — because you’re worth the trip. For me, solo adventures have been empowering, healing, and deeply transformative — and I want to share that joy with you.”
For over fifteen years, she has designed and led journeys exclusively for women, keeping each adventure intentionally intimate — never more than ten to fifteen guests — so that every woman feels seen, supported, and genuinely part of something.
These are not getaways. As Nadine puts it, they are “soulful experiences crafted to uplift and energize you,” with every hotel, activity, and shared meal chosen with care and precision. Finland’s Northern Lights journey is one of her most extraordinary offerings.
THE JOURNEY BEGINS
The trip begins at Vancouver International Airport, where the Pacific Northwest skyline recedes behind the clouds and the long flight east carries each woman toward something she has been quietly anticipating.
It is an overnight crossing — the kind that belongs neither to one day nor the next — and by the time the descent into Helsinki begins, the world outside the window is pale and snow-bright and entirely new.
Finland’s compact, design-obsessed capital greets arrivals with architecture that is sharp and light that in early March comes softly, like a hesitant guest. Settled into the Art Deco elegance of Hotel Lilla Roberts — its landmark bones dating to the early 1900s, its interiors a conversation between Nordic restraint and warm amber light — a quiet exhale.
The streets outside beckon: café windows fogged from within, market squares dusted with the last whispers of winter, waterfront promenades where the Baltic gleams cold and silver. Helsinki is the kind of city that rewards wandering without agenda, and the first afternoon belongs entirely to discovery.
That evening, the group gathers. Strangers who have arrived from different corners of the world sit down together at dinner, and something quietly remarkable begins.
“Solo travel is a gift,” Nadine says, “but sharing it with like-minded women makes it unforgettable. Some of you may arrive as strangers, and by the end of this trip, you’ll likely leave with lifelong travel friends.”
The conversations that begin over Nordic cuisine and candlelight will continue across five more days, deepening with every shared experience.
INTO THE ARCTIC
Then comes the flight north — a transformation that happens not over hours but over minutes. The landscape below shifts from the coastal geometry of the south to something ancient and immense: boreal forest stretching in every direction, river systems locked beneath ice, the world simplified to white and green and an enormous pale sky.
The descent into Ivalo, the gateway to Finnish Lapland, marks the crossing into a different register of experience entirely.
Kakslauttanen Arctic Resort emerges from the treeline like something imagined — and yet everything about it is deeply, deliberately of this place. The resort sits within Saariselkä, a region of protected wilderness so remote that no one lives within 200 kilometres east or west. There is no overtourism here, no infrastructure built for convenience at the cost of the land. The wilderness remains exactly what it has always been.
That rootedness extends to every surface and material within the resort. The pine logs used in construction were kept as close to their original form as possible — shaped only where necessary, never stripped of character. Fabrics are sourced from Marimekko, the celebrated Finnish design house whose work has long been inseparable from the country’s cultural identity. The chandeliers are fashioned from reindeer antlers shed naturally each season. The water that guests drink is among the cleanest in the world. The menu draws from the surrounding land: locally harvested berries, traditionally prepared breads, and regional ingredients that speak to the rhythms of the Arctic year. Even the horses kept nearby are fed with older bread from the kitchen — nothing wasted, nothing imported from elsewhere in spirit.
The staff live in close relationship with the Sámi people and the reindeer who move freely through the surrounding forests. This is not a resort that occupies the land; it is one that has made peace with it.
The Kelo Glass Igloos — structures that are part traditional Finnish log cabin, part panoramic glass dome — offer one of the rarest forms of luxury: the wilderness made intimate.
At night, the glass overhead becomes a theatre. The aurora borealis does not announce itself; it arrives. First a smear of pale green at the horizon, then a slow unfurling across the sky, curtains of light shifting from emerald to violet, moving with a rhythm that feels almost deliberate, almost conscious.
From inside the warmth of the igloo, watching the sky dance above without wind or cold or distance between oneself and the spectacle, the effect is one of profound, silent privilege.
LAND, CULTURE, COLD
The Solo Travel Collection’s itinerary was never designed simply for passive wonder. The days in Lapland are built around full immersion — both in the landscape and in the culture of a people for whom this Arctic world is not a destination but a home.
Among the most quietly affecting encounters is time spent with the indigenous Sámi, whose traditions of reindeer herding represent not a quaint cultural artefact but a living, necessary practice. The reindeer are not ornamental here. The Sámi communities across Lapland depend on these animals for their survival — for a continuity of identity stretching back thousands of years. To stand among the herd in the birch forest, snow falling in slow silence, is to understand something true about the relationship between human beings and the landscapes they inhabit.
The pristine Arctic wilderness itself becomes the adventure on the days given over to exploration. Crossing vast frozen terrain — landscapes that extend with an almost oceanic indifference to scale — a quieting of the ordinary noise takes hold. The cold sharpens awareness. Every sense becomes more accurate. The compressed crunch of snow underfoot, the exhalation of breath visible in the air, the quality of silence in an old-growth forest — these details accumulate into something that resembles clarity.
FIRE, STEAM, ICE
And then, at the end of those cold hours, the sauna.
Finnish sauna culture is not a wellness trend imported from elsewhere; it is foundational. The smoke sauna at Kakslauttanen is the authentic expression of this — a ceremony of deep heat drawn from birchwood fire, the air thick with steam, the body releasing its resistance layer by layer.
To step out from that heat and plunge into an ice pool beneath an open Arctic sky is to experience something at the outer edge of sensation. The cold is absolute and bracing and — unexpectedly, entirely — exhilarating. Laughter. Gasping. The particular joy of something deeply, physically alive.
“Every day invites us to slow down and truly be present,” Nadine tells her travellers, and it is in the sauna, in the ice plunge, in the long dinner afterward with red cheeks and open conversation, that this invitation is most fully accepted.
The farewell dinner in Lapland carries the particular weight of endings that have been earned. Three courses of traditional Lappish cuisine, each plate drawing from the Nordic pantry with simplicity and care, served beneath the Glass Igloo Bar.
Stories have accumulated. The group that sat down at a Helsinki dinner table five days earlier has transformed, quietly and inevitably, into something more than a collection of individuals.
WHAT COMES HOME
The return to Helsinki is brief, a single evening of city light after all that wilderness dark. Then the airport, the departing gate, the long flight back toward Vancouver — and what travels with each woman is harder to pack than anything in a suitcase.
Clarity. A renewed sense of self. The kind of connection, to place, to other women, to oneself, that only comes from stepping fully outside the familiar.
Nadine has always believed that these journeys return something essential to the women who take them. “You’ll return not just with incredible memories, but with a renewed sense of clarity, confidence, and connection.” Finland has a way of making that feel not like a promise, but an inevitability.
“We are so excited to journey alongside this incredible group of women,” Nadine writes, “to explore thoughtfully, laugh freely, learn something new, and create memories that linger long after the snow has melted.”
All hotel photography courtesy of Lilla Roberts Hotel.
Author Profile
- Helen Siwak is the founder of EcoLuxLuv Communications & Marketing Inc and publisher of Folio.YVR Luxury Lifestyle Magazine and PORTFOLIOY.YVR Business & Entrepreneurs Magazine. She is a prolific content creator, consultant, and marketing and media strategist within the ecoluxury lifestyle niche. Helen is the west coast correspondent to Canada’s top-read industry magazine Retail-Insider, holds a vast freelance portfolio, and consults with many of the world’s luxury heritage brands. Always seeking new opportunities and challenges, you can email her at [email protected].
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