Reward yourself for all the hard work by going dog sledding in Finland

GIVE yourself a reward for hard work this Christmas. Try dog sledding in Finland! Or sailing around the Aeolian Islands!

Aeolian

Woohoo, it's nearly Christmas! That time of the year where your suppliers try to impress you with a gift that meets your corporate entertainment and gift policy.

Granted, it's hard to excite anyone with a $19.95 gift or one of the 2.5 million cards you have to sign, insert a highly personal greeting, lick a stamp and send.

Then you have to try to impress the chief executive of your biggest client. Now, he or she probably has two Ferraris, a Mark Richards' Palm Beach motor yacht 65 and holiday houses in Aspen and Tuscany. So it's unlikely that giving a copy of Lean In, the best-selling book by Sheryl Sandberg, a boss at Facebook, or House of Lies: How Management Consultants Steal Your Watch and Then Tell You the Time, which has been turned into the hit TV series House of Lies, is going to get you more business. If you are in the consulting business, I would be paying your clients not to read or watch either of these. So forget about the clients and look after the most important person in your life-you. Here are two Christmas gifts that will make you incredibly grateful (to yourself).

Dog sledding in the Arctic Circle: $4000 per person plus medical expenses for frostbite. There's nothing like a plane trying to take off after a snowstorm with the hostesses dressed like nuns. But that's just the start of the fun flying to Finland's northern-most airport for a week of mushing and frostbite. Landing at Lapland airport with the pilot having to buzz the runway to get rid of stray reindeer was an exciting start, as was the 150km drive further north on the icy road with the temperature hitting a balmy -8C.

The team to go with is Hetta Huskies (hettahuskies.com) run by Anna and Pasi. If your only experience with snow is Thredbo or Courchevel, then you just don't get how beautiful and mystical the Arctic Circle is. The dogs become your best friends. You may not know the meaning of the name of the band Three Dog Night, but a night in a freezing fisherman's hut, cuddled up with a couple of huskies, will bring it home. Caution: these are self-drive but guided experiences; letting go of a sled pulled by six strong dogs can mean a long cold walk.

Top tip: Don't go during the Polar Night because you won't see much.

Sailing around the Aeolian Islands: bareboat yacht charter costs $3000 a week plus food and wine and Sicilian ice-cream for breakfast. For some reason Sicily has got a bad rap in the media. But as a place to charter a yacht from and then sail north to cruise among some of the world's most magnificent islands, it's a winner. There are seven Aeolian Islands - Lipari, Vulcano, Salina, Panarea, Stromboli, Alicudi and Filicudi - and they are so wonderful UNESCO put them on the world heritage list and every rich European with bad taste in motor boats has them on their list too. So don't go in summer.

Yes, there are heaps of things to see - such as Stromboli, the active volcano with real kryptonite bellowing forth from its bosom, ruined churches and Bronze Age villages - but you really go for the scenery, the lifestyle, the food, wine and the people. After the war Italy lost, about 99 per cent of the islanders moved to Australia. The sensible ones have come back, so this is one of the rare places where the locals get excited to meet Australians.

Top tip: Hire a skipper to do all the hard work and show you the best restaurants. I use Gico Russo, a former Sicilian lawyer who saw the light. ([e-mail]).

John Connolly writes about life, leisure and taking care of business.