The Best Holiday Ever

January 22, 2014Finland, Norway, Swedenarctic circle, aurora, camping, cooking, finland, holiday, northern lights, norway, road trip, snow, Stockholm, sunrise, sunset, sweden, travel, walking, winterJudy

Yes, I know. Not everyone would be thrilled to be going overseas with only 2 days’ notice. But I was. Spending almost 3 weeks in sub-zero temperatures, not seeing the sun for 2 weeks, camping in a tent in the snow, sleeping in the car and even the prospect of travelling so far to see a natural phenomenon without any guarantee of success would not be everyone’s idea of the perfect holiday. Gee, we could have just stayed home and enjoyed (or endured!) a long stretch of 40+C days instead. But I’m so glad we went, and not just because we missed Adelaide’s heat wave.

It was wonderful to revisit places we had seen 6 months ago, in mid-summer. At the time, we wondered what it would be like there in winter …. and now we know. Once we got used to colder weather than either of us had ever experienced, and worked out what to wear, the cold didn’t bother us much. Okay, so I wasn’t brave enough to get out of the warm car when it was -36C, but getting out and about in slightly warmer but still sub-zero temperatures, and even sitting watching for aurora was fine as long as we wore enough clothes. The Norwegians are right – ‘there’s no such thing as cold weather, only inappropriate clothing’.

I had always thought that winter inside the Arctic Circle meant existing in complete darkness, and was very happy to learn and experience that it’s not so. During ‘polar night’, which is the opposite of ‘midnight sun’, it does get light even though the sun doesn’t shine above the horizon. The light is weak, like pre-dawn light here, and it only lasts a few hours. For the first few days, we were looking for dinner at 4pm … well, it had been fully dark for HOURS by then, feeling tired at 5pm and sleeping in until it was light … at around 10am. We never really did wake up early unless we used an alarm, but then we don’t at home either.

We did see the Northern Lights … 3 times. The first 2 nights we were inside the Arctic Circle (the night we slept in the car, and the next night when we camped in the tent), they were there. Not spectacular displays, and if we had realised how elusive they really are, we would have paid more attention and spent more time outside watching them. But because they were just there almost as soon as we arrived to watch them, we figured they would be there all the time and we could see them whenever we looked up at the sky. So, so not true. The third time we saw them was the first night we stayed in the cabin at Birtavarre, but they were mostly hidden by cloud. We could see them through the cloud, but wasn’t a good show.

There are 2 enduring images that I’ll carry with me as memories of our trip, and neither were photographed. The first is the one Greg mentioned, of the couple walking their baby in a pram when it was -36C. The other is of a mother pushing a child on a swing in a playground in Kiruna. It was 4.30pm, -5C and pitch black outside. And it reminded me that wherever we are in the world, kids are kids.

As always, thanks to everyone who has read, commented and sent messages – while we really write and share our photos for our own amusement and to keep a record of our travels, it’s great to know that we entertain other people as well.

Just a few last words … for Greg. Thank you. For planning and organising our amazing holiday; for buying the equipment, warm clothes and other essentials; for doing all the driving, including that long, difficult snowy drive back to Stockholm; and most of all, thank you for your adventurous spirit and for taking me along with you!

Dubai

January 17, 2014Dubaidubai, emirates, stopover, travelJudy

Lovely, easy flight from Arlanda Airport, Stockholm, to Dubai, after our mad dash to get to the airport with just enough time to board the plane. 6 hours, middle row of 4 seats between the 2 of us, great entertainment system. Greg watched Diana and a submarine movie, I watched Mama Mia … twice. Because, you know …. leaving Sweden, ABBA, Meryl. I’m tempted to watch it again on the flight from Dubai to ADL, but I should probably use the time more constructively and watch other movies instead, or sleep.

Our 2 days in Dubai have been great. We stayed in a 2-bedroom apartment at the Fortune Grand Apartment Hotel in Bur Dubai. Not far from the airport and close to a metro station. The apartment was bigger than our house, with more toilets but fewer books. We didn’t bother about using the kitchen, but the washing machine came in handy. We spent yesterday getting out and getting some sun. After 2 weeks of absolutely no sun, it was a bit of a shock to be out in such bright light … and all the cars, and people and urbanisation took some getting used to, although it was nice to walk on footpaths and not have to worry about slipping on ice.

We took the train to Dubai Mall, which is a huge, multi-storey shopping complex near Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world. We wandered around there for several hours grazing – frozen custard (J) and chocolate thickshake (G) at the Shake Shack, giant pistachio macaron (J) and rhubarb tart (G) at Paul’s French patisserie and cafe (and then we went back there for lunch today, sitting in the non-smoking section of the balcony and it was fantastic), a Whoopie Pie from the Hummingbird Bakery and then a browse through Waitrose supermarket and some time sitting in the sun out by the fountain. We thought it ‘performed’ every 30 minutes, but it seemed to be switched off for maintenance while we were there. Greg was keen to see the beach, and the easiest way to get there is by taxi, but the queue for a cab at Dubai Mall was so long that we gave up on that idea and took another train to the Mall of the Emirates to find dinner, then headed back to the apartment for a good sleep.

Today we went out to try and find breakfast down by Dubai Creek, but things here don’t start early, so we gave up and decided to wait until we’d checked out of the hotel and then have lunch. We don’t fly out until 2am, so we asked the hotel to keep our bags and went off to do some more exploring. Friday is the first day of the weekend here, and the metro is closed until around 2pm, as we discovered when we couldn’t get into the station …. so we caught a cab back to Dubai Mall. After lunch at Paul’s, we caught a ‘LadyTaxi’ to Jumerah Beach. There are 2 state-run taxi companies, one of which features cabs driven by women …. for women (and a man if he is with a woman, but no solo men or groups of men). Our driver was a young Filipina who had been driving a cab for 2 weeks. Prior to that, she had worked as a maid. She has lived in Dubai for 2 years and hopes to save enough money so that she can go home. But the cost of living in Dubai is much, much higher than in the Philipines – she rents a bed space in an apartment here (not even a whole room!), and it costs as much as renting a whole house back home. She told us that fuel costs 70c per litre. She was really good to talk to, and the best cab driver we had here – the men are all wanna-be racing car drivers.

We sat on the public beach for a while, then went to the ‘private’ beach, entry fee $1.60 per person or $6.60 per car. Being the weekend, the place was packed with families having picnics, barbecues, swimming, playing, and a worrying number of kids running around with lethal-looking kebabs on skewers. There were lots of trees and grassy areas, but the actual beach and sand in the private part was pretty much the same as the public beach. We walked a few kms to the nearest train station and slowly made our way back to collect our bags and head to the airport. Greg got an airport lounge pass when he got his new Amex card, and we’re currently sitting in the Marhaba lounge, whiling away some time until 2am. It’s very nice – free Wifi, food, drinks and comfortable seats.

I’d come back here for a stopover anytime, it was an interesting place to visit, I’ve found more things here that I’d love to see and do, and it breaks up a long trip to or from home very nicely.

Camels milk at the supermarket, it sort of sums up Dubai

Not sure that you need to tell Muslims that its not for them.

A Whoppie pie! bought from Hummingbirds bakery, but not as good as Brianna’s

On the beach with the tallest building in the world in the background

On the metro with no driver! What will little boys want to do when they grow up if all the trains are driverless?

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South to Stockholm

January 15, 2014Finland, Norway, Swedenarctic circle, aurora, finland, norway, road trip, snow, Stockholm, sweden, travel, wintergreg

It was a long cold 1500km drive south from Birtavarre Norway to Arlanda Airport in Stockholm. We spent another fruitless night looking for Aurora. It was a clear night with the temperature dropping to -18C, but no sign anywhere of Aurora.

We left Birtavarre at 5:00am, and within a couple of hours we were back in Finland, refuelling the car with cheaper Finish Diesel (about $A2 a litre) rather than expensive Norwegian Diesel ($A3 per litre). When we refuelled it was -24C and we worked our way through northern Finland for about 100km with the temperature dropping even lower. The temperature finally dropped to -36C with the cars clutch starting to play up getting heavier to use. We thought it might be the cluch fluid freezing , but it turns out clutch fluid does not freeze until -59C, so something else caused the clutch to play up when it was very very cold.

We crossed south into Sweden with the temperature still hovering around the -36C level. We drove through a town where a couple were taking their baby out for a walk in a pram, and it was still -36C.

We finally had the sun rise over the horizon in northern Sweden, unfortunately we drove straight into the low sun for a couple of hours. By the time it got dark at about 2pm we had covered 500km, but we still had a 1000km to go. Once we got to Lulea the road got wider with more overtaking lanes. Around about 600km from Stockholm it started snowing again and you have difficulties overtaking the trucks on the overtaking lanes. The trucks kick up light snow that billows around like dust on an Australian dirt road when you follow them. When you overtake the outside lane has a lot more snow sitting on the road because not as many cars use the outside lane. So you pass on the outside lane driving through layers of snow trying to peer through the snow being thrown up by the truck you are passing. Very difficult.

We stopped at a parking bay about 11pm and slept in the back of the car, waking again at 5am to do the last 350km to Stockholm. We refuelled the car at a Service Station about 40km from Arlanda Airport with only 2 hours before our flight left. We asked the service station attendant if he could take some our of discarded camping equipment, and he kindly volunteered to take it to a local charity. With a very fast and rough repack, and a very superficial clean of the car (it was still caked with ice on the rear) we rushed to Avis to return the car. Hopped on the bus from Avis to Terminal 5, checked in, did the usual long wait in security, changed out of our thermals, and by the time we made the gate, they had started to board the plane.

-36C. The cars clutch started being very heavy and we did not dare turn the car off.

Dawn and -36C. Judy staying in the wamer car (which still had ice on the inside of the windows however) — Dawn and -36C. Judy staying in the warmer car (which still had ice on the inside of the windows however)

Trees covered in snow in the pink light of the low morning sun

Birtavarre, Norway

January 13, 2014Norwayarctic circle, aurora, camping, fjord, northern lights, norway, road trip, snow, travel, walking, winterJudy

After chatting with Christian, our campground host, about how best to see aurora, we put in a concerted effort last night. It was cloudy, but there were patches of sky visible most of the time, and we hoped that the cloud might just clear away. It didn’t, but we drove 8kms out of the village to the end of the (cleared) road to see if it was any better there. It wasn’t, but along the way we noticed that most of the houses had lights on inside – when we drove along here in summer, we had assumed that most of the houses were just holiday places, but apparently not. The Scandinavians have a lovely tradition of putting a small light or a standard lamp in every window. Around Christmas and New Year, there were a lot of decorative lights, nearly all of those have gone now, but there are still lights in a lot of windows. And indoor plants too.

We set the alarm to wake up every 2 hours overnight to check the sky and make sure we weren’t missing anything. At 5am, we both saw Lights behind the clouds, but the cloud was too thick to give us a decent show. We gave up after that and slept in until dawn … at 9am.

Greg walked around the campground this morning, taking some of the photos that are in the previous post. There are moose/s around here. I saw one last night and Christian showed us bare patches on trees around the cabin where they had stripped the bark off to eat. There are footprints around the cabin, and I’m being careful when I go outside in the dark – I don’t really want to meet a moose up close. We donned several layers of thermals and other clothes and walked into the village, which has 2 ‘supermarkets’, a car mechanic, a pretty church and probably a few other shops that open when there are more tourists around. The mobile library bus was at one of the supermarkets when we were there.

January is the worst month, according to Christian.Long, dark, too cold to snow and not enough snow to make things interesting. December is good because of Christmas, and February is good because the days are longer and the snow sports people start arriving to do their snow thing.

Tonight, the sky is completely clear and we’re hopeful. It’s our last night here, tomorrow (Tuesday) we have to do the 1600km drive back to Stockholm, which will mean a very long day’s driving, a stop somewhere along the way for some sleep and an early start on Wednesday to get the rest of the way before midday. And then we fly to Dubai for a couple of days to thaw out before heading home on Friday night.

Trees with the bark stripped and eaten by moose

Greg sitting out in the snow watching for aurora

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Mad Dogs and Fishermen

January 12, 2014Norwayarctic circle, aurora, fjord, northern lights, norway, road trip, snow, travel, tromso, winterJudy

…. go out in the winter dark. Apologies to any fishermen reading (*waves to Ian Banks and Mark Nash*), but really they must be some of the craziest, most dedicated people alive. We have seen them ice fishing on frozen lakes where they have to use big ice drills to cut a hole in the ice in order to fish, and today as we were driving out of Tromso, there they were standing on the bank of the fjord with the temperature hovering around -15C. I can’t even imagine how they managed to stand still for more than a couple of minutes, let alone put tiny pieces of bait on a hook when it’s that cold. I do admire their dedication though.

So we spent a couple of nights in Tromso, but had no luck finding any Lights. The first night, we drove across to Kvaloya Island and found a dark spot with views across the fjord, but didn’t see anything. Last night we didn’t even bother going out looking …. and of course there were some Lights where we’d looked the night before, but only for 30 minutes or so, so even if we had gone back out, we might have missed them. It can be a very frustrating pursuit, trying to find these darned Lights.

We liked being back in Tromso, especially as we didn’t get a parking ticket this time. But parking in a parking station for a couple of days cost nearly $40. Cheap hotels don’t have parking, and the least expensive hotel that did have parking was an extra $100 per night, so using a parking station was the best option for us. We wandered around the city centre yesterday morning, browsing in an electrical store and a sports store that had a winter sale. We don’t need anything, but it was interesting to see just how many different kinds of thermals they sold. Merino thermals were around $40, which seems cheap compared with Australian prices, but we already have 3 sets each and I’ve been really happy with the polyamide ones we got at the Columbia sale just before we left. Much more comfortable than the polypropylene ones I’ve had for …. almost ever.

The Tromso library is a magnificent new building that has great views over the fjord and looks across the water to the beautiful Arctic Cathedral. The Library is 4 or 5 storeys with a glass front to take advantage of the view and the light. As always when I’m visiting a library in a foreign country, I headed to the English language section and looked to see how many Tim Winton books they had …. only one, Dirt Music, but I was happy to see that. The library is open every day and has lots of spaces for sitting, reading, using computers , accessing newspapers and magazines and, of course, borrowing books. It’s right next door to the local cinema.

We fly to Dubai on Wednesday, so we have a couple of days left before we have to take the rental car back and catch a plane. We’re spending them in a tiny cabin at Birtavarre (you can see some photos here), which is at the end of a fjord 170kms east of Tromso (much less as the crow flies …. those pesky fjords!), and about 80kms north of the Finnish border. We drove through here on our way to Nordkapp, but don’t really remember it as it was just another tiny village on the edge of yet another fjord. We’re the only ones in the campground and it’s the usual Norwegian cabin set up – a couple of single beds, small table, 2 chairs, electric hotplate and this one also has a fridge which is a bonus, although we don’t really need it as we have our own, and it’s still -15C outside. There is a huge mountain right behind us, and one of my first thoughts when I saw it was ‘oh, I guess they don’t have avalanches here’. There’s not much snow on the mountain at the moment anyway. Our host, Christian, is a very helpful man who speaks excellent English and has told us quite a lot about the Lights and where to find them around here. He was born on the property when it was a farm, and has spent most of his life here, apart from a few years in Oslo. He and his family also own a house in Italy and they spend time there as well. He still farms some of the land, but the campground and cabins have taken over from farming as his main occupation.

It’s currently cloudy outside, but we’re hopeful ….

The narrow ends of the Fjords have started to freeze over

The sun never made it over the horizon, but its starting to get dark at 1pm

Birtavarre Campground, our cabin is behind our white car, we are the only guests

The sunrise that is south of us showing up on above the mountains of the fjord at Birtavarre

River behind the campground at birtavarre

Sleds for sale at the local Coop supermarket

Tromso, Norway

January 10, 2014Norwayarctic circle, aurora, finland, northern lights, norway, road trip, sarkijarven, snow, travel, tromso, winterJudy

How disappointing! After watching all the websites for information about the solar flare and CME, with all their predictions for some great Lights last night, we stayed up late watching the clear sky for any activity and … nothing. Nada. Zip. Not a sausage. I went to bed at 10.30pm and Greg crawled in at 2am mumbling something about Tromso in Norway having some great Lights and that we should go there. Okay then, let’s go.

So we did. We drove north and then west for 350 kms to Tromso, and our longer-term readers may recall that we got a very expensive parking ticket here 6 months ago. We’re reading the parking meters extra-carefully now to try and avoid making THAT mistake again.

As we drove, the temperature dropped lower, and lower and lower. We started the day with the thermometer on our cottage porch showing -18C, and at some stage early this afternoon, the car thermometer showed the outside temperature as -29C. It all just feels bloody cold to me, but I think the difference is how long you can stand to be outside ….. and at -29, that’s not very long at all!

We saw the sun, briefly, for the first time in 2 weeks! Just a little tiny bit of it sat right on the horizon. It looked like it was setting the whole time, it was that red ‘sunset’ colour, but it was really just skimming along the horizon from east to west for an hour or so before it disappeared at around 1.30. The sky was a clear, pale blue, with a pink tinge at the horizon for the few hours of daylight.

Tromso is such a pretty town. It spreads along both sides of a fjord and all the lights looked lovely as we drove along and over the bridge to the town centre. We’re staying at a ‘cheap’ hotel for a couple of nights. Cheap by local standards, but still over $110 per night, which is expensive to us. There’s very little snow here compared with the other places we’ve visited inside the Arctic Circle, but there’s enough slippery ice on the roads and footpaths to make walking a potentially hazardous experience. We’ll have to go out of town to do some aurora-watching, to get away from all the lights.

Greg snuck into a supermarket when he was ‘getting someting from the car’ this evening and found his beloved lefse. I’ve just eaten some and it reminded me that I didn’t really like it much …. so it’s all his, and he’s delighted about that. Any spare Norwegian kroner at the end of our stay here will be spent on lefse, I’m sure. Here’s the Wikipedia article on lefse. Greg likes a commercially-made variety that is filled with butter (I think) sugar and cinnamon.

The coldest it got on our trip north, -29C. We thought it was cold in the morning when it was -18C

Scraping ice off the inside of the windscreen. This was not just after we started but after an hour of driving with the heater running.

Actic Sunrise, about 11 am. The sun just peaks over the horizon and then and hour or so later drops back. The first sun we had seen in a couple of weeks

Hard to see in this photo, but there was a "Light Pillar" a beam of light extending vertically from the sun caused by ice crystals ib the air — Hard to see in this photo, but there was a “Light Pillar” a beam of light extending vertically from the sun caused by ice crystals ib the air

Lunch spot at the Servo. It was -24C so we ate lunch in the car with the engine and heater running the whole time

Arctic Beer - $A30 for a 8-pack, at the Supermarket! — The most expensive beer in the world. Norways Arctic Beer – $A30 for a 8-pack, at the Supermarket!

Tromso Wharf with the bridge in the background

Tromso shopping, don't slip on the ice — Tromso shopping, don’t slip on the ice

Lunch in Tromso - Club Sandwich $A31, Chicken Bacon Baquette $A18 — Lunch in Tromso – Club Sandwich $A31, Chicken Bacon Baquette $A18

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Random stuff

January 9, 2014Finlandarctic circle, cooking, finland, food, road trip, travel, winterJudy

When we do road-trips like this one, and the previous one in Scandinavia & Russia, and the one aross the US, we tend not to eat out much, preferring to shop where the locals shop and cook wherever we’re staying.

We’re currently staying in a holiday cottage in Särkijärven. You can see some photos of it and the holiday complex here. Quite a few of the photos on the Booking.com site were taken in ‘our’ cottage. It’s a small place, single storey, sleeps 2 people and has everything we need in it, including a large clothes-drying cabinet and a stove with an oven. The last apartment we stayed in only had a hotplate, so now I’m having fun using the oven to roast vegetables and do some baking. Yesterday we found a packet of bake-them-yourself croissants in a can – you take the dough out of the can, unroll it, cut into 6 triangles along the perforated lines, roll into croissants and bake for 15 minutes. We ate them with cloudberry jam and they tasted great.

We’re having a bit of a pancake ‘thing’ at the moment , because they are quick, easy, use just a few easy-to-get ingredients (eggs, milk, plain flour), and I have never known Greg to decline a pancake, ever. I won’t turn this into a food blog, but 4 eggs, a couple of cups of plain flour and a couple of cups of milk makes a lot of pancakes, and we managed to eat them all, with banana, sugar and cloudberry jam as toppings.

If we are just using our camping stove with its gas cartridge, we’ll have something simple like canned ravioli or burritos made with a packet of vegetarian mince (just add water, cook for 5 minutes, serve), cheese and pineapple salsa. The Swedes seem to really like Mexican food if shelf-space, range and empty shelves post-New Year are anything to go by. But in Finland, not so much. The only vaguely Mexican thing we’ve found here so far are packets of tortillas, in the snack section. Don’t know what they use them for as we didn’t find any related items like salsa, dips or taco seasoning.

The lights in the cottage window that are in a couple of the photos of the cottage in the Sarkijarven post are a very common Scandinavian Christmas decoration. Lots of houses have some kind of light in each window, and then they also often put lights on a fir tree in the yard, or strings of fairy lights on buildings, verandahs, trees, bushes …. you get the idea. As there are so many hours of darkness here, the lights look lovely, and many place leave them on day and night. We spotted quite a few decorated Christmas trees on apartment balconies, which seems to be a good use of the space at this cold time of the year … and the apartments are probably too small to be able to comfortably fit a tree inside anyway.

I’m sure the novelty will eventually wear off, but all the houses here look to us like gingerbread houses, with their snowy white roofs and their afore-mentioned lights. On a more practical note, I wonder if the snow on the roof provides some kind of insulation.

Waiting for the Aurora

January 9, 2014Finlandarctic circle, aurora, finland, northern lights, road trip, snow, sunrise, travel, wintergreg

We are waiting for possibly good Aurora tonight in Finland. The sun has a very large sunspot on it (it has a number AR1944).

Sunspot AR1944 which is big enough to fit 3 earths in it

Two days ago this very large sunspot emitted a solar flare and a Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) which has been heading towards the earth at 2000km per second. The sun was not facing the earth directly at the time of the CME, but it is expected to give the earth a glancing blow. This CME is big enough that NASA scrubbed the Cygnus resupply launch to the International Space Station.This CME is expected to distort the earth’s geomagnetic field which is called a geomagnetic storm. The benefit of a geomagnetic storm is that it ….. creates Auroras!

However we need more things going our way, Firstly the CME is expected to hit in the middle of the day out time, and its not dark then (sunrise here is 11:30am sunset 1:30pm). However no one is quite sure when the CME will hit and it could be some hours later. Secondly we need good weather. It has been snowing here in Särkijärven, Finland for the past 3 days and it does not make good Aurora viewing. However tonight it is meant to clearing, with a crisp clear night of -20C. At the moment it is still snowing so we can only cross our fingers and keep watching the Kiruna Magnetogram which indicates the affect of the CME on the earths magnetic field. Kiruna ia a couple of hundred kilometres west of here so it should give us a good warning.

UPDATE: It is nearly 1am and no sign of Aurora. The CME has arrived but not as strong as predicted, so it looks like no geomagnetic storms. The weather is excellent for viewing with clear skys and -17C:

Särkijärven, Finland

January 8, 2014Finlandarctic circle, finland, muonio, road trip, sarkijarven, snow, travel, winterJudy

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Judy inside with the snow falling outside our “cottage” at Särkijärven Majat

After long distances the ice builds up in the wheel-well. The ice here is about 4cm thick and when you eventually turn into a carpark after a long drive the tyres make noise scraping against the ice.

We go on about icicles too much, but they are so exotic to us, here is a large one we found.

The Ice Hotel, Jukkasjarvi, Sweden

January 7, 2014Finlandarctic circle, finland, muonio, road trip, snow, travel, winterJudy

We have booked a few nights in a cabin near Muonio in Finland, just across the border. It’s about 350kms from where we have spent the last few days, but it took us all day and part of the (very long) night to get here. We packed up and left the apartment at Katterjokk just after 10am, wandered around Abisko for a short while and then drove to Kiruna, where we stopped to have a walk around the town centre, pick up some groceries and have lunch in the car.

Just a few kms east of Kiruna is the turn-off to Jukkasjarvi, home of the Swedish Ice Hotel. We had considered staying there for about a nano-second, until we found out it costs at least $700 to stay in the ‘Cold’ part, as opposed to the ‘Warm’ part which is just like any other hotel room, but costs $350 per night. We figured that we had already experienced sleeping on ice for free, so decided to save our money and not stay there, but we did want to have a look at it. Just driving into the car park was an experience – the car park spaces are marked out by huge blocks of ice. We wandered past the hotel reception and the hotel shop towards the magnificent, but temporary, Ice Hotel. It melts at the end of each cold season and is then rebuilt again at the start of the next . It is still in the ‘being built’ stage at the moment.

There is a beautiful, very minimalist chapel just outside the main entrance to the hotel. built mostly of snowy blocks of ice, with clear blocks providing ‘windows’ and fittings for lights. The chapel pews are long solid blocks of ice with reindeer skins providing insulation and padding. The altar is another single block of clear ice. We walked past the hotel entrance down to the lake, and saw new parts of the hotel still at the construction stage. There was a team of dogs and a sled out on the nearby frozen lake, and a forklift was carrying blocks of ice to the builders. We snuck into the main entrance and into the bar, where even the drinking glasses are made of ice, but we needed to purchase a ticket to get any further and we felt like we’d seen enough (*cough* – okay, we’re cheapskates and didn’t want to pay). It was well worth the detour, though. There are also Ice Hotels in Norway and Finland.

We kept on driving towards Muonio in Finland, taking a wrong turn somewhere along the way and ending up in a little village where the (snowploughed) road didn’t go any further, so we had to turn around and find the correct road. We haven’t brought any maps with us, and have been relying on the GPS in Greg’s phone. The ‘voice’ is a very British gentleman we have named ‘Nigel’ and he does tend to get us lost at times. Anyway, we finally got to our destination at around 8pm, then wandered around for a while trying to find the right place. Fortunately the manager was watching out for us and came out to get us all sorted out. We’re staying in a comfy little cabin that has a sauna somewhere, and it is also possible to swim in the icy lake. I feel hypothermic just thinking about swimming when it’s -2C outside. We’ll check it all out tomorrow, by the light of day.

We’re still inside the Arctic Circle, and it is possible to see aurora here, but it’s cloudy again tonight and it’s been a long day, so we won’t be venturing out to look skywards.

10 litre water container left overnight in the car - frozen solid — 10 litre water container left overnight in the car – frozen solid

Shopping Sleds- take your sled and collect your shopping

Removing icicles before they fall on someone

Ice Hotel car park – the pillars are ice.

Wall Ice Hotel — Wall of the Ice Hotel. The Ice Bar is on the other side of the ‘windows’.

Ice Hotel Chapel -with reindeer skins covering the solid ice block pews

More blocks coming out of the warehouse for Ice Hotel construction

building-ice-hotel (Small) — Still constructing the ice hotel

Accumulated snow and ice after 400km of driving