After our 2 nights camping/sleeping in the car, we are now happily indoors surrounded by lots of creature comforts – electric lights, central heating, beds, a kitchen, a bathroom with cold AND hot running water. Ah, the luxury of it all. We are regular patrons of the little supermarket downstairs, but haven’t yet ventured into the restaurant/cafe just down the hall, other than to pay for our apartment for the 4 nights we’re staying here.

It’s so nice to be able to unpack some of our stuff from the car (not the tent stuff, it’s all sitting frozen in a duffle bag in the back. We’ll get to it later) , do some washing, have a second (or even third!) cup of coffee without firing up the gas stove. And, of course, an early morning trek to the toilet is so much easier indoors. We cooked dinner last night – meatballs AND mashed potato – juggling any more than one thing on a gas stove is tricky, so we usually just heat up a can of something when we’re camping. But the warm, canned ravioli we had the night we were in the tent tasted very good!

Here’s a link to the apartments we’re staying at – Katterjokk Apartments. There is a train station and a ski-lift just up the hill. The lift isn’t working at the moment, not sure why, maybe not enough snow yet. The restaurant manager told us that there would be a lot of snowmobiles here today as it’s Saturday. We think it’s the Swedish equivalent of guys riding their dirt bikes at home.

We will go in search of aurora tonight. The lake near Abisko seems to be the pick of places to view The Lights, so we’ll drive there and take lots of warm clothes so we can sit and watch. It’s a bit overcast, but there are patches of sky amongst the clouds. It’s currently 12.30 and the clouds are turning pink because it’s getting close to ‘sunset’ here. In another hour it will be dark.