Wednesday 6 April 2011 - Monday 11 April 2011
Nothing really prepares you for the Icehotel. Not only is it well hidden in the most northern regions of Swedish Lapland – a sweet 200km north of the Arctic Circle for that matter – it is also completely made out of snow and ice. The name probably gave it away.
So after a good 14 hours of travel on SAS planes full of screaming Scandi babies, with a refuel in a town with one of the cutest names in at least our recent memory (Lulea), we finally arrived in Kiruna, which is as close as you can get to Jukkasjärvi. But then the real adventure started.
Every year the Icehotel is built up from scratch, opening its doors in November and melting away again around May. The hotel has around 60 rooms, with every room looking pretty much like an igloo. Although the outside temperature can drop to as low as minus 42 degree Celsius during the darkest of winter months, the average room temperature stays pretty constant at a chilly minus 5 degrees Celsius. Fortunately, we got our timing spot-on and we didn’t have to suffer temperatures much lower than minus 7 degrees Celsius.
Having found the necessary Dutch courage in the Icebar, we made our way over to our “Iceroom” for the first night. Sleeping on a big block of ice, with a mattress and some reindeer skin, while wearing long johns, a fleece and a woolen hat is an experience to say the least. Was it cold? Ehmm yep. Did we sleep well? Actually, like babies. One piece of advice, don't go to the toilet in the middle of the night. Em found this one out the hard way.
Some warm pomegranate juice, a hot sauna and a big Scandi breakfast got us back to humanity again in the morning. To complete the defrosting process we spent the next couple of nights in the warmer (non-ice) chalet rooms.
A visit to Lapland would not be complete without spotting the Northern Lights (tick) and of course some dog sledding. The dog sledding was quite an experience. Basically you have 12 dogs, or six pairs of two, in which the two paired guys seem to hate each other with a vengeance. To make things worse, these Alaskan huskies all fart like troopers, making sure you can make more than an educated guess of what they just had for breakfast. And just to complete the picture, these guys even manage to take a dump while running at speeds of around 20km/h. Think of it as "squat-shitting", quite impressive although slightly unfortunate if they have diarrhea and you happen to sit a bit too close to the action for your own liking. Amazingly each of these dogs apparently burns up to 11,000 calories a day, not bad if you take into account that a Tour de France cyclist burns around 5,000 calories during a Tour day. And at 25kg these dogs are only a fraction of the weight. Impressive stuff.
After three nights in the Icehotel we couldn't resist but hitting the Swedish capital on our way back home. The blog wouldn't be complete without some wining and dining recommendations, although to be fair, special thanks is due to the Swedish House Mafia (aka Andy and Jess) for pointing us in the right direction. So for sleeping and a killer breakfast, stay at the Lydmar Hotel, for some fishy lunch drop by Sturehof and for a nice dinner either opt for Backfickan Djuret (meat) or B.A.R. (fish). The only thing we missed out on was Operakallaren Bakfickan, which, according to legend, has the best meatballs in town.
So far so good, 23 destinations down the line and now only 5 to go. Stick with us, we are almost there.
Next stop: Destination #24: Seeing QPR being crowned Champions in Cardiff (Wales)
