We spent our Christmas/New Year time in beautiful Scandinavia going as far North as we could handle in the middle of Winter! A fantastic trip to Sweden and Norway, we had some pretty cool adventures including Kim chasing a pack of Huskies…
We started off being over cautious and getting to the airport well over 2 hours before our departure, definite overkill. But our second experience at Terminal 5 was much better than the first (the day it opened – see Austria blog). We arrived in Stockholm in one piece and on time to get a taxi to our hotel. Our first experience of Sweden was the architecture. Our hotel was a piece of art in itself! Due to the time difference, we both called home to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and then off to bed.
Woke up Christmas morning and looked outside first thing – it was white! Frost that is, not snow. The frost was so thick, everything looked white, so we consider that to be our first (and probably only) White Christmas 
We went downstairs to have breakfast where Kim was delighted to try smoked reindeer and pickled herring.
After our rather non-eventful morning, we set off to look around Stockholm. We had a look over the city from a nice lookout point and wandered around the old part of the city. It was soooo cold, we’d totally underestimated how cold we’d be outside walking all day, but we ventured on. We saw the palace, some churches, parliament buildings and then took a stroll down the main shopping strip. Being Christmas day, not much was open. We decided we needed to thaw out a bit, so we found a coffee shop, paid £15 (AU$30) on two hot chocolates and a slice of cake to share. Ouch. But we made the most of it and stayed there and talked for at least 2 and a half hours! Until our dinner reservations actually! Our dinner was lovely, but as everything in this place, expensive Not exactly the traditional Christmas dinner… After dinner, we basically ran back to our hotel, which was a good 40 minute walk because it was sooo cold! We settled in for a lazy night and kicked back So that was our Christmas!
Next day we took our time getting ready before hitting the shops for the Boxing day sales. Of course, with only a daypack each with us, we had no room for anything, but Kim needed shoes for the snow, so we bought some and threw out his old ones. Mission accomplished, we went through an inner city square, watched kids make snow angels and people ice skating. Was a beautiful sight! We had a look around some of the islands and saw a museum, then took the ferry back across the water, a lovely view!
Next day we were up early to catch a flight to Kiruna, above the arctic circle We bought metro train tickets, didn’t know how to actually use them, so a lady let us through the barrier. On the platform, we found a very strange advert for ‘clone a willy’ – see the photo’s, it’s for real! Off to the airport and on a plane that had to be washed down prior to departure, first time we’d seen that!
We arrived in Kiruna to see the sun at it’s peak for the day… about a 1cm above the horizon It was an awesome light and fantastic for photography! We conned our way onto the bus for the ice hotel for our 2 nights sleeping on ice!!! When we got there, we went straight into a tour of the hotel and spent a good hour inside in -5 degrees checking out all the cool art rooms. What an awesome place! Artists come every year to design and sculpt a room of ice. Most have never worked with ice before, so damn impressive we thought!
After that, we had a survival meeting which ran through essentials of how to sleep on the ice and actually wake up There was much debate between a single sleeping bag and a double… One of the only times I have ever said to Kim that I wouldn’t let him forget it if he didn’t go double with me! I needed his body heat dammit! The funniest part was hearing all the toff women carry on about having to walk in their long johns from the warm changing rooms to their ice room.
Next we suited up and went for a walk to search for these elusive northern lights. Although we didn’t find them, we did find plenty of snow to play snow angels in and a game of dare as to how deep each other would dare walk into!
That night, we headed to the Ice Hotel restaurant. Clearly we were uneducated about this experience. We both ordered King Crab as a starter which cost us £25 (AU$50) each – yes this was a starter. But worse… It was the size of about a tenth of a crab stick. Damn. Kim’s main wasn’t much better, but mine was massive, so we shared mine! Whoa – we thought the accommodation was expensive, the meals are worse!! FYI – if you happen to be going to the Ice Hotel in Sweden, head down to the OTHER restaurant around Jukkasjärvi, it was £35 all you can eat buffet, which we did the following night!
So anyway, we head off to bed in our long johns and big massive snow boots that they give you on arrival. It was so exciting, we were just buzzing! We took a trillion photo’s of us in the room freezing our butts off, but it was all good. We soon snuggled in for a nice warm night… kinda! Our noses and faces were cold, but with the aid of some buffs and beanies, we had them covered too!
We were woken in the morning to hot lingonberry juice (yum). We were told we had to be out of bed by 10am, purely because that’s when the hotel turns into a museum – not nice to be on display in your undies I guess
But we were up early to go on our snowmobiling adventure! We headed out with a small group to the Kebne mountain area. After a quick lesson on how to drive the beasts, we spent an adventurous 3 hours snowmobiling, ice fishing and moose spotting in this beautiful, isolated area of Sweden. If you ever get to this area of the world, we highly recommend Kiruna Guidetur! Some parts of this trip, however, were just plain scary! At first we were driving in the snow, which seemed stable enough, but then we started driving over the frozen lake… when you go through a nice deep puddle it makes you wonder if you’ll be sinking too far down! We stacked the thing a few times, nothing major, but another couple had to be towed out of some deep snow! The other thing was the wind – by the end of the day, the wind was blowing quite a gale and of course I needed to pee… So off to the outhouse I go. As if that wasn’t bad enough, I had to fight the loo door open to escape – the wind was mighty determined to lock me in that loo forever!
After lunch and another drive back to our starting point, we made the trek back to Jukkasjärvi for our second night on ice!
That night, we took out a kicksled and rode around Jukkasjärvi looking for the Northern Lights again, but without luck. After dinner, we went to the ice bar for a vodka (and Kim had one too!) and met a lovely American/German couple who we had a good laugh with. Then off for our second night on ice!
Next morning we were off to Norway. We were to catch the train, but given it was run by Connex, it was 2.5 hours late Typically, this wasn’t just annoying, but disappointing because it meant our limited daylight hours were reduced even more. So although we got to see the beautiful lakes, mountains and the fjords between Kiruna and Narvik, there was just not enough light for photo’s to do this magnificent place justice! Onto Norway……
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