We have reached our destination

Location: 67*51'2" N, 20*35'44" E
Jukkasjarvi, Sweden

IceHotel Lounge



Ok, I lied. For being 200 km above the Arctic Circle it is incredibly warm here and who guessed there was Internet connection?? Silly me for thinking we would be so remote, out in the middle of nowhere. In fact, it actually feels like a little ski resort town with a constant flow of incoming and outgoing people. Doesn't feel so far away after all.
We arrived yesterday afternoon after a flight delay. The plane's reverse went out, which helps in landing. So after about 40 minutes wait, we had to de-plane and board another plane. Then a quick 1.5 hour jump and we arrived at our planned honeymoon destination. We walked on our own through the IceHotel and toured all the rooms, the chapel and the bar. It's definitely as magical in person as seen in pictures.


I couldn't help but make Joe pose for pictures so he'd look like Superman in the Fortress of Solitude. Ha! In the evening we had a fancy dinner of reindeer and elk. It was the kind of fancy where they give you a huge plate and the food is piled in a stack on the corner and the sauce is painted on the rest of the plate. Joe wasn't at all impressed by this. Late in the evening we put on our snowsuits and walked out to the field and stargazed. We hoped to see some aurora but we didn't. Instead we saw a clear sky full of bright stars, some really bright shooting stars, and some other phenomenon that we can only describe as "a rainbow in the dark". It was a low slung, light colored arc that stretched across the sky (but it wasn't the Milky Way).


This morning, we took a snow shoe excursion into the woods. The guide said it wasn't ideal conditions for cross country skiing. The snow was too soft and powdery to ski on top of the snow. We would end up walking the whole way anyway which would have been pointless. We snow shoed, looked for animal tracks and saw some reindeer. Later we will take a guided tour of the IceHotel and then take a Northern Lights tour by snowmobile.