Day 4: Ice Hotel

On the morning of Day 4 those who chose to pay for the optional cross-country skiing or ice-climbing tours went out to their activities while the rest of us had free time. Sarah did ice-climbing, but Lara and I were not scheduled for anything so we chose to take a walk around the canyon (see pictures below). Funny story, as we came around a corner on the trail that followed the canyon, we heard voices and there below us were the ice climbers! They were climbing a waterfall that had frozen in the canyon. Lara and I stayed to watch a couple climbers, but it took a while before they started and each climber took quite a few minutes and we were cold after two, so we continued with our walk (and I fell in a snowbank and had to go back and dry my pants by heater). I was so happy that Sarah did the ice-climbing. She came back being so excited and happy with her experience. I'm thrilled for her. Most of the ice climbing pictures are her doing also ;)

We left Abisko around 1:30 pm and headed for the Ice Hotel, about an hour and a half away. The Ice Hotel's season runs from December to about April. They start construction each year in mid-November and end after about a week of melting sometime around April. There are also non-ice accommodations in the form of cabins. The ice hotel originated as an art exhibition and it is still very art oriented. Each year over 100 artists enter a competition to be chosen to design some of the Ice Hotel and each year about 60 are chosen. The nicer rooms are unique because an artist gets to design one to his/her liking. Each room has a theme and is decorated accordingly, just as the pillar hall and the ice bar have a theme as well. Besides the ice bar there is also an ice church, which is not used for Sunday services, but mostly for weddings and baptisms. (See more pictures on Facebook).

View from Northern Lights Balcony

After the Ice Hotel we traveled another couple hours to the Jokk Mokk Camping Center. Lara, Sarah and I shared a cute little cottage equipped with our own kitchen. As you can see we made pizza that night for dinner :)

We were hopeful about seeing the Northern Lights until we walked outside at 11:45 only to discover that it was quite cloudy outside. We walked around for a bit but without much hope. Instead of watching the Northern Lights, we spent our last night in Lapland watching the movie 1408 which was playing on tv with Swedish subtitles. It was kind of fun because I could pick up on what was written a bit since Swedish and Norwegian are somewhat similar.