I always heard about the Nordic countries wherein they have these specialized hotels, which are built on and are built of all ice, including the rooms, beds, washrooms, restaurants and even a bar!!! Everything to anything you can think of is basically made up of ice.
These hotels are built every year from scratch by experts and every room in these hotels are carved personally to give a unique decor during the winter months. Come summer, they disappear as the temperature rises!
So, when we were planning to visit Swedish Lapland during the peak winters in December, there were few things in my list and one of them was visiting and staying in the Ice Hotel.
We booked a room, just for a night in the Ice Hotel in Jukkasjarvi in Swedish Lapland! Ice Hotel is situated in the town of Jukkasjarvi, which is 30 minutes drive from Kiruna airport which is the northernmost airport in the Sweden.
We landed at the airport in the afternoon and quickly realized, how cold would be the next 3 days for us here. The thermometer at the airport was reading -28 degree Celsius and there was a snow blizzard already blowing even when our plane was landing.
We were picked up by the hotel staff. After driving for 30 minutes in a Ice blizzard, we reached at the hotel and and it was hard to believe what I was seeing!
There was a massive building in front of me, which was basically the hotel completely built of ice. There was another some like ice structure which was Ice bar cum restaurant and a main building, which was a normal building with reception and the souvenir shop and had a normal heated restaurant to eat. There was another building at a distance, which was a hotel run by the them year round and had normal heated room for stay.
Upon arrival, we were given a short introduction of the hotel and the facts like the hotel is basically built every year using the ice from the nearby Torne River which melts into the river again during summers.
They use around 40,000 tons of ice to make this hotel with approximately 80 rooms or so, many a times completely sold, such is the popularity of the hotel!
We stayed in one of their standard suites which costed around 30k for a night, including dinner. I know a bit expensive, but we always budgeted for this, after all a once in the lifetime experience!
We really enjoyed our time taking a free guided tour of the hotel, exploring it's various rooms and the deco, sitting in their ice bar enjoying drinks in the glasses made up of ice and exploring and walking around a bit.
Sleeping in this room was a bit uncomfortable for me, even though there was a top class arrangements with high quality sleeping bags and reindeer skin blankets and bedsheets to keep you warm. But still, I guess I wasn't prepared more from mental perspective than physical 😀.
Nonetheless, had such a unique experience visiting here and would definitely recommend you guys to try this once in a lifetime experience, if you can!
I will be further writing about what all I did on my remaining 2 days in Swedish Lapland and how each of it was an experience in itself, so stay tuned ☺️
Until than, Keep Exploring!!!