torsdag 11 april 2013

The ice hotel in Jukkasjärvi

After almost 2,5 years studying in Luleå I finally took time to visit the fabolous ice hotel in Jukkasjärvi, not so far from Kiruna and not so far from Luleå.

The ice hotell is one of few ice hotels in the world definitely the best, it was the first ice hotell in the world when the first hotel was built 1990 and since then a new one has been built every year (it melts every year around May).

The hotel is built just beside Torne river where the ice are collected from. The river in Torne river is very fast moving and clean, this makes the ice very very clear, which you also can see on the pictures, I have never seen that clear ice ever before.

The 2013 ice hotel is the largest one that they've ever built. They have an icebar and more than 70 rooms there, half of the rooms are just standard rooms (only nicely shaped ice) and the rest have been sculpted by famous sculpters, some of the artistic rooms were just amazing!

The entrance to the icehotel, as you can see it is just one floor
Main door
Another building, this is the ice chapel, where people get married and children gets baptized. Usually if a child gets baptized in this chapel they have the letters "is" in the name (for example Isak), "is" means ice on Swedish.
Inside the chapel
Me at the main podium, to the left you can see the watercontainer (they put water there when it is needed)
The supercool icebar
Superclear ice, this icecube is around 40 cm thick
Exit of the icebar. You may have noticed the different colours of the ice, some are dark some are bright. Actually all ice is totally transparent so in order to colour the ice they put some coloured paper behind it.
Me and my traveling friends
The drinks are served in very icy glasses
The drunken fish bar
Swedish alcoholic pride Absolut Vodka in an ice state

The main hall

All corridors to the rooms can be reached here

Entrance to corridor 4

We had a guided tour in the ice hotel
A sculpture of an ice crystal

This is the only time I found for sleeping in the hotel, actually one night in the hotel costs around 700 euros (if you want to stay in an ice room, they have real houses on another place for smaller price)

This was one of my favourites due to all the details, I am just amazed how the artist made all the details

Some really cool chairs...
The are lounge, I think that the building was more overwhelming than the actual art inside
The guests in the icehotel take icesculpturing courses, and here are some of the results
The backside of the icehotel
On the roof of the icehotel, as you may have noticed the icehotel is only one floor, it would have been quite hard to make several floors in the hotel
Scooter riders on Torne river 
It was an amazing sunset



In the icehotel you could see several emergency fire items, which is a little ironic when it is a hotel made of ice, however this is required due to swedish laws for hotels. Smoke detectors and fire exstinguishers can be seen throughout the hotel.

lördag 9 mars 2013

North cape the end of the world

North cape, the final  outpost before the North Pole on the European plateau. 

The "exotic" location of North Cape attracts a great amount of people, approximately a  quarter million people visits it during each summer. It has also attracted the king of Thailand, visited the place when it still was extremely hard to get there.  The strategic location of north cape gave place to some decisive battles during the Second World War. 

Going with car to Noth Cape

A well planned schedule was organized weeks before takeoff. Hostel was booked in the city of Honningsvåg, which is located a comfortable 20km from the northern most part of Norway. 

However what we did not expect was the weather... We found out how the weather can be in north of Norway the hard way. After 10 hours of traveling by car, crossing two nation borders,  we got caught up right in a storm. And what we didn't know was that the roads in the far north of Norway often gets closed due to bad weather... 

So after traveling 831 km 50 km from our warm beds in Honningsvåg we got stopped by a road block and are advices to stay off the road until 6 am (The time was 11:50 pm)... This meant sleeping in the car and waiting out the storm.

Following the magnificent night in the back of the car we headed steadyfast to Honningsvåg and North Cape. 

Due to the extreme weather in the north of Norway the final route to North cape is only accessible in an organized convoy, with a snowplow in the beginning and a final controlling vehicle at the end. The convoys are only leaving specific times. Ironically after that the convoy start moving a new hagelstorm started...

Location of North Cape, Luleå is where my university is, it is 840 km road between Luleå and North Cape. Alta is the last major city on the way and where the beautiful church lies. 

 The roadblock where we got stopped and also where we had to sleep...
 Early in the morning by the roadblock...

 A snowplow cleaned the road for us in the morning


 A film location for a famous Norwegian movie
 I took an inside look of it




All the tunnels close to North Cape were closed on both sides in order to prevent snow to enter the tunnel during storms

 Our supposed to be hostel
 Central Honningsvåg
 Fishingboats


Protection against the snow
 The famous dog Bamse comes from Honningsvåg
 The North Cape hotel, with almost 500 rooms its the biggest in North Cape. But now it looks quite close







 The queue for the convoy that was going to take us the final distance to North Cape, it was going 2-3 times/ day
 The snowplow which cleared the way for us
 The snowplow was driving with us the final 20 km to North Cape, without him it would have been impossible to reach it because of all the snow lying on the road

 The north cape

 Emergency exit for North Cape


 The king of Sweden placed this memorial here to mark that this was part of the Norwegian kingdom

 The midnight sun during summertime, as you can see it is never leaving the sky
 The famous church in the city of Alta, it is shaped as northern light

We also managed to get a shot of northern lights during our trip