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.