Sweden, Sweden, Sweden, always to be remembered as the the place where little crevette lost her second tooth.
Just kidding (well, not for her).
So, first there was the car. The very-small battery electric car. A good idea in theory, but in practice, an 800km journey in the direction of remoteness IS feasible, but will take 15 years, a whole load of app downloading-networking finding hassle, and a LOT of hunting for chargers followed by waiting around for the car to charge.
Christmas was curtailed as a result and we left a day early in order to travel through the night, squash all 5 of us into a double bed (too tired to blow up the air mattress) and then have a very lovely day in Paris, thankful our next trip was by plane. And all was forgiven after a night at a very beautiful airport hotel in Stockholm.
Back in Batignolles:
We were able to see Rosa and Pekka, and just by chance, cousin Carolin aswell, and ate a wonderful Peruvian meal together.
And mucked about.
And then it was the overnight train north to Santaland. Easier for some than others:
And our arrival, 100 miles north of the Arctic Circle, 15 hours later and about 20 degrees colder.
Our first few days there were all about discovering our beautiful volvo, discovering our beautiful home, discovering the beautiful sauna, and discovering Gällivare. It's a small mining town, with daylight from about 9.30am to 12.30pm each day, which allowed us to look around the town in the daylight hours, and watch the northern lights from beside the fire in the afternoon.
As long as it was warmer than -11 or so, it was generally comfortable and well within the limits of our gear...for a few hours at least, always followed by a warming hot chocolate and a sauna.
But there were two days where it got down to -17 and -24. And even if with the dry cold it was C-O-L-D. I mean c-c-c-c-cold. Really at the limits of our gear. That -17 day we went skiing which was bearable...while we had lunch in the lovely wooden ski huts. But going up in the chairlift was enough to turn crevette to ice and she had to be carried down by El Puma.
Nice photo but does NOT show how cold it was, but a helpful photo to see how the sun rises this far north. It stayed like that for 3 hours and then was dark by lunchtime.
Gällivare's main industry is actually iron ore mining, a multi-billion dollar industry, so it made sense to view an iron ore mine and learn a little bit more about this type of mining. Plus it's a consistent 8 degrees under ground until about 500m below, and then it warms by 1 degree every further 100m that you drop. Wahoo!
This is how the mine works - the iron ore is the bit under the mountain shape, and the tunnels on the right are how they burrow down to explode the iron ore. Beside it is the picture of the area from the air. It looks terrible but on the ground you don't see it so much and, of course, we need iron ore. They blast the ore every night at midnight and you can feel it for miles around. It has destabilised the houses around it so much that they are wholesale moving the town further away, so it's quite a fascinating story.
But basically the kids loved the big machines. And being warm.
My absolute dream/objective for this holiday was to visit the ice hotel. I'd had it on my radar for years and even tried to convince El Puma to take me there for my 40th (Rome also worked ;-). I'm kinda glad now he didn't as I would have spent the time there cold and miserable.
We chose the coldest day of our holiday to travel another 100 miles further north to Kiruna to get to the original ice hotel. It really was amazing to see and the ice sculptures were amazing, but the reindeer skins did not look as warm as a nice heating system and you had to pay a LOT extra for a heated ensuite bathroom, which is probably where I would have slept given half a chance.
It was actually warmer within the hotel than outside, but that's not saying much. Any tiny piece of skin stung with the cold, and El Puma had to take crevette back to the warm reception to thaw out with a hot chocolate (once I'd forced them all to pose for mandatory photos).
It was cold, it was beautiful, it was a once-in-a-lifetime thing. And crevette wants to live in Greece.
Although the whole holiday was incredibly calming and relaxing and mindful (can't think of anything else but staying warm), by the end we'd had enough of the cold. The straw that broke the camel's back was the day (cough, hour) of cross-country skiing. You simply can't move fast enough with a moaning 6 year old to stay warm. It was a great experience and clearly a logical (and hilarious, until we got the hang of it) method of getting around...definitely something I'd like to do more of in the future...in the sunny Alps.
As a reward for all our moaning, shivering and hot chocolate spend, El Puma booked us into a very cool hotel on our last night in Sweden. Within the airport is the Jumbo airport hotel...literally inside a Jumbo 747. It was pretty fun, original and wonderfully warm!
I guess the only time I'll have breakfast at the front of the plane ;-)
Best night's sleep I've ever had on a plane, I'll give it that.
And that was it! Hello to 2025! What a wonderful and thrilling end to 2024 and start to the new year. A true adventure, even if half of it was frozen.
