Journey to Kiruna, Sweden (Thursday 7 February)

February 07, 2013

A full day of travel to get to the icy North of Sweden. Free wifi on the Norwegian Air plane which was unexpected. The inflight magazine revealed that the town of Kiruna, our destination was investing to relocate 3kms south due to the mine's expansion. Also read about a Norwegian explorer legend that had been featured in a movie called Kon Tiki. The story goes that a guy wanted to prove Pacific migration so built a raft and brought a crew along to sail across the ocean catching live shark along the way.

Stockholm airport was ok. It amused me that the staff used adult sized scooters ferrying around stock to shops. Nice Brighton connection with a number of Abba memorabilia displayed including their Eurovision outfits, winner's medals and Brighton Dome admission tickets. Otherwise it was a case of eating at the New Orleans restaurant drinking Brooklyn Beer on tap and laughing at the Swedish choclate brands like Mums Mums, Kexx and Plopp

Met a Norwegian guy (from Narvik) on the plane to Kiruna who was so friendly he offered to share us a taxi then gave us a lift to the hotel. The snow had been piled up high everywhere making roads like snowboarding halfpipes plus the roofs had at least a metre of snow on top.

Our hotel was the Hotel Bishops Inn and had a great English themed-bar offering a great selection of beers including a Belgian raspberry flavour beer. It was a bit weird having to check in at the bar but the room was ok and you couldn't hear the bar below.

I guess with the Kiruna town light pollution there was no way to see any Northern Light action. :-(

Next blog entry - Day 2: Ice hotel, snowmobiling and Northern Lights (Friday 8 February)