Icehotel Jukkasjärvi
In Jukkasjärvi, 17 kilometres outside Kiruna in northern Sweden, a hotel of snow and ice is built up every year. It all started in 1989 when an entrepreneur got the bright idea to build a snow hotel for overnight guests. The rest is a success story. Today the Icehotel is famous world wide and this year you can visit the 26th edition.
I wanted to show the Icehotel for my boyfriend and surprised him with an overnight stay in an ice art suite for Christmas. We booked a little winter holiday to northern Sweden and my parents joined us. They stayed with Liam in a warm cabin next to the hotel, while we stayed the night in the cold ice suite.
During the day the Icehotel is open as a museum and you can walk around in the different rooms and art suites. I think this was my fourth time visiting Icehotel, but the suites look different from year to year so it's always exciting to go there. Below are photos of some of the 2016 art suites.
The suite we slept in was called Counting Sheep and was full of ice sculptures of sheep. The sheep were jumping over a fence and if you have problems to fall asleep you can count them. :-) I didn't. In fact I slept very well. Inside the hotel the temperature is -5 degrees Celcius, but inside the sleeping bag it was nice and warm.
In the evening we had dinner at Icehotel Restaurant. We tried the six courses Ice Menu and enjoyed food from northern Sweden served on ice blocks. The menu was:
- Bleak roe, waffle & classic trimmings -
- Fröya salmon, soy & wasabi -
- Smoked ptarmigan with porcini consommé -
- Reindeer with chocolate sauce, potato fondant & beets -
- Arctic char with almond potato puré & lobster bisque -
- Arctic brambles & chocolate -
After the dinner we went to the Icebar and had a drink served in a glass made of ice. It was cool and refreshing. :-)
The Icehotel is a popular place to get married. An Ice Church is build up next to the hotel every year. They had two weddings the night we stayed there, in the middle of the week, so it's really popular.
The 2016 Ice Church.
Mother's Day
Yesterday was Mother's Day in Norway. My first! Despite his young age Liam remembered me! He had actually sent out his dad to buy a beautiful bouquet of roses for his mum. :-)
I also helped Liam to bake a Mother's Day cake. I decided to bake a cake with buttercream roses and two marzipan butterflies as decoration.
Sunday was also Valentine's Day. I got a cute gift bag filled with chocolate, candy and a card from my older guy. He also took me out for dinner. The little guy was so nice and fell asleep in his baby stroller during the dinner. Mum and dad could enjoy a dinner without interruption.
Cream Buns
In Sweden we have a special Tuesday in February every year. This year it will be on the 9th of February. It's a theme day based on a Christian tradition. This day we eat a special cream bun called "semla". When I moved to Norway it was hard to find these buns here, but now I have seen that more and more bakeries produce their own versions of it. The original one is supposed to be filled with an almond filling and fresh wipped cream.
The tradition when I was a child, and went to school in northern Sweden, was to go skiing on this day and after the ski trip we got a cream bun as a little reward.
I decided to bake my own kind of cream buns this year. For the first time. I was a bit worried about the result, but here they are! Not so bad for the first time! I guess they passed the test, at least my boyfriend liked them, but on the other hand, he is a nice guy and he is happy to eat everything I bake and cook for him.
