Stay in the Ice Hotel in Sweden

I have no idea how to pronounce this. Jukkasjärvi. It looks like a cat just walked across my keyboard. But the name is Swedish and refers to a place, a village in Sweden that is home to the famous Ice Hotel. This is not the place you want to go if your idea of a vacation is Bermuda shorts and Mai Tais. The Ice Hotel can be found up in Swedish Lapland, about 120 miles inside the Arctic Circle. Which means it's cold. Think shrinkage.

But here's the really interesting part about the hotel. The hotel is built anew every year. That's right. Just about now, about thirty artists and builders take water from the nearby river, make large blocks of ice and they begin carving and building a hotel. It takes months, and they have a viable blueprint they follow, but when it opens on December 9, it will welcome visitors eager for a cold dark stay in a hotel made of ice. And then, if you are really dedicated, you can wait around until May when the thing melts. Consider chipping off a piece for your Absolut on the rocks.

Filed under: Arts and Culture, Learning, Business, Festivals and Events, Food and Drink, Blogs