Like just about every student in Sweden, some international friends and I decided to make a pilgrimage to the Ice hotel in Kiruna, Sweden's most visited tourist destination. We rented a pair of volkswagen golf station wagons and hit the open road. Luckily I can drive a manual transmission because no one else was interested in driving other than a German friend who was behind the wheel of the second car. After getting around by bike for so long its nice to get behind the wheel but after many hours of snowy swedish roads the novelty does wear off a bit. I've never been so far north and things are definitely colder up there. -2o celcius is actually quite numbing to the extremities even with all sorts of layering. Once we finally got to the ice hotel I was worried that it would end up just being some sort of tourist trap. Something that everyone goes to see but is never quite as cool as you imagined. They definitely make a lot of money off the place, and if you want to part with your cash they will gladly take it from you with all sorts of excursions offered in the bitter cold. The coolest one will be virgin galactic space flights starting at the very reasonable $200000. The ice hotel was really cool, there were a bunch of different rooms made by different designers all with different themes, it was much warmer there than outside, -5c instead of -20 and we walked around for a few hours. I decided that the place could only be considered a tourist trap if you actually stayed there overnight. While unique and beautiful I cant imagine wanting to spend the night in -5 with no in room bathroom or closet or even a working door, all they had were reindeer skins covering the entrances. Its supposed to be a honeymoon destination, can you imagine trying to get anything done in those conditions?
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