{"id":8153,"date":"2024-12-27T15:26:05","date_gmt":"2024-12-27T15:26:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/justpaste.in\/blogs\/arrival-at-the-icehotel-in-lapland-sweden\/"},"modified":"2026-08-04T09:45:55","modified_gmt":"2026-08-04T09:45:55","slug":"arrival-at-the-icehotel-in-lapland-sweden","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/justpaste.in\/blogs\/arrival-at-the-icehotel-in-lapland-sweden\/","title":{"rendered":"Arrival At The ICEHOTEL In Lapland, Sweden"},"content":{"rendered":"

If there\u2019s one place you have to visit, not just at Christmas time but in winter, full stop (and as it turns out \u2013 now all year round), it\u2019s Lapland! It\u2019s the home of Santa, polar nights and more snow that we would ever know what to do with in London.<\/p>\n

Lloyd and I had long wanted to visit Lapland (it\u2019s such a no-brainer to visit at this time of the year) and so it was a very quick yes when Discover The World<\/a> asked if we\u2019d like to head over to the ICEHOTEL<\/a>\u00a0with them to go find Santa!<\/p>\n

And with that, we packed our bags and our very best winter gear and made our way over to Jukkasj\u00e4rvi in Sweden \u2013 home of the ICEHOTEL.<\/p>\n

See, that’s the other thing. Discover The World<\/a> are the only ones who offer direct flights to the ICEHOTEL from London, meaning you can be in Lapland in just around 3 hours from London.<\/p>\n

(This is a pretty huge deal and a big part of why we just knew we HAD to go! \ud83d\ude00 In the past, it’s been a hassle to try to key in all the different parts of the journey to take us to the ICEHOTEL which is why we never really got round to doing it).<\/p>\n

Now at the ICEHOTEL, it is recommended that you only actually sleep one night on the ice \u2013 the rest can be spent in warm cabins instead so we decided on a 3 nights stay to do the first couple of nights warm and then one the final night \u2013 sleep in an ice suite in the ICEHOTEL!<\/p>\n

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The cabins are pretty Scandic (simple and minimal) and after checking in and dropping our stuff, we headed straight to the Veranda, where we would be dining at the Chef\u2019s table<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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The Chef\u2019s table<\/a> is as nice as it sounds, by the way.<\/p>\n

The Michelin-trained head chef of the ICEHOTEL \u2013 Alexander Meier (who\u2019s an absolutely amazing guy, by the way \u2013 funny, clever and just a generally brilliant guy to spend time with) makes you dinner, along with his other sous chefs while a sommelier serves you brilliant paired wines with every course.<\/p>\n

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As we all good meals, we started off with a glass of champagne (Ruinart, for anyone curious \ud83d\ude0b\ud83e\udd42)…<\/p>\n

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…before tucking into our first course – Arctic char mousse with sturgeon caviar.<\/p>\n

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The Arctic char was followed with Jerusalem artichoke with white Alba truffle…<\/p>\n

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…and Kalix bleak roe with lemon air. Light, zingy and utterly delicious.<\/p>\n

In fact, I\u2019m just gonna cut to the chase here! It was all delicious! The attention to detail is just so impressive here and every single bite was just absolutely amazing!<\/p>\n

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Next up, we had the white fish taco with chimichurri, \ud83d\ude0b<\/p>\n

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green tea cured Arctic char served in its bouillon…<\/p>\n

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…and grilled lobster with a coconut bisque. (Sooo sooooooo good!)<\/p>\n

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We switched things up with a consom\u00e9 of smoked reindeer heart …<\/p>\n

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…and a porridge of wild mushroom from the local forests.<\/p>\n

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We rounded off the last of the savoury menu with reindeer tartare, served with flavours of pine…<\/p>\n

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…truffle risotto<\/p>\n

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…ptarmigan (for the uninitiated, like I was at the time, it\u2019s actually a bird) with morel sauce<\/p>\n

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…and elk fil\u00e9 with almond mashed potatoes and chocolate sauce.<\/p>\n

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The chocolate sauce was probably the hint that dessert was on its way… and indeed, it was with Arctic raspberries sorbet, swiftly followed by crumbly lingonberry and vanilla dessert.<\/p>\n

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It was the menu to surpass all menus! \ud83d\ude0b<\/p>\n

Usually, I\u2019m so wary of Chef\u2019s menus as there\u2019s bound to be a couple of things I won’t like and to have one like this where every single item, without exception, was absolutely delicious and made you even more excited for the upcoming items was just such an amazing dining experience! The absolute\u00a0best!<\/p>\n

Totally stuffed, but too excited to just head to bed, we decided to quickly head over to the ice bar to check it out.<\/p>\n

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It was too late to check out the actual hotel \u2013 that would have to wait till tomorrow as hotel guests would have already been given the rooms (in the daytime, when guests have checked out \u2013 it\u2019s actually a museum for like 8 hours or so).<\/p>\n

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The ice bar is every bit as cool as I\u2019d imagined! (Pun intended \ud83d\ude04).<\/p>\n

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The ICEHOTEL is actually open all year round but there are two parts to it.<\/p>\n

There is the ICEHOTEL 365 part (the all year round bit) that you can visit and sleep in, even in the middle of summer (don\u2019t worry, it\u2019s all renewable energy used to power it then so it\u2019s actually quite eco-friendly). <\/p>\n

Then there\u2019s the ICEHOTEL 29 part which is the seasonal one that melts in spring summer and is rebuilt every winter (the 29 actually had to do with the 29th<\/sup> year of the hotel running \u2013 so next year it will be ICEHOTEL 30 and then ICEHOTEL 31…etc).<\/p>\n

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Eventually, we decided to call it a night and retire to our hot cabins for some well-earned sleep!<\/p>\n

The following morning, we woke up to what daytime was like in the Arctic.<\/p>\n

See the sun never rises here (it stays beneath the horizon the entire time) at this time of the year and so what you have is polar nights.<\/p>\n

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Polar nights looks, when it isn\u2019t cloudy, like a sunrise\/sunset that just lasts for hours!<\/p>\n

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The sky is all sorts of light pastel-y blues and pinks and it\u2019s absolutely beautiful!<\/p>\n

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Despite arriving in the afternoon the day before, we didn\u2019t actually get to see any of this as it gets dark around 1pm (ish) and so it was dark by the time we even arrived in.<\/p>\n

After a fairly quick bite to eat at breakfast (we left it to the last minute to get as much sleep as possible), we spent the rest of the morning wandering around and excitedly taking in the beauty of Swedish Lapland \u2013 eager to go check out the ICEHOTEL properly!<\/p>\n

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All of the details on that in the very next post! (I took waaaaaaaay too many photos to fit into this one). \ud83d\ude00<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If there\u2019s one place you have to visit, not just at Christmas time but in winter, full stop (and as it turns out \u2013 now all year round), it\u2019s Lapland! It\u2019s the home of Santa, polar nights and more snow that we would ever know what to do with in London. Lloyd and I had … Continue Reading<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8154,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40,396],"tags":[355,797,684,798],"class_list":["post-8153","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-travel","category-travel-journal","tag-europe","tag-jukkasjarvi","tag-lapland","tag-sweden"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/justpaste.in\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8153","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/justpaste.in\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/justpaste.in\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justpaste.in\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justpaste.in\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8153"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/justpaste.in\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8153\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justpaste.in\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8154"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/justpaste.in\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justpaste.in\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justpaste.in\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}