Day 8 - Part 2: Ice, Ice Baby!

First look inside

Here it is.  Your moment of zen.  What you've been waiting for.  Its Snow Hotel-time!!

Lets go.....through the keyhole!

But... wait!  First.....

A few fun facts about our lodgings for the evening.  Its really quite impressive what they manage to achieve in the 7 weeks they have from when its cold enough for the ice to freeze to when the first visitor rocks up for the winter season!  The ice carvers are actually from China, home of the world's largest and best ice scuplting festival.  Here's the blurb about the SnowHotel on their website http://www.kirkenessnowhotel.com/:

Everyone is welcome for a fun and exciting stay in our amazing winter wonderland.

Kirkenes Snowhotel opened for the first time in 2006, and since then we have been giving our guests a wonderful experience in one of Norway’s most beautiful surroundings.  

"is it time to go in yet?!"

Snow is a very good insulator, so when it is minus thirty degrees outside, the SnowHotel remains a stable minus four degrees. This special ability of snow insulation can also be seen in Mother Nature. For example, the snow grouse makes caves in the deep snow during winter to keep warm and save its energy inside the shelter. Husky dogs also cover themselves in snow to keep warm.

Every room in Kirkenes Snowhotel is like a small treasure. The rooms are five metres in diameter, and they are equipped with everything needed for a comfortable night. Photos appear to look like you are sleeping on ice, but that would be too cold and too hard for your back.  The beds are framed with ice blocks and the beds have comfortable mattresses with thermal insulation on top. You sleep inside a sleeping bag graded for -35 degrees Celsius.

All of our 25 rooms have a different theme from our Arctic culture or nature. The lighted ice sculptures give the SnowHotel a very cosy and special atmosphere.   In every room there are decorations and sculptures made from ice and snow. These beautiful designs are created by artists from the specialist ice-sculpting Chinese city of Harbin.

In constructing the hotel’s Icebar and sculptures, more than 15 tonnes of ice is used. Once again the expertise of the Chinese ice artists are used, and every year, we are astonished at their creations and attention to detail.  All the ice comes from the frozen lake close to the SnowHotel. We cut the ice with chainsaws and pull it with snowmobiles into the SnowHotel. In the middle of winter this ice is 70 centimetres thick. The Icebar and the sculptures are designed differently every year. It is always exciting to see what kind of sculptures the artists find hidden in the ice.

You ready to go inside yet?

Oh, go on, then.  Here's a quick video of our first look inside - the largest room in the hotel, the Ice Bar.

Pretty cool (ahem), eh?  This part is the main chamber of the hotel, serving as the IceBar after dinner where we were to enjoy one (or two) shots of icy-cold vodka later on out of shot glasses made of ice!  This was still in the early part of the day, though, so instead we were handed little glasses full of winterberry juice instead, which was dark purple, sweetly thick and delicious!

Our guide talked for a few minutes to tell us more about how the hotel was constructed - the walls of the main dome are six meters thick down at the base, three meters thick at the top and its built out of a mixture of snow and ice, called sn'ice - which is nice!  I asked what happens when it melts and whether it gets unsafe to be in, and our guide told us that it actually melts from the top down.  After it starts to get warmer outside and things start to melt, one day you'll just see a little hole in the roof - and this hole will get progressively bigger and bigger each day until the whole structure has melted down and you are left with a kind of icy ring-fence on the ground.  After that happens, then they demolish the rest of it and cart the ice away so that the ground has time to dry up ahead of the whole process beginning again the next year.  Fascinating stuff.

the bar was carved in the shape of a viking
boat - this was the prow, carved like a dragon

ManpanionTM checking out the bar scene

Me, feeling cool.

Icy torch, lighting up the room

And curiously, a shovel handle buried in the
snow tunnel ceiling.  Didn't spot a little
gloved hand nearby fortunately....

After she finished her spiel, we were then free to wander about and go and explore the 25 different rooms, all uniquely decorated with different carvings and sculptures.  I'm not entirely sure what some of the themes have to do with either the Arctic or nature (Charlie Chaplin and Marilyn Monroe, I'm looking at you!) but all were just incredible.  Most of the rooms were set up for 2 people but there were a few that could accommodate larger groups or families, with 3 or 4 little pillows set out, side by side.  Here are pics of some of the rooms: enjoy!

Eeek!!  Don't blink!!

Each room number was etched onto the wall
outside - privacy was provided by little fleecy
curtains forming a "door"

Frozen, anyone?

ManpanionTM tries to chat up the local talent.
She was a little frosty.

This turned out to be our room

The Taj Nippal

Minds out of the gutter, please.
I was admiring the beautiful carved
pattern on the side of the bar

 It really was incredibly impressive.  Especially done in such a short space of time.

First course for dinner - reindeer tartare and snow.
S'no joke.  

But I know what you are thinking.  Where on earth do you pee??

Just moo-sing about after dinner

Good question - and this is where the rest of the structure that is helpfully not made of ice comes in!  So right at the end of the corridor where the rooms are is another door - and this one leads into the barn structure, restaurant and lounge areas I was telling you about in my previous blog.  It also houses the loos, showers and sauna area as well as a luggage storage facility AND, most importantly, the place where you collected the sleeping bag that was going to keep you alive through the night!

Comfy cosy sitting area by the restaurant

During dinner, our guide (who's name I've forgotten - sorry!) went through what to expect and how to stay warm during our overnight sleep.  Each of us was to get one of the big sleeping bags (properly fitted to our height) and instructed on the best way to use it - basically, the fewer layers on you have, the better and warmer you will be.  The sleeping bag is warmed up through direct contact with your body, so if you went to sleep wearing all the layers you were wearing outside, you'd wake up cold a couple of hours later, as your body heat would not have been able to warm up the bag.  We also had access to additional thick woolen socks and balaclava hats and - with that - we were assured we would be just fine!

Our CouchpanionTM

Now - back to the loos.  Obviously there are no loos within the actual snowy ice bit of the hotel itself - all the bathrooms are in the permanent structure.  The rooms were handed out via a lottery - and the trick here was to get a room with a higher number (in the 20's preferably) rather than a lower number, because that would mean that your room would be much closer to the bathroom end of the corridor, rather than the ice bar end!  And you definitely wanted that in case you had to get up in the middle of the night for a pee!

Our number was 12 - just right near the Ice Angel - and was the room with the crazy-eyed fox carved onto the wall.  OK - could have been better, but could have been much worse (ugh for Room 1!).  But then, in a twist of fate that again had us wondering if they had ever done this before, it turned out they had TWO bookings for us.  One in my name, and one in Matt's!  On learning we'd gotten room 12, I asked if there was any possibility to get a room closer to the bathroom - but as it happened, Matt's duplicate booking had been assigned room 22!!!  Bonza!!!  So we ended up sleeping under the skirts of Marilyn Monroe for the night, just a couple of doors down from the bathroom - result!!

After dinner, of course we had to partake in a few rounds of shots in the ice bar.  Matt brought his guitar out and we ended up having a little informal jam session, sitting on chairs carved out of ice, covered in a fur rug.  we'd made friends with this very chirpy British couple during dinner, so it was fun to hang out with them for a bit too.  The bar wasn't open very long (its not really the kind of place you'd chill out in for a couple of hours) but we made good use of it while it was open for business!  Drinking icy-cold Norwegian vodka shots, flavored by sweet blueberries, out of shot glasses carved of ice was, well, very cool!  (and eye-wateringly expensive, but what the hell - once in a lifetime experience, right!).

The upper barn restaurant where
we'd had reindeer sausages and apple
cider earlier on

After about an hour, the bar closed up and we retired upstairs to the comfy warm lounge for a bit, to defrost and mentally prepare ourselves for our impending icy slumbers!  After everyone else had gone to bed, we figured we couldn't put it off any longer and headed downstairs to our snowquarters. We'd already laid our sleeping bags out ready on the bed, so all we had to do was get VERY quickly undressed to our thermal underlayers and hop inside, remembering to put our outer layer of clothes inside the bag, so they'd be warm to put back on the next morning.  Our boots?  Well, they had to be left by the side of the bed, so would be a bit chilly in the morning, but we'd survive.  And then, with a kiss goodnight and wishing each other luck, we bedded down for the night.  There was no light to turn off - just the soft illumination shining right up Marilyn's skirt behind the bed.  Fortunately, snuggling down into the sleeping bag blocked that out, so it wasn't a problem.

The huskies get everywhere here...

And how did we sleep?  Well, for my part, remarkably well - at least initially.  You really were nicely warm and toasty and snuggly in your (individual) sleeping bags - sometimes even too hot!  Then you would just try and vent some of the heat by exposing more of your face to the air - until it then got too chilly on your nose, so you'd burrow back down, d.mouse-like, into your sleeping bag again!  I did have to get up in the middle of the night for a pee but given our proximity, it was no big deal and within a few minutes I was back in my bag again.  I did accidentally slam my right knee into the corner of the ice-carved platform though, which was very painful.  My delightful ManpanionTM suggested I put ice on it - thanks, my darling.  VERY helpful suggestion.

And so that was it.  We survived our night in the SnowHotel!  I won't say it was the most comfortable experience I've ever been through - but it was certainly memorable and one that I am very glad I did! The next morning, there was time for a shower, a very welcome hot cup of tea and toast before catching the bus back into Kirkenes.

Tomorrow, its time to start the long, long journey back home to Chicago - and to SUNLIGHT!!!!

Wool rocks.

I packed one of these as a souvenir but I can't
find it anymore.  Must have lost it en route...

One of the crazily chirpy British contingent

Our guide and mixologist for the evening

Bottoms-up!!

Huddled against the cold with my
WarmpanionTM

...and with friends!

"Is this the way out?"