Day 2: Brrrrr... it's cold in here.

Our holiday really began today as we headed off for our flight to Kiruna. We had more delays due to headwinds for the incoming flight but those same winds turned to tail winds for us and got us there only about 20 minutes late. Touching down in Kiruna it was already dark as we walked across the snow covered runway to the airport building. A nice big sign showed us that it was -17'C, I'm glad we'd packed our thermals in hand luggage.

When we arrived at the Icehotel, as our first night was in cold accommodation, our bags were taken from us and we were taken inside the hotel. I was really glad to get inside as it was warm at -5'C. They explained where the rooms were, showed us where to store our luggage and where to get our thermal boots, suit, mittens and balaclava. As I'd upgraded us to an Art suite, we got use of a little dressing room to store our luggage and change in rather than a locker and communal dressing room. In all honesty, it was worth that extra money to not feel like you were living out of a suitcase for that night. We settled in and attended our "how to survive at minus five" talk where we were given lots of really useful information about what to expect from a night in the cold rooms. We then had a quick look at the suite we'd been assigned "Freeze Frame". It was really beautiful compared to the one we'd been taken to for the talk.

We decided to have dinner at the Homestead Restaurant. From what I'd read on the internet I imagined it to be very rustic with checked table clothes but it was actually really nice, modern white tablecloths and beautifully presented food. There were only two things on the menu that I could have so I decided to try the steak. I don't like red meat, but I was actually quite surprised by how nice it was. Maybe now I only like red meat if it's good quality, perfectly cooked steak. As we walked to the restaurant we were quite surprised to see that it was drizzling, however the drizzle was frozen!

After dinner we warmed up from the cold before donning our thermals, hats and liner gloves, collecting our arctic sleeping bag and making the run across the -18'C courtyard and along the -5'C corridors of the icehotel to our room. Whilst The Boy calmly took his boots and jumper off, put the liner in his sleeping bag and made sure I was tucked up, I frantically threw my liner in, pulled off my boots, jumped in my bag and pulled the drawstrings tight to keep out the cold! Sleep was surprisingly easy, far from being cold, I actually got too warm.