SUITE takes you to Sweden and their famous Ice Hotel.

As I write this, our current temperature in central Massachusetts is minus 1 degree with a wind chill index of minus 17 degrees. I can’t imagine wanting to vacation in a hotel built from snow and ice, but apparently, many people do; not just those who live in and around Jukkasjârvi in northern Lapland, Sweden, but from all over the world.

I first heard about Sweden’s Ice Hotel from a Swedish cousin of mine who lives in Stockholm. She visited one of the hotels a few years back, and I was completely intrigued by her descriptions and experience. Then, recently, a documentary on cable TV’s Discovery channel showcased the latest Ice Hotel and I was amazed at the amount of architects, contractors, artists, and many other people who came from all over the world to put together this magnificent structure. It’s built and re-built every winter from thousands of tons of snow and ice, and no two hotels are alike.

The hotel consists of double rooms and suites for up to one hundred overnight guests, a lobby, a pillar hall, film auditorium, and the famous Absolut Icebar where visitors from all over the world gather to socialize until all hours. The hotel and each room is also uniquely decorated with art and sculptures strictly formed from ice.

Building starts in November on each Ice Hotel with the official opening in mid December, weather permitting, which means ICE COLD! The hotel usually closes at the end of April or the beginning of May, depending on the weather and how quickly the hotel starts to melt. It is built in a location near enough to run back into the River Torne, where the blocks of ice to build the next year’s hotel are “manufactured” and kept in huge freezers every year. Watching the ice manufacturing process on the TV special was amazing in and of itself.

If you choose to sleep in the hotel, you do so in a thermal sleeping bag, on top of reindeer skins, on a specially built bed of snow and ice. BRRRR! A hot cup of lingonberry juice at your bedside is a welcome treat in the morning!

On a special note – neither the restaurants OR the toilets are made of ice. You thaw out indoors at either the Ice Hotel Restaurant or The Old Homestead Restaurant, where there is also a daytime café . The toilets are located in a    more >>