Great Journey 🇸🇪 Day 529
At 3 a.m. Gerd rumbles excitedly through the van. At 4 he does it again. At 5 he can't stand it any longer: "I think we need to refill the gas!
Okay, we get up, make tea & coffee with the last gas, put on our usual layers and Felix takes off his little coat.
The gas station opens at 7 a.m., and shortly before 7 a.m. we are in front of the door and fill up our gas tanks. All went well again, the app probably shows "alarm" quite early. We learnt something again.
It is still dark, the romance of an industrial estate leaves much to be desired. We think through our options and decide on sightseeing and nature-viewing today.
A little outside Kiruna, there is supposed to be an Ice Hotel in Jukkasjärvi. There is also an ancient mini wooden church, a Sàmi museum, a reindeer enclosure (why do the animals live locked up here?) and a hiking trail that, according to the hiking app, leads directly across the lake.
We drive - unplanned and once again gifted - into one of those beautiful sunrises for which this region is famous. It's flaming over the lake, the trees are nicely decorated with snow and the thermometer goes into free fall. (Later we hear that it is actually much colder here than in nearby Kiruna).
We dress up, visit the church, trudge across the frozen lake and consider whether we want to have a look at the Ice Hotel. From the outside it is very unspectacular, we decide to have a coffee in the warm restaurant first. Unfortunately we can't have "coffee only", we have to book the whole buffet. It's half past eight, we've already done some sightseeing and lake walking, our noses are about to break because of the cold and we think to ourselves, "Why not?"
Slowly our faces and fingertips thaw, we beam and think that this is already quite a good start to the "long weekend start", as we always call Wednesday.
We leave the Icehotel on the left and simply enjoy the holiday atmosphere among all the tourists here.
