Ice Hotel (Kiruna) and Harstad

Installment two of our Scandinavia trip.

Ice Hotel

We left Stockholm by night train heading towards Kiruna.  Luckily it was just one train the whole way and we didn't have to change trains.  My friends, husband and I spent the evening having a picnic and playing card games.  It was a great time.

In the morning we looked outside to see what a change the night made.  We had arrived in the arctic circle and there was snow everywhere, and not in small amounts.  We were on the train for another couple of hours just enjoying the scenery and talking to a Swedish guy in our compartment.  He was volunteering as a warden in one of the national parks about one hour north of Kiruna.  He was really interesting and told us how he tried to volunteer every year since it meant he got to spend a number of weeks in the northern part of Sweden for little cost.  He helps tourists and keeps track of hikers and generally has a great time skiing and watching the northern lights.  Sounds like a good holiday to me.

We arrived in Kiruna and took a taxi to the Ice Hotel.  There are no words for the ice hotel, just pictures attempting to show how beautiful and amazing it is.

Ice Church

Ice Hotel Entrance

Into the Ice

Reindeer skin door to the bathrooms (which are inside thankfully)

Ice bed

all made of ice and snow

One of the "luxury" rooms

The Ice Hotel really is an amazing feat of engineering.  They (whoever owns or runs the hotel I have no idea) make the hotel every year.  Every May the snow and ice begin to melt and they can no longer have guests - so the ice hotel goes back into the lake that is frozen over behind it.  Unlike on James Bond, the Ice Hotel is actually on land. Even though the lake is frozen very well, it still can't handle the weight of the ice and snow required to build this hotel.  I think it houses something like 192 in one night (or can handle that amount).

It also has some hundreds and hundreds of winter weddings every season while it is open. In the Ice Church of course.  Because many people want to wear traditional clothing (wedding dresses and regular suits) our guide told us that most of the weddings don't last more than 15 minutes - which sounds like a great wedding to me.  Just as we were leaving we actually saw a woman all dressed up to get married - with a white fur shawl to match her dress, it was really romantic. Would have been nice to get married there. No way hubby and I could have afforded that though!

After Kiruna we got back on the train and headed to Harstad.

Harstad

Lights in Harstad

Harstad is in Norway and required a train journey then two buses to get there.  It could have taken less time if there were more bridges across the many fjords - but alas there were not so it took most of a day to get there.  While there we didn't expect to see any northern lights (since the city lights were soo bright) but actually that was the best light show we got to see our whole trip. The lights were bright greens and had yellow and purple and little bits of red. It was amazing and even though the town was just like any town, I really wish we could have stayed one more night.

Instead we headed to Tromso - by boat.  It took most of a day (again) to get there, but a much more comfortable day than getting to Harstad since we were just on a cruise boat (with about 1,000 retired people) the whole time and got to see a lot of landscape in northern Norway.

Next part to come- Tromso and Oslo!

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Stockholm

My husband, me and two of our friends went to Stockholm, Kiruna, Harstad, Tromso and Oslo together over 12 days as a holiday.  Our main goal was to see the northern lights -which we did! - but also to visit the cities a little as well.  Needless to say we had a great time, I think Stockholm and Oslo are some of my most favorite cities to visit now: my list includes for many different reasons Rome, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Banner Elk, London, Whitby, Krakow and Nashville.

I loved Scandinavia (or what I have seen of it so far) for many reasons (the people were always nice, good food, snowy but not too rainy and beautiful landscape) but I really loved all the wood flooring and real wood everywhere; tables, chairs, banisters etc.  It was amazing to see after years in HK where plastic and chipboard live and die. I mean I know that wood goes moldy in HK, but I missed real wood features.  Even Stockholm and Oslo airport had wood flooring and banisters - which was a nice treat coming off the plane.

I didn't love the cost. My husband called it one of those places you visit - like Tokyo - where, when you look into your wallet you feel you have been mugged, only to find out actually no one violently took your money or invaded your wallet, but the result is still the same - no money left over.  It costs a lot to just get around on a regular basis as a tourist, so you must save up before going.

I hope to write about each place we visited during this trip individually - so starting with Stockholm here are some highlights:

Stockholm airport was a little funny because it had an ABBA tribute area - apparently they are opening an ABBA music museum or something like that soon.  I do love ABBA but I didn't realize that Swedish people did as well, perhaps they don't and this will just bring the tourists - I don't know.

I love ABBA but WOW a whole museum??

Stockholm was amazing because of it's age.  The architecture was beautiful nearly everywhere we went in the city center and old town.

old town

old town street

old town street? not sure if it is a street or an alley
 I think it is used as a street though

Also the Swedes and Norwegians seem to love Trolls, which I haven't figured out. There is some amazing troll art and figures all over both Stockholm and Oslo - it makes me happy because I love trolls too!

And of course this means that I couldn't resist buying one for myself.  I got a little gypsy woman troll and a gypsy man troll dancing. It is lovely.

The Palace in Stockholm - oddly- has the longest zipper in the world (48 meters long). It is in this really long hall that tourists are allowed to walk through regularly so the zipper is for the half of the carpet that is rolled out of the way when tourists visit.  The Palace was nice to visit, but if you don't have much time I would go to the Vasa Museum instead.

one part of the palace

The Vasa was a ship that basically sailed for like an hour or something, then sunk just off the coast of the city.  But it is amazing because it was the first of it's kind in so many ways.  It was the largest military ship made in Sweden up to that time and it had tons of guns - all of which were uniform in size, another revolutionary thing to have at the time (1600's or something like that).  After it sunk it sat that the bottom of the harbor in Stockholm for like 400 years - until someone in the 1950's brought it up to the surface and slowly put it back together.  Amazingly it is nearly whole (something like 90% original features) and it quite beautiful.

Vasa

Vasa

Vasa

After the Vasa museum we hung around Stockholm and went to a Viking bar - which was a blast! People were dressed up (staff and patrons), there was live music, and a really cute bartender that looked very Nordic. Unfortunately I didn't get a picture of the bartender, just too embarrassed to ask.

viking bar

viking desert with wooden bowls and spoons - yum!

Here we drank mead, listened to music and people speaking Swedish and had some desert.  It was a great night in Stockholm.  The next day we headed for Kiruna and the Ice Hotel - which will come in the next post.

Moving Photos

I am way behind in my blogging, and I plan on catching up this week.  But for now I wanted to share a couple of photos from the actual moving day in Hong Kong.

Panda hiding from the chaos

moving my art room / the junk room

moving the office

bedroom 

 

all the stuff we took on the plane

moving man packing the dining room

view from our flat

View from out flat

Lastly here are a couple from around Hong Kong just before we left. I really loved living in Hong Kong (with hindsight) it just wasn't the right place for us.  I wanted a house with a yard and I wanted a job (I know I know I want so much) but those things can't be found in HK unless I was willing to work in finance - which is soo not happening.

flats in Sham Shui Po area

 

Mong Kok shopping street

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Life in the Country

My husband went out very early this morning and took some great photos of a canal near where we are living in Thatcham.  Yesterday we went walking along this canal and had forgotten to take our camera, so I am glad he went back to get some photos.  It is only like 15 minutes away from our house - so we should be able to get tons more photos of the same area as the weather changes to spring and summer.

These photos are a reminder of why I wanted to move back to England in the first place, despite the cold.

All rights reserved to Clewin Griffith.

Crazy American

My husband and I have officially moved back to England.  More specifically we have moved to Thatcham while he looks for a job in either Reading, Oxford or Winchester.  I am massively excited about this eventuality but until we actually know where we will live I can't look for a job.

I am excited about working again. In Hong Kong it was so easy just not to work, and most jobs were impossible to get for people who didn't speak two languages (Cantonese and English - or even three if you add Mandarin). Granted there were tons of jobs in finance - but unlike my husband I didn't want to sell my soul to the devil.

So here I am back in England and I felt the need to change my blog's name.  I initially stared this blog to relay my adventures and new life in Hong Kong to those I couldn't talk to everyday.  Since I now love blogging, I decided to continue with the blog but it needed a new name.  Plus there are still people in the United States and a few in Hong Kong who may want to know what the "crazy american" is up to.

I was first called the "mad american" by an Irish friend of mine who probably thought this because I talk to much, so loudly and I didn't really drink. How was it possible for me to be so insane and be sober?  Since then the name seems to have stuck.  I have had friends from Ireland, England, Europe, and Hong Kong all call me mad or crazy before and honestly I like being called it.  It makes me more interesting.  So when I decided to rename this blog I though - of course, it must be called something to do with my craziness.  

In addition to people calling me mad, I also feel slightly manic at the moment since we are so unsettled and only slightly homeless.  We are temporarily living with friends - but it isn't the same as having your own home.  I will get that someday too and I am sure that whole story will be rife with craziness!   

After getting a house my next step is to get lots of animals and be THAT crazy lady :-) - well maybe not, I don't really like cats that much - they smell.  I guess I will have to think up other ways to be crazy. Maybe I can ask my mom (the original mad american).

Shanghai Street

Today I had very little to do to prepare for our big move to the UK.  I decided to go to one of the places in Hong Kong that I discovered recently and always enjoy to get some pictures: Shanghai Street in Yau Ma Tei, which is just filled with all kinds of kitchen equipment for home and businesses.

I didn't technically discover it on my own but I have known about this street since we moved to Hong Kong three years ago.  I just never got around to visiting it.  Occasionally I would pass it in a bus or someone would mention it, but still I never went.  It was sort of like a foreign country, if I remembered it existed I really wanted to go, but usually when I had free time I had already forgotten I wanted to visit.

While my mother was here we did visit mainly because she and my father run a BBQ restaurant in Tennessee and she wanted to see the street filled with kitchen supplies.  I love kitchen supplies and to some degree I am glad I had not visited Shanghai Street earlier - I would have bought everything!

Bamboo baskets for steaming dumplings and buns.

Cats in the Cake shop 

Clay pots in all shapes and sizes, plus you can get your uniforms here too!

Because every shop in HK needs an Alter, there is an Alter Shop!

Cleavers, Cleavers - get your Cleavers here!
I totally want one of these but my husband says I will chop my hands off.

General kitchen supplies
Look at the size of those pots!

Woks of all sizes

I love cake too

More woks, but hanging this time.
By the way - the smallest Wok here is still too big for a home kitchen
The largest one is really massive!

Cutting boards - more like cutting tree stumps.

And lastly - today I went shopping at the Ladies Market in Mong Kok.  It was fun and I will miss some aspects of haggling and wandering down small allies in search of treasure.  All in all, though, I miss shopping in England and the US mainly because the clothing fits me!

If I have any more time before we leave I plan on putting some more pictures of general life in Hong Kong on here as well.  

All photos (except the first one of Shanghai St sign) copyright Me 2013.