voyage into the arctic circle

10 Mar, Monday

the wait is finally over! we are finally going to wweden, or more specifically – kiruna, to see the northern lights. only thing was that we did not get to see the lights eventually. but that’s another story of its own. for now, we are glad we are finally on our way to the arctic circle!


all ready to go!

Upon arriving in Stockholm all tired, we decided to check ourselves into a hostel since we did not book in advance thinking we could just spend the night at the bus terminal. turns out the terminal closes after the last bus arrives, so staying over was not an option. after some aimless walking and vague directions, we finally settled at a somewhat decently priced (mind you, we are in scandinavia afterall) hotel.

11 Mar, Tuesday

The first half of the day was really spent travelling, to get to our final destination of kiruna. Imagine our excitement when we first set foot on the snow covered airport. Even the runway is lined with snow.

at kiruna airport

sas rocks!

cab picked us up from the airport, after which we were checked into our nice family suite! The room was fully equipped with TV (which had English programs!!), cooking stove, comfy beds, and the coolest gadget we’ve seen so far – a “fridge” looking thingy, which really is a giant heater where u can put basically anything inside to dry it up. So u can imagine the stench of the device when everyone puts their dirty and wet shoes/socks in. bleahs

cab to our hotel

sights on the way to our hotel

our room!

view from the room

afternoon was spent taking pictures, fooling around in the playground, exploring the town and finally, doing grocery shopping for our dinner. At night, we gullibly opened our door every 15 minutes to check to see if we can see the lights in the sky, not realizing that the area our cabin was way to bright to see any light. And it was only much later than we found out that they WAS light that night, and we have just missed our only chance on the entire trip to catch it.

view at our doorstep

sitting in snow

outside our room

kiruna church

yums!

@ the playground

walking in the snow

angel wings!

smux

mt kiruna (not!)

kiruna town council - voted one of the most beautiful buildings in sweden. hmm..

love this pic!

made entirely of snow!

on our way home












home cooked dinner!

12 March, Wednesday

We departed from Camp Ripan to embark on our northern lights tour. And as lukc would have it, we bumped into these 2 chinese girls whom we met the day before when one of them approached me to ask for directions. I immediately identified her as a Singaporean, although I had no chance of proving it, until now. Turns out that not only was I right about her nationality, check this out – she’s actually from smu! That makes her our senior, from the pioneer batch! Wat a small world it is! The other girl, mae, is from china, and both of them work for maersk. While mae is based in Sweden, Natalie is working in Antwerp, Belgium, so it was their nice “weekend getaway” of sorts. Rich people. tsk tsk.

We also met 3 germans who are from Wiesbaden! How cool is that! They are in Sweden for their exchange, but they did recommend us a restaurant in Wiesbaden which apparently has really good and cheap Chinese buffet. The thought only was enough to make us hungry!

Got a try at “driving” a snow sleigh pulled by the huskies, as well as ride the snow mobile. Upon reaching the campsite, we also to do some wood chopping, cross country skiing, ice fishing and ice hockey.


seeing snowflake for the first time!










husky


mario and luigi










dog sled

frozen lake

with our chef!


feeding the reindeers

reindeer meat for lunch

gone fishing!

ice fishing

Dinner was BBQ and after that, the girls did sauna together. It was nice just chatting away and steaming ourselves like those steamed baos.

After that, we went out into the frozen lake and just lied their, with the sky as our blanket (: what we originally thought was the northern lights turns out to be merely the lights of kiruna, so in the end, we just ended up gazing up into the sky and talking about everything and nothing.

bbq dinner

13 Mar, Thursday

After a hearty breakfast in our cabin, we explored the place a bit more. Trekked in the snow, attempted to do some elk watching (but to no avail) and finally, finishing off with some stupid videos.

sweeping the snow at our door

snow tasting session with mae

When we left that afternoon, all of us were tired but sated. And we agreed to meet that night to go try our luck at catching the lights.

But nopes, still no lights in sight. And as we returned to our rooms, we parted and bid our goodbyes to our new friends.

we also took the opportunity to try out the sauna - and we were determined to do it the "right" way - which was to be in the sauna for 15mins, at a temp of 90 deg cel, after which, jump into the snow and repeat the process 3 times over. it was prolly the craziest thing i did, but they body really felt very much relaxed after that (:

14 Mar, Friday

It was ice hotel day as we caught the bus to the famed ice hotel – where everything is made of – surprise surprise – ICE!

snow covered rooftops

bye bye to comfy room!

ice hotel!!

ice toilet bowl

fur seats

absolut icebar

icy bed

my ice car

old ladies with their walkers

snow covered cars

after that, we did our made dash to the airport - where we managed to catch our flight just by a few seconds.

headed to our hostel, where we met up with jimmy! Dinner was at a nice Italian restaurant which eugene recommended. After dinner, we went to some random bar to chill out.

stockholm by night

our hostel

presenting....JIMMY!

15 Mar, Saturday

saturday was spent sight-seeing around stockholm. first stop was the tv tower, which turned out rather disappointing.

horses by the road side

atop the tv tower, with our swedish flag

view from the top

vikings!

next, we headed to the palace for the changing of guards

we had to stand outside the circle to take a picture with the guard!

having heard so much abt the vasa musuem from fredrick, we cldnt risk missing it. and it was really cool how they built a musuem ard this gigantic shipwreck.

mini model

the real thing

after the musuem, we headed back to our hostel, after which we met up with another fren - eugene, who recommended a nice italian restaurant for dinner.

streets of stockholm

chilling out at a bar

eugene, who's on exchange at jokoping

canons of the world unite!

16 Mar, Sunday

so we left early that morning and reached back home around 1ish. meixiu left that night and it was us, once again, looking forward to our next upcoming adventure