February 23, 2008
Sweden's Ice Hotel
draws creative artists every year to create the hotel's guest suites with inspiring results. Also, a reporter's account of a visit. Here are some more photos. At the official website, you can book your stay.
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Saw a documentary about this on Discovery Channel a couple of weeks ago. It was pretty interesting to see how they do the construction.
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I just watched it today. It is pretty neat.
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And next door, the Ice Globe Theatre. One day I shall sing there. I will distrubute frostbitten toes as souvenirs.
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A former online friend (I've lost touch with her, sadly) is Swedish and posted a bunch of pics when her mom took her and her brother there, circa... 2000-2002, sometime. The photos were lovely, and K. gave a pretty good idea of what a night there was actually like, which I don't find that the documentaries necessarily do.
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Isn't there one of these in Canuckistan, as well? I seem to remember Kevin Murphy writing about it in A Year at the Movies.
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I have a feeling I'll be staying in the Flame Hotel in the afterlife.
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Voilà .
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In the article, it mentions that the Canadian version was an offshoot of the Swedish version but the Swedes broke off association with their Transatlantic brethren because they considered the Canuck version was crass and inartistic.
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But it keeps our beer cold, eh?
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It was the back bacon sculpture that tore the deal I think.
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That, and the late-night hallway hockey games.
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Bizarrely, I just got back from staying there this weekend. I loved it - it's not just about the IceHotel itself, but all the activities around it; snow-mobiles, dog-sledging, etc. We hoped to see the Northern Lights but unfortunately we had cloud the whole time we were there. There is a space research facility up the road which you can look round http://www.ssc.se/esrange and Virgin Galactic will have their European base there in conjunction with the Ice Hotel. The Hotel is a license to print money - great experience but you end up significantly poorer for it!