Great Canadian Travel Offers Swedish Ice Hotel Package

The Great Canadian Travel Company is offering a package to Sweden’s aptly named Icehotel, which is built every year in Jukkasjarvi in Sweden’s Lapland from snow and crystal-clear ice. When summer comes to Jukkasjarvi, which is located 125 miles north of the Arctic Circle, the 80-room hotel melts down and trickles into the Torne River. It is the oldest hotel of its kind in the world. The winter of 2008/2009 will usher in the 19th annual version of Icehotel.

Typically, it opens in early December and closes around mid-April, when it begins to melt and slip back into the river from whence it came. The experience begins when clients open the main, reindeer-skin-clad doors and are greeted by a grand, ice-pillared hallway illuminated by an ice chandelier.

The interior temperature, hovering around 23 degrees Fahrenheit, actually feels quite pleasant, especially when compared to the outside temperature which can drop to minus 34.

One of Icehotel’s most popular rooms, the Absolut Bar features a vaulted ceiling, ice-block seating (covered in reindeer skins) and a see-through bar which serves a range of colorful vodka cocktails (poured into glasses fashioned from ice).

The hotel’s restaurant, just across the road, offers extensive breakfasts, a lunchtime buffet and a la carte dinners with “Laplandic gourmet food” served on plates of ice from the Torne River. The neighboring Old Homestead Restaurant serves food from local native cultures.