Last week, my parents came to visit me in Sweden. I hadn't seen them in over 7 months. They arrived Tuesday afternoon. We spent Tuesday looking seeing the sights in Eskilstuna.

Wednesday night, after getting lost on the way, we finally made it to the airport to fly to Kiruna, a small town in Lappland.

Thursday morning, we went to the world famous Ice Hotel, home of the Absolut ice bar.

We went cross-country skiing in the afternoon. We were driven to the top of a rise and then got to ski down (they took the work out of skiing for the tourists!)


We spent the rest of our day wandering through the ice hotel and church, and sauna-ing, and finished our evening off with a traditional Swedish meal (including cloudberries, wild boar, and reindeer meat).

We were lucky enough to be able to spend a night in an ice room. AT about 11 o'clock, we went into the warm house to get outfitted with our arctic sleeping bags.

Everyone slept in just their long underwear which created a few funny moments as people ran from the warm house in the long underwear and jumped into bed. If you left your regular clothes in the ice room, they would get really, really cold!

After surviving a night at minus 5 degrees, we had Swedish breakfast, a morning sauna, and finished with a dogsled ride to the airport.
The dogsled ride was by far the most amazing part of the trip! We sat in a traditional sled on reindeer furs for the 1.5 hr ride.
After our adventure above the Arctic circle, we flew back to Stockholm to spend a few days sightseeing.

To finish off their trip, my parents met the people in my life here. They flew back to England yesterday, on their way home to Canada.