Travelling Diaries
2018 Swedish Lapland / Day 0 - Pre Travel
Previous and next: Day 1 - Travel to London
Thursday 1st Feb 2018
In preparation for a celebration
It is 10 years since we got our current pet, Tess, a collie with a vacant mind. She was brought into our family as a present to celebrate Karen's 50th Birthday.
On this, the 10 year anniversary of that birthday celebration, we are heading off to Swedish Lapland to try and see the Northern Lights.
The hops and the stops
Our journey takes us south to go north. Well, our motto is, why go in a straight line when a curve is just as interesting!
Well, actually that's not quite true. In fact we don't really have a motto.
That's also not true. Our motto is never to have mottos.
Having said that, never is a long time, so maybe it should be "not have mottos most of the time".
Though even that may be difficult to achieve. Let's settle on "try and not have mottos most of the time, where possible". Is that clear?
Anyway, our Itinerary will be as follows:
- We start with a hop from Dublin to London. This is handy as it allows us to visit our son, Mark, and his girlfriend, Mina.
- We then have a couple of nights in London giving us a chance to enjoy the 10 year anniversary of Karen's 50th Birthday.
- We then fly from Gatwick to Arlanda airport in Stockholm, Sweden followed by a a short flight from Arlanda to Luleå in Sweden.
- We then spend two days in Luleå (including an Ice breaker boat trip) before heading by train to Kiruna, the northernmost town in Sweden. Kiruna is situated in Swedish Lapland and not far from the Norwegian border.
- After a couple of nights in Kiruna, we head by train over to Björkliden for three nights.
- Our return journey then takes us back to Kiruna where we fly to Stockholm, followed by another flight to London Gatwick.
- We finish our trip with a brief overnight in Gatwick (as our plane gets into London late from Stockholm) and then head on home to Dublin.
Let's hope it is a good trip with lots of views of the famous Northern Lights!
Before we travel...
The day before we head off, our daughter, Laura, flew off on her own to Malaysia for a few months as part of her PhD. We will miss her, of course, but her time in Malaysia is going to be important for her studies, and we know she will have a fantastic experience!
We wish her all the best.
Baby it's (gonna get) cold outside!
In preparation for our trip to the arctic circle, we revisited our winter wardrobe that we bought for our last trip to Norway.
Although the trip was only in 2015, the weather then in Norway was not as cold as we expect it to be this time in Swedish Lapland. This is because Norway has the gulf stream keeping it that little bit warmer (hence the Germans occupying Norway during the second world war in order to ship the iron ore out of Sweden via the ice free waters off Narvik!).
The weather forecasts we are seeing for the Swedish areas we are visiting are cold. Very cold.
Today it has been down to -16ºC and snowing in Luleå, -19ºC in Kiruna and -24ºC in Björkliden!
The way to cope is to ensure that you wear layers of clothing. Lots of them. Oh, and drink whiskey, of course.
We have been buying a few extra clothes to build up our layers, and some of our friends have lent us some additional items. Hopefully we will have enough.
However, all of these layers, by their nature, are bulky. So it will be interesting to see how our luggage will take the volume and weight! We have a 20kg weight limit in our bags, so careful packing is the order of the day.
More importantly, will we have enough room for the whiskey! (Feck the extra scarf, we need the Jameson!).
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