So i know i've been a bit radio silent as of late but o my heavens the adventrues are now well and truly over for a little bit at least, if only becasue exhaustion has taken over!
The adventure period began on March 21st at 11:38 one relatively spring like morning in the Northern Hemisphere, as the train departed Lund station for Stockholm. Despite the prospect of another 24hours on a train spirits seemed suprisingly high! The 4 hour journey went remarkably quickly, mostly due to some classic Ana time and memorable comments. My most favourite one being a genuinely amazed statement about Sweden that, 'O my god, they have WHITE hay!' This rather splendid outburst arose after seeing a pile of hay bales covered in white plastic! O i love the Ana, she is a legend!
So Stockholm arrived, sooner and windier than generally expected and we were let out in the fresh air for an hour before the next train. Shana, Mina, Ana and I had a little exploration around the station and found only roads (aparently we should have gone the other way if we wanted to find the city!) The girls found it rather nice to be back in a proper city (Lund is 'apparently' a city...hmmm....!) all coming from either Sydney or London. Before we knew it though it was 5pm and time for our 2nd leg of the journey.
Ana and I agreed to sharing a cabin with 'the boys' (Ilias, Dave, Hugo and Pieter) and o my if we'd only known what lay ahead! Our cabin actually turned into 'the party' cabin after many a round of Who Am I? Ilias getting some classics such as Santa, Hercules and his hardest one of all, having never heard of him, Tiger Woods! Not convinced that this guy was in fact rather famous and trulyexisted, he then proceeded to ask every one who passed if they had in fact herad of someone called Tiger Woods, which of course they had, much to his amazement!
Now when i described it as the party cabin, i make no exageration of this term! The table was covered in alcohol bottles and when the iPod arrived - WITH speakers - Well you can imagine the scene! (one tiny 6 bed cabin, people all over the show, drinking, laughing, shrieking, and of course the obligatory drunken rock rendition, complete with air guitar and head banging!) But im sorry to say Ana and I were both ready for bed around 12, we felt like such old ladies!)
Beds were finally put down around 1 ish after the guard had already been round for the 4th time to tell everyone to quiet down, bless him he really was so tolerant. Swedish design amazed me again when making the beds, they just think of everything, my favourite being the seat covers folding down into pillows - genius! :-D
Slept beautifully, despite the smelly boys (again i make no exageration here, it was a confined space with 4 boys - need i say more!!!) But we arrived in Kiruna alive and kicking, despite the bad air at 10:30. Quick check in at the hostel, then off to the ice hotel - yes the whole hotel really is made out of ICE!!!! it's very very schnICE!!!
Got extreeeeeeeemely snap happy and only just had time for a hot chocolate in an ICE glass before heading for the bus. Most people went backt to the hotel, but the boys being true adventurers and full of energy decided to head off for some cross country ski-ing. Unsurprisingly my ski legs are not so good and i ended up falling A LOT, mostly due to an inability to trun, which resulted in a most splendid superman slide down a hill on my front, which i'm still quite proud of!
Truly exhausted we headed home. End of Day 1.
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