Sightseeing in Kiruna - Snowmobile tour - Dogsledge tour - Flights and prices

Tuesday : We take off from Arlanda (Stockholm) at 11:30. Nice fly over an amazing landscape and we arrive at the Kiruna's airport one and an half hour later. We land on a totally iced tarmac. The plane is stuck and cannot move because of the ice and the snow so we have to wait for a truck before we can finally roll to the terminal (well, let's call that a parking instead). We get out of the plane and we walk to the building.

Kiruna's airport under snowWe get our luggages less than 10 minutes later and we call a cab for a ride to the youth hostel (Yellow House) where we'll spend the first night. We have our first car experience on snow : roads are just straight lines drawn into the snow, the taxi goes at 100 km/h and we use the central line to overtake slower vehicles (the road is wide enough for 3 vehicles).
We arrive at the youth hostel at about 14:00, we pick up the keys, we put the luggages in our rooms and we head to the city. We walk around Kiruna, we do some shopping (we even get free cakes, coffe and Julmust in the shopping centre thanks to the Saint Lucy's celebration). We visit the church and have an interested look at Systembolaget (shops owned by the swedish state and which are allowed to sell alcohol) especially for the upcoming sauna.

Kiruna is a city in northernmost Sweden with 19,000 inhabitants; and 23,000 in the Kiruna Municipality. The name Kiruna comes from the Sami language Giron and means ptarmigan, a white bird native to northern areas. This bird is also depicted on the city arms, together with the sign for Iron. Iron symbolizes the mining industry which has been of great importance for the town.
Kiruna became a Swedish city in 1948, and was at one time listed as the largest city in the world by area, but after the Swedish municipality reform in the 1970s, the term "city" has been discontinued. Kiruna is today the second largest municipality in the world by area, roughly 20 000 km² after Mount Isa, Queensland, Australia, 42 904 km².
Being located 145 kilometres north of the Arctic Circle, Kiruna has perpetual daylight, the midnight sun, approximately from 30 May to 15 July. The polar night is a few weeks shorter, lasting December 13 - January 5. [Wikipedia].

Kiruna's church covered with snow      Bell-tower of Kiruna's church

Kiruna's church by night

Around 17:00, we turn on the sauna, we put the beers in the fridge (in the snow) and 1 hour later everything is finally ready. We have a tough sauna time: 15 minutes inside (one of the hotest sauna I've ever been in!), out jumping and rolling in the snow, 15 minutes inside, ... While we are outside, almost naked and enduring the -15°C, we see our first aurora. We don't really stay long to enjoy the sight! The rest of the evening is quite, we eat, we go out to stare at the sky.

Sightseeing in Kiruna - Snowmobile tour - Dogsledge tour - Flights and prices

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