No Ice Hotel

Parts of a sign were still left, but this was the most Ice Hotel like thing there.

One of my friends asked me: "There is something called the Ice Hotel outside Sapporo. Have you heard of it?" Since I was introducing this hotel on Japanese TV last year, I had indeed heard of it. I even visited last year.

My friend wanted to go see this Ice Hotel and asked me to come along. I asked if she was sure they were still open, since it closed in early March last year. She said that she had checked with their Web page and it said that they were open two more days.

The things that are between the car and the truck is what was left of the Ice Hotel when we got there.

When we got there, there was no Ice Hotel left anymore though. It had melted a week ago. Since we had a very warm winter, that was not very surprising. You would think they should have updated the Web page with that information, though...

A guy who was clearing away some of the non-melted parts from what used to be the Ice Hotel remembered me from last year.

Seeing reruns of myself on TV again

Me, not being interviewed for 5 minutes like I though, but sitting smack in the middle.

One of my friends in Sapporo recorded my latest appearance on (Hokkaido only) TV and made a BlueRay with this program. They sent it to my parents. My parents do not understand Japanese, and since it is BlueRay it was hard to add subtitles. I was thinking of translating the show and sending the subtitles to my parents, but apparently the powers that be have tried and mostly succeeded in making that very difficult.

Anyway, when I was in Stockholm we watched the show together, and I explained what was going on. I also got some better screen shots now that I had control of the TV.

The previous story describing the contents can be found here.

Talking about the ice hotel built just outside Sapporo.

Trying to decide what face to make when I was in the small frame.

Presented with my name

Bowing politely as the information about age, my place of work, etc. shows up.

When asked if I speak Japanese I said yes, but that I was not a native speaker, and showed my shirt that said: "I am not Japanese", in Japanese.

You could fax/e-mail/etc. stories of visiting Scandinavia to the show, and some of these were read at the end of the show.

The first e-mail that was read to me was from one of my friends! Which I realized halfway through the mail... "This story sounds familiar?" I was not sure if it would be OK to say: "I know this girl!", so I kept my poker face, haha.

Speaking Japanese and using Japanese body language

We also talked about Swedish handicrafts

Being treated like a celebrity at the Ice Hotel

Yesterday I went to the Sweden Hills "Ice Hills Hotel" that was featured in the TV show I was on last Monday. There are four buildings built from ice and snow, three that are rooms that you can stay over night in and one that is an "Ice Bar".

The (blue) Ice Bar and the three Ice Hotel rooms

The Sweden Hills ice hotel is inspired by and built in cooperation with the Ice Hotel in Sweden, which apparently is the oldest ice hotel in the world. This Swedish connection, and the fact that the new ice hotel is located in "Sweden Hills" was why they asked me to be on TV (being Swedish).

Me and the staff

Me and a cocktail

When I got to the ice hotel, the staff there recognized me from TV and said they were very happy about me promoting them on TV. They showed me around the hotel rooms, and several of them came up to me and asked if it was OK to take a photo together with me. Next time I should go there wearing sunglasses and look more like a celebrity, I guess, haha.

Selfie. They said that you could not have your drinks "on the rocks", only "in the rocks"...

Selfie. The hot cocoa was also good, but not served in ice

I wanted to try the glasses made of ice, so I ordered a cocktail in an ice glass. I also wanted to try the hot cocoa. I was wondering about what kind of system they had, since they did not seem to have a tab where they wrote down what I ordered, but then again when I showed up there with my friends we were the only guests. Later, other guests also showed up and it became quite crowded. I looked at them ordering and they had to pay for everything they ordered at the time of placing the order. It turned out they just gave me everything I asked for for free because they thought I had done a great job on TV...

Flowers and a bunny

Colored lights in blocks of ice

Staircase to a cold bed

The hotel rooms were very nice. They were all designed by different local artists, and one had a plant theme with carvings in the walls. One had colored lights, which looks very nice with the ice and snow. My favorite room had a staircase leading up to the bed. All the beds were made out of ice, though you have a fur blanket on top so it is not that hard to sleep on.

Fur lined door

Other people waling around in the hotel rooms

So far they have had quite a few guests, and the only ones to make use of the "give up" policy (they drive you to a normal hotel and let you stay there instead if you want to give up) was a family with very young kids where the kids could not take the cold the whole night. The roof of the buildings have holes straight out to the night sky, so you get new snow in the room when it snows, and the temperature (while warmer than outside) is not that high.

Ice counter

Ice seats

Ice table

The ice bar was also very nice. The counter and all the furniture are made from ice. The room looks very white when you are in there, but it is actually blue. So all the photos have people looking very blue in the face. The chairs are made from ice but have fur covers so it is quite comfortable to sit there.

Ice glasses

My ice cocktail

The ice glasses are cool (haha). They are a little bit inconvenient to drink from since they are so thick, but they give you a straw to drink through too, so no problem. The hot cocoa was very good, as expected since it is produced by the Royce chocolate company (which has a factory just outside Sweden Hills). All in all, it was a very nice place and I want to go back there again before the facility melts.

Hot cocoa comes with Royce chocolate

They recommended melting some of the chocolate in the cocoa to improve the experience of bot the cocoa and the chocolate.