Good afternoon,
Sorry for the delay in reply. Since we got back we've been super busy.
The holiday was fab, thank you.
We did see the northern lights. So beautiful. We got that in Kiruna. It lasted hours. Made our lad so happy as it was the first time he has ever seen it himself and didn't need a camera to see it.
Stockholm was awesome. We got an SL travel ticket for three days, so basically could do what we liked without worrying or thinking about trips costs. If we would have had any longer, we'd have gone to Uppsala, but Stockholm has so much it wasn't worth doing that this time. Think I museumed out both husband and son, but they were really excellent quality and I particularly wanted them to go to the Vasa museum. I saw that back in the early 90's and remembered it as being most impressive. It still was. I couldn't persuade them to go in the ABBA museum, so they waited outside while I went in. I enjoyed it immensely, but karaoke is a lot more fun when you are with your friends. Got a random audience clap, though, so was still fun.
Free skating in one of the town squares took us there two days. Just need to pay for skates if you don't have any. Don't know what months that runs through.
I can't say what any catering was like on the train, as the advice was to not bother due to queueing, so we took our own breakfast and had a takeout before the evening boarding.
The takeout was a cooked pay by weight from the dept store. That is definitely worth recommending. Everybody gets what they want for a decent price and it's excellent quality. We did that a couple of times.
One night we'd booked a tourist gimmick Viking restaurant. I would 100% recommend it, however, as it was clearly a labour of love. he food was great and it integrated people from all round the world, so might help with world peace, too! Well, that not might not be the Viking way, but it definitely was there. We live in hope.
We did dog sledding in Kiruna. It was very different to my experience in Greenland. The dogs were more like pets. We also did snowmobiling on an evening dinner trip. That was awesome. It started off really cloudy, so by the time we actually finished dinner and opened the hut door, it was really magical experience as it was really full on aurora and we hadn'texpected it at all. Even without that, the trip was magical, snowmobiling across the tundra and cooking dinner on a silver birch fire and talking and singing.
We saw two ice hockey games whilst away. One in Sweden and one in Norway. The Sweden one in Hovet Arena had very charismatic fans so a lot of atmosphere. The one in Narvik was comparatively sedate, with home made cakes and coffee fir sale, but also good. Both home teams won.
As ever, the biggest issue was time. We now need a holiday to recover.