After a night at the Ice Hotel, we switched to the X:Ripan, a hotel/campground located right in Kiruna itself (about half the price per night of the Ice Hotel!)  This was a very nice spot for us - there were lit cross country ski trails right outside our room, and skis (and snowshoes) for rent at the Ripan.  They arranged a dogsledding tour for us and were generally very helpful with trail maps, suggestions about what to do, etc.  It was also nice to be walking distance into X:Kiruna, although there wasn't really a lot in Kiruna itself to do...

One nice thing about the small town of Kiruna though - to catch a 12:25 flight, our cab picked us up at the hotel at 11:45am!!  A little different from the 2 hours we need at the airport here...

This is our room at the Ripan - cozy and warm - quite a switch from our room at the Ice Hotel.
The Ripan Hotel
 Our room at the Ripan

Right outside our door there were probably 50-100k of cross country ski trails, about 10-15k of which were lit.  Since it was dark so early, we made good use of the lit trails!  Here is Karen skiing, about 2:30 in the afternoon!!
Skiing in the middle of the day

We also went dogsledding, with the company (?) X:Husky Safari (really it was just one guy and his girlfriend, with their ~30 dogs).  He was very friendly and his dogs were wonderful.  On the left you can see us ready to go, with the dogs in the background, while on the right we are actually on our way.  Note the light - these pictures were take about 11am (or 11:15am).

The dogsled tour
 View from the dogsled
Our final day, we took a snowshoe tour up the side of a local mountain - we didn't make it to the top of the mountain, but we did get to see a good view of the sun trying to rise (though it wouldn't actually make it over the horizon for another few days).  It was beautiful there - cold, barren, snow covered - I'd love to go back sometime.
The sun trying to rise




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