Northern Lights!

Our trip started in Stockholm; we arrived in the early morning (luckily our room was ready at our hotel).

We stayed in a hotel with a lovely view of the harbor (our hotel is the one to the right of the yellow building). We were in the Östermalm neighborhood. We brunched at a nearby Paris-style café, which was delicious. They were very liberal with the "Paris-style" part, as it was indoors. We opted for a supermarket dinner consisting of bread, cookies, fruit, and strawberry juice (my favorite thing in the world to consume). We walked around the area's streets enjoying the architecture and storefronts.

The next morning we left to fly to Kiruna and then off to nearby Jukkasjärvi, home of the IceHotel (pictured here at night). We spent the first day exploring the hotel. That means that we have pictures of almost every room.

Our room had a boat bed. It was awesome. However, I was a wimp and couldn't sleep there more than one night. I kept waking up covered in sweat from the sleeping bag being too warm, then I'd get cold from the air, then hot from the bag...it was a vicious cycle that landed us in a warm cabin the next night.

The first night we dined in the renowned IceHotel restaurant. It was amazing...except for the sea buckthorn gel. We started with alcoholic drinks that were cooled by gigantic ice cubes that were the same ice the hotel was built from. Then we had reindeer steaks with potato cake, various root vegetables, and pumpkin purée. I can't describe how delicious the whole meal was. Our dessert choices were not terrible, but they were not as satisfying as the meal. The lingonberry mousse I had was a bit more sour than I would have liked. The previously mentioned sea buckthorn gel was apparently the centerpiece of another dish, but certainly was disgusting (sour, unpleasant flavor, etc.); luckily the trimmings of meringue, cookies, and ice cream were better.

We also made a trip to the Absolut Ice Bar. We got a drink in an ice cup (!) that was currant-flavored vodka, black currant juice, and guavabanana juice. It was delicious. Currants really need to be this delicious and plentiful in the US, too.

The second day we snowshoed, which I was remarkably good at. This is noted by the fact that I only fell twice where I needed the assistance of a tree or another person to get up. This snowshoeing venture involved riding a sled towed by a snowmobile, which was fun on its own. During a break in the snowshoeing we ate arctic raspberry muffins and drank warm lingonberry juice, which was just delicious.

After our snowshoeing adventure, we wandered around the IceHotel compound and relaxed quite a bit. We again went out for dinner, but this dinner was special. We first went to the Swedish Space Corporation's Esrange Space Center for a very comprehensive tour of their facilities and capabilities. We first saw the Northern Lights peaking out behind the clouds from the top of the Esrange compound. We visited their rockets and learned about their atmospheric tests. Much like in the morning, we then trekked through the snow (this time without snowshoes!) to a tiny cabin in the woods. Our tour guide made us dinner. The first course was smoked salmon, which did not taste like any salmon that I've ever had before (in that it was delicious and not fishy at all).

We went outside while the main course was cooking to witness the Northern Lights in a newly cleared sky. Unfortunately, we only captured a handful of aurorae pictures, but the ones we did get are fantastic (ignoring that the stars are slightly blurred). We were too busy watching the sky to play with the camera excessively. Anyway, the Northern Lights do, in fact, shift before your eyes. It was an absolutely amazing night. The aurorae were fantastic and the sky was so clear (certainly rivaling Chile). We finished our dinner of moose, potatoes, and black currant sauce (like cranberry sauce but better). Dessert was chocolate mousse with cloudberries (also good, but lots of seeds). I made some unnecessary comment about consuming several kinds of moose at some point. We were driven back to the IceHotel (during the drive to the space center we saw some reindeer and on the trip back we saw a female moose).

After a while we walked down to the Thorne River (where all the ice comes from) and took pictures of the moon before everything was engulfed in clouds (no more aurorae).

The next afternoon we returned to Stockholm. We wandered around Gamla Stan, which was supposed to be the best place to buy souvenirs. They were probably the worst souvenirs I've ever encountered. After walking around the old, old streets of Gamla Stan, which is the oldest part of Stockholm, we wandered back to Östermalm, walking along the harbor. We ventured back to an Italian restaurant we had seen a few days before. It was amazing (but not better than the reindeer). We returned to our hotel, which was right by Stockholm's central train station. In this hotel, our room had controllable mood lighting, which was amusing.

It was a fantastic trip, and we saw some amazing things. However, it was far too short. Sweden is a lovely country with very nice people and amazing food.

Seattle Nerd Conference 2011

I once again went to Seattle for the meeting of the American Astronomical Society. Most unfortunately, I had little time to wander around.

In the process of finding a store that would print my poster on very short notice, I stopped by the Space Needle. It is still there. It is just how I remembered it from four years ago...all "futuristic".

Aside from conferencing, I did a lot of eating. That's about it. I met a lot of important people; generally that's the point of a conference at this stage in my career it would seem.

Gettysburg

I will be quite honest; we went to Gettysburg at the end of August to stay in a "haunted" inn, the Farnsworth House Inn. It was quaint, and there were plenty of creepy things hanging around (see picture!). However, there were no ghosts. We ate some "period" meals (fresh baked, fluffy gingerbread was a highlight!), drove through the battlefields

(which looked much like the picture, but some others were much more overgrown) on our own and on a tour, and went on a ghost tour in the dark. One of the most amusing portions was after the ghost hunting, we were taken to the basement of the Farnsworth where the tour guide (also our tour guide form the afternoon, by coincidence?) told us ghost stories. He is a talented narrator, so we all enjoyed ourselves.

This was a fun weekend trip, as I had never been to Gettysburg before. I was reminded of the history I learned in school.

Last Days and Departure

So I've been a little sloppy with the up-to-date nature of this blog.

The conclusion of Paris was quite enjoyable. The sister and I went to the Château de Chantilly, which was an adventure on its own. We experienced the walking around the quaint little town. The castle is pictured here. I was so glad that we could do something I haven't done before.

We walked through Chantilly for lunch. I had forgotten how hard it was to find food in a small French town. We finally found food that was tolerable, but what saved the meal was the Chantilly cream topping the massive mounds of ice cream we got for dessert. We also acquired some of the best macaroons that we had. I miss the macaroons.

Additionally, we ascended the Eiffel Tower and descended into the depths of the catacombs. Long lines were to be had everywhere. Overall, it was a pleasant trip with lots of good food.