Karin at Ice Hotel just booked our activities. Christmas Eve we’re taking snow mobiles in search of Northern Lights and having dinner cooked over the fire in a big leather teepee, hut thing. Christmas Day we’re spending half a day dog sledding to the big kennel area and having lunch. I’ll book restaurant reservations next week. I’m very relieved that they provide outerwear since I don’t want my parka smelling like campfire smoke and dog when I’m in Stockholm. Apparently, there’s a big outfitting room with several piles of parkas, snowmobile coveralls, gloves, boots, and goggles. You just outfit up and live in it with your wool and fleece layers for the duration of your stay.

I picked the brain of Patagonia’s customer service folk about the best base layer. Wool won hands down but their stuff was OUTRAGEOUS for a 4 day stint. I got the SmartWool from LL Bean for half the cost. I don’t feel badly about using Patagonia this way; they don’t feel badly about spamming me with prissy, self-righteous environmental/political messages.