Kirkenes Part 2

After our hike we drove over to the Russian border crossing to just spy into Russia. The first three photos are all from the parking lot at the border. I was way too excited to stop by here. Like if things were different then Russia would be top of my list for places to travel to…but as it is I will probably never go because you know all the things there. So it was fun spying over into the country even though you couldn’t see much.

Then it was up to the Kirkenes Snow Hotel to spy on the rooms and grounds. Now I was pretty excited for this as well, but mainly because they had sled dogs that you can visit with! Plus snow/ice hotel sounds fun! When we first got there it was sprinkling a little, but stopped after a few minutes which was really nice. We went and saw the reindeer first, the light one did not like people! He came right over when we were there and started kicking at the fence (and we saw him do that to other people too!) so we left him alone. The others didn’t care about us.

Then on to sat hi to the pups and oh they were so nice!! And super calm. The lady at reception was like if they jump on you it is just because they are excited to see you so you might get dirty since it is wet today, and I was like okay I will try not to get too dirty. But the pups were so sweet and chill and just came over and wanted pets and were just super friendly and I loved them! We visited them a few times and walked around and said hi to the pups that wanted us to (they said to only interact with the ones that wanted to so I waved to them and said hi and if they came over they got pets and scratches!). The one pup was being silly the one time and sitting half in half out of his house. Oh, I loved it (even though the pups were a bit wet).

Then it was on to the hotel to spy and…it was super dissapointing. Like yeah it was cool it was made of snow and ice, but…it felt really run down and cheesy and not very nice. Like I think it is over 400 euro a night to stay in one of the rooms and…it is definitely not worth that. The beds didn’t look very comfy or nice and yeah. There was a lot of dipping so that would be annoying trying to sleep. It was just not what I expected. It took like 5 min to walk through the whole thing and take photos. Definitely not worth it to stop by just for that. By the pups? Pups were worth it for me! They were such good pups!

Then there was supposed to be a trail you could walk along down to see the views by the restaurant and cabins (the cabins looked WAY nicer than the snow hotel!), but we couldn’t find it and finally asked someone and it was not what was listed on the map and didn’t look very nice and was all muddy from the rain so we skipped that and had coffee and kuchen at the restaurant outside (hot chocolate and a cinnamon bun) instead! The hot chocolate was just hot water and cocoa powder and sugar you mixed yourself and was fine for something warm, but the cinnamon bun was really good! Oh! And next to the outside seating at the restaurant there were some insulated pipes on another building that the birds had gotten into and tore up and built a nest in!

So that was the snow hotel. Without the pups I would have been super disappointed, but they were so sweet!Read more