In the 2019 retrospective post, we promised a postscript about the then upcoming trip to Sweden to see the Northern Lights. Here it is, finally. It took a while to pare down the thousands of photos we made to the small selection you see here.
We arrived in Stockholm on December 30th. We stayed in Gamla Stan, the oldest part of the city, until January 2nd, which gave us the opportunity to explore the city, including the great Vasa museum and the Viking museum, and have New Year’s Eve in a very nice restaurant there and to enjoy gifts from the sky that we did not expect, when both the sunrise and the sunset on New Year’s day were amazing.
On January 2nd we flew to Kiruna, in the far north of Sweden, from where we were taken by bus to the Tourist Station in Abisko National Park, where we stayed for four nights and chased the Northern Lights.
As you see, we had great luck seeing the Aurora on two of the four nights. Even greater luck was being able to see polar stratospheric clouds, a much rarer phenomenon.
After our excursion to the Arctic (Abisko is a good 200 km inside the Arctic circle), we spent three more nights in Stockholm, seeing a few more sights (the Middle Ages museum, Stockholm City Hall, and the Nordic museum), making new friends, and celebrating our 20th wedding anniversary with a dinner at the Michelin rated restaurant of the Grand Hôtel. After that, it was time to fly back home and get ready to hit the ground running for the Spring semester. All in all, it was a great and memorable trip.