Travelling north...

Last night we took an overnight train to Abisko in far Northern Sweden - 200km north of the Arctic Circle.  We are stopping at the Tourist Station, which (I think) is run by Hostelling International.  I joined YHA before we came to Europe, which entitled us to the HI rates.

We had a sleeper on the train last night.  Our only other experience with sleeper compartments was on Amtrak when we were in the US in early 2011.  On Amtrak, during the day we had two seats facing each other, which gave a good view.  At night, the two chairs converted into the bottom bunk, parallel to the side of the train and the top bunk folded down.  Last night, the bunks were at right angles to the side of the train and during the day there was just one bench seat.

Our compartment actually had three bunks, but fortunately we had it to ourselves!  Anna chose to sleep on the very top bunk which gave me plenty of head room!  Much appreciated as my head has only just recovered from the Camino!  There are seat belts for the upper bunks – it is a long way down.  On this train, I was actually able to use my CPAP machine, which I need for sleep apnoea.  The power occasionally dropped out, although what I tended to notice was the beep the machine made when the power came back on!

We arrived at Abisko at about 11:30am – we left Stockholm at about 6pm last night.  We awoke this morning to snow covered pine trees…

This is the view looking over the lake…

And this is the view from our bedroom window…

We have a double room with our own bathroom and are having breakfast and dinner in the dining room.  We will look around, but also plan to rest, relax and plan.  And of course we are hoping to see the Aurora Borealis!

In Stockholm our good luck with the weather ran out!  It was cold but fine when we arrived on Monday afternoon, but it was cold and wet yesterday.   However our hotel was fun.  We had chosen a yacht hotel, Malardrottningen…

 

This was the view from our window when we arrived…

And this was our view from our breakfast table yesterday morning…

Not sure exactly what we are doing tomorrow.  It will be good to slow down a bit…