TIP-TO-TIP: UMEÅ, LULEÅ, AND THE TREEHOTEL!

We got up a bit later and enjoyed the hotel breakfast before heading on north again. We stopped in Umeå for lunch and to walk around the city center and riverfront a bit. They were hosting SM-vecka, which is the national championships week for all the little sports that don’t have their own world championships. We watched several games of 3×3 basketball, which I’d never seen before, but most of the events were scattered around the city and some were in venues you had to pay admission to.

Fountain by Renmark’s square in Umeå, designed by Stig Lindberg

Anders looked up what else there was to do downtown and took us to Guitars The Museum. Because we got there 15 minutes before closing time, they didn’t charge us admission, so we just zoomed around the extremely well set-up museum that houses a collection of thousands of guitars plus other miscellaneous rock music memorabilia. We finished the evening at a tiny little AirBNB cottage by a lake but we were tired, so we mostly just crashed!

The next day we stopped outside Luleå at Gammelstad Kyrkeby, which was the third world heritage site on our trip. It was fascinating. There used to be tons of these church villages all over the northern end of Sweden, because church-going was mandatory, and distances were so great that many farmer and their families couldn’t afford to pay the fines, so they traveled to the nearest church and built a little cottage to stay in over the weekend, and for church holidays. There were hundreds of nearly identical little red cottages, all in pretty good condition, because they are all still privately owned. You are not allowed to use them for summer cottages, and can only stay 1-2 nights in them at a time, plus no electricity or toilets, though there are communal toilets now dotted around the village. The exhibition in the visitor center was excellent, as was the gift shop and the little café next door where I had a rhubarb biskvi that was divine. We also went into the church and around the grounds before we left.

All the houses have to be painted Falu Red with white trim

Onward to our destination: Treehotel in Boden (Harrads)! I read about this hotel ages ago and have always wanted to go, but because it was far away and it’s ridiculously expensive, I figured I’d never make it. When I found out our route was passing quite close to it, though I talked Anders into spending one night at the cheapest room they have, which was still ridiculously spendy, but hey! You only live once, right?! They only have 8 treehouse rooms, though they have several regular hotel rooms in the main building. Ours was The Cabin. It was super cool, but to be honest, it was not the most restful night I’ve spent. The view was amazing, and the bed was fine, but they had an incinerator toilet that you had to add a paper filter to each time and that was enough to wake me up thoroughly when I had to get up in the middle of the night to use it. Plus, we were now up in the land of the midnight sun and even with blinds and curtains, it was VERY light in the room all night.

We had a FABULOUS dinner the evening we arrived, 3 courses and our own little private dining room for two. I was a bit taken aback when the appetizer turned out to be reindeer heart tartar with pine tree shoots, but it was very good, as was the arctic char main dish, and the dessert was AMAZING. Cloudberry sorbet with salt caramel crème brulée: NOM NOM.

You have to walk about 10-15 minutes from the main building up through the mosquito-infested woods to where the treehouse rooms are. They are scattered about in the forest and each one is completely different. There is a central shower/sauna/toilet facility in the woods as well, which was fun to use, walking in the woods in the early morning and being breakfast for the mosquitoes! Thank god for mosquito spray as all the stories I’ve heard about northern Swedish mosquitoes turned out to be true.