Northern Lights

dn852k4

My girlfriend and I are going to North Sweden next week.

For return flights to Stockholm (1 checked in case), 1 night stay in Stockholm, return night train to Abikso and 2 nights at a hostel up there the price come to: £687.62

Flight 185.60
train 273.46
hotel in Stockholm 56.70
2 nights in hostel in Abisko 171.86

slopemaster

firebird082 wrote: »

We went to Iceland 2 years ago in late Feb for a (amongst other things) northern lights trip. ...Don't go with the sole aim of northern lights otherwise you are likely to end up disappointed.

Re moon - new moon is best as there's no other source of light in the sky. The other thing to consider is what the moonrise and set times are.

Ah, yes, I'll look up moonrise and set times, hope i can get dark skies to coincide with my birthday!
Iceland - yes, I would love to see the volcanoes and waterfalls, and soak in hot springs too.

slopemaster

nwc389 wrote: »

I am going to tromso in Northern Norway next week for my birthday ....
When you say 'budget' what prices are you comparing it to ?

Have a lovely time and happy birthday.
When your birthday's this time of year and it often snows, you might as well embrace it!

Good question, but I don't really know what my baseline is. I'm certainly not prepared to pay 400 to 800 for one night in the ice hotel. I consider any hotel over 100 dollars/euros/pounds to be expensive.....but I know that this would be a special trip, and these remote places are expensive...

slopemaster

dn852k4 wrote: »

My girlfriend and I are going to North Sweden next week.
For return flights to Stockholm 1 night stay in Stockholm, return night train to Abikso and 2 nights at a hostel up there the price come to: £687.62

Wow!
Thanks for exact figures.

Shimrod

I budget on £2000 for a week in Iceland (I've been four times). That includes car hire, which would be around £400 for the week, but I offset that against the cost of trips you would have to pay for and convenience of being able to search for the northern lights as soon as it goes dark. On our most recent trip we chose to rent a house for five nights instead of using a hotel. The costs was around the same (£100 per night), but we made savings through cooking our own food and packed lunches! It was also in the middle of nowhere, so we were able to see the northern lights without travelling more than 10 feet.

I suspect we might have been there around the same time as Suki1964, as we had three really good nights, and they were the best we have seen.

pompeyrich

Easyjet holidays had some real bargains last december, we paid under £500 total for 3 of us for 4 nights in a Reykjavik hotel inc breakfast with flights from Bristol. Car for £88 from Budget/Avis. Loved Iceland but didn't manage to see the lights . Did have record snowfall and a hurricane to contend with though!!

Was told by everyone that it was mega expensive but found most stuff similar to here although we ate mostly budget take away snacks rather than fancy restaurants and took advantage of the hotels happy hour, around £3.50 a pint then.

slopemaster

Shimrod wrote: »

I budget on £2000 for a week in Iceland
.........
On our most recent trip we chose to rent a house for five nights instead of using a hotel. The costs was around the same (£100 per night), but we made savings through cooking our own food and packed lunches! It was also in the middle of nowhere, so we were able to see the northern lights without travelling more than 10 feet.

2000 a week is a bit scary.
But I like the house idea - whereabouts was it, and where did you find it?

Widelats

For budget, go to Kiruna (Northern Sweden) and hire a log cabin for 2 weeks, you will have to rough it but the lights will be amazing.

michelle09

December 2014 - Easyjet Holidays: Return flights and seven nights in a Reykjavik hotel for £244 each. I can't compare hotels in the other Nordic countries because I crash with friends (in return for putting them up when they're here).


We were lucky and saw the Northern Lights twice (once from our hotel room!) but I would make sure you have things to look forward to other than that so you're not too disappointed if you don't. Reykjavik and the surrounding area is amazing if expensive. You can keep costs down if you try though - we bought snacks from shops for breakfast and dinner and only ate out for lunch.

bagand96

I visited Iceland in November and stayed for 3 nights on the way to the USA.

I didn't find Iceland as terribly expensive as it's reputation. Cost of living there is undoubtedly more than the UK. But I just found it like visiting a major European city, you could make it as expensive or cheap as you wanted.

We got an apartment on airbnb that was fantastic and was in the region of £300 for 3 nights. There was three of us but it would have slept 6. I appreciate November is quite low season for Iceland though so not sure how the prices would stack up at other times.

Flights to Iceland can be very reasonable on easyJet or WOWair. Even Icelandair have some pretty good prices at times so are worth checking.

We did a Northern Lights tour which was reasonable and nearly all the companies allow you to go again for free the next day if no Aurora is seen. Typically nothing was seen on the 3 nights we were there. The day after we flew to the USA the tour company posted stunning photos on their Facebook page... the following few nights had a great display.