Sweden 2024: Off to the Arctic!
Today, we embark on our last adventure of 2024–a trip to the Icehotel in Kiruna, Sweden. However, our first actual stop of this trip will be a couple of days in Stockholm, which involves a long layover in Heathrow.
The last time we flew to London was a few years ago, when Nick flew for work and was able to fly in business class, while I paid for my ticket and was stuck in Premium Economy. This time, we both sat in business class in the middle two seats on the newly outfitted British Airways plane. This is our first time flying their new product, even though it’s been available for a couple of years. Nick isn’t a fan of the herringbone seats, primarily because at 6’5”, the footwell is too narrow and short for him. But with the new 1-2-1 layout, this means that every passenger has aisle access. My issue with the previous business class seats were that they were in a 2-4-2 layout, and if you were seated in a window seat or in the middle of the group of four seats, you had to walk over legs of the passenger next to you in order to access the aisle—super awkward. Personally, I found the new Club World seats to be far superior to the old seats, and am happy that BA upgraded their hard product.
Our check-in at SeaTac was amusing because of the person checking us in. First, he asked if we came from downtown Seattle, which was an odd question, but we responded that we drove through it to get to the airport. He then commented that he knows someone with a name similar to mine, but that his last name was spelled Lu. And then he said that he used to work at the Fairmont in downtown Seattle, but then was let go because they had high standards for their staff, which is probably not the greatest thing to tell a customer. And then as we were almost finished, he told us that we could upgrade to first class for $1000/person, which we declined. Maybe if it were $1000 total, we would have entertained that offer. I might consider it for the return flight though.
Since we had a couple of hours before our flight departed, we decided to head to the Alaska lounge in the North Satellite. As we were walking to the escalator down to the train that goes to N, a woman stops us and says that her daughter (probably 3 or so years old) really wants to go down the escalator. However, the mother needs to use the elevator because she has a stroller with a newborn, so she asked us if we could accompany her daughter down the escalator and meet her at the bottom, and we agreed. It was very uneventful, and she seemed genuinely excited to go on the escalator. We met the mother at the bottom as she excited the elevator, and she thanked us. Meanwhile, Nick and I were amazed that she trusted random strangers with her young daughter. I guess we look trustworthy and harmless?
Soon, it was time to board our flight. It took a few minutes to settle in, mainly trying to figure out what all the buttons do, and where all the storage is. Our flight was actually very pleasant. My flight attendant was super nice, and even asked about what I was crocheting. Meanwhile, Nick was amazingly able to get a few hours of sleep on the plane!
After a small breakfast was served, we landed in Heathrow. Our flight to Stockholm wouldn’t be for another 8 hours, so we decided to transit from Terminal 5 to Terminal 3 so that we could take advantage of my Oneworld Emerald status and use the Cathay Pacific first class lounge.
To get there, we had to first find the terminal connection bus from T5, which actually wasn’t that hard after getting off the plane. And luckily for us, as we approached the waiting area for the bus, it arrived so we had no wait. A few minutes later, we arrived at T3, where you have to go through security again, meaning that they need to your passport and boarding pass. The security agent scanned my boarding pass, and said that we were at the wrong terminal because our flight to Stockholm is departing from T5. We then told him that we wanted to use the lounges in T3 because our layover is so long, so he asked his supervisor about this. The supervisor asked us which lounge we wanted to use, so I told him the Cathay Pacific lounge, and he looked at our scheduled departure time on the boarding pass and said that it was OK. But then the agent needed to manually write down our information on a list of passengers, so that took a few minutes. Fortunately, no one was in line, but yeah, if you ever need to transit from T5 to T3 airside, it’s a process. The agent was super nice though, which is not our usual experience at Heathrow.
Inside T3, we found our way to the Cathay Pacific lounge, and once the receptionist confirmed my Oneworld status, she showed us the way to the first class lounge:
The floor to ceiling windows of the tarmac bring in so much natural light, and the seats the face out the windows make for a relaxing place to chill out. There’s a small pantry area with some prepared foods, snacks and drinks, as well as a self-serve bar. But the main attraction is the full-service restaurant, where you can order food to be delivered to your seat, or you can dine-in at the dedicated restaurant space.
You also have access to the business class lounge, which is bigger, but less secluded, however, they do have a wonderful looking made-to-order noodle bar. We didn’t ask, but I’m sure we could have ordered some noodles and take them over to our seat in the first class lounge.
Since we had many hours to kill, we decided to order some food: a dim-sum basket, a bbq pork bao, and dan dan noodles:
There was significant amounts of fog at Heathrow, which meant that our flight was delayed by a couple of hours. Since it took a while to get to T3 from T5, we wanted to give ourselves some time to figure out how to get back to T5. It actually wasn’t too bad, and we found ourselves with at least two more hours until our flight was going to board, so we decided to go to the British Airways first class lounge in the South Terminal. This is different from the Concorde room, which is exclusively for paid first class passengers.
Compared to the Cathay Pacific first class lounge, the BA First Lounge felt like a mildly better business class lounge. It was actually quite crowded when we visited, and the seats were not as nice (no lounge chairs to relax in). But it did have a large food area with many options, so that was nice. And really, we’re happy to be able to relax there at all while waiting for our very delayed flight.
Our scheduled departure from Heathrow was going to be around 10:10pm, meaning that we’d arrive in Stockholm well past 1am. We realized our flight was so delayed that we’d miss the last train from Arlanda to Stockholm, so we pre booked a taxi online. It took a while for our bags to arrive, but we were happy when we saw both on the carousel. Soon we were talking to the immigration officer, who was actually quite thorough with his questions. After asking the normal questions of why we’re visiting, where we’re going and where we’re staying, he proceeded to ask us what we’re specifically doing in Sweden. We told him that we’re going to Kiruna to go to the Icehotel, and then he asked how many days we’re there and why, so I responded that it’s for my birthday. And then he asked us to provide the booking confirmation for our flights out of Stockholm to London, which no immigration officer has ever asked us. Eventually he let us through, but it was about 5 minutes of questioning.
Once exiting immigration, we found our pre-booked taxi driver, who met us with a sign, and soon, we arrived at our hotel at 3am. Our sleep-addled brains were greeted with this giant sculpture upon entering the very modern lobby of Hotel At Six:
But we didn’t spend long contemplating it, and went to sleep quickly to get as much rest as we could before our first full day in Stockholm.