Grab your fur and pack your ice skates because it's almost time for the 2004 opening of the Ice Hotel in northern Lapland, Sweden.

If you haven't experienced this winter wonderland, a visit to The Ice Hotel should be at the top of your Christmas wish list. In a small village called Jukkasjarvi, 200 km north of the Arctic Circle, the Ice hotel is built every year entirely out of ice and snow. Every spring the entire hotel melts into the River Torne.

This year, the hotel opens for the season on December 11. Everything here is made of ice, and when you arrive, with the lights behind the ice makes everything looks very blue. Each room is built by an ice artist and has a different theme - Most guests brave the cold for a night to sleep on a bed of ice on top of reindeer skins in specially made fur sleeping bags that keep you warm even when it gets to-50 degrees (and it does!!!!). The Ice Hotel provides you with warm outer clothing, snow mobile overalls, gloves and a fur hat!

In the morning they wake you up with hot lingonberry juice and a sauna. During the day, you can go on moose safaris in the Swedish forest visit a Sami camp (the Swedish Eskimo tribes who live off the land here) and get is a lesson in driving a reindeer sled. Later they will encourage you to take a dip in the open-air wood heated hot tub, right out on the frozen river. Good luck.

Probably the highlight of the trip though is the Absolut ice bar. People come here from all over the world and it is the most happening bar - hard to believe to find all these people up here! But the bar itself is stunning with crystal ice chandeliers and you drink your icy vodka in glasses made of ice. Everybody in the bar is wearing the same hats and coats provided by the hotel and it makes for a outrageous atmosphere - as if you were all stranded on a northern desert island together.

The Swedes have decided to look on winter as a great asset and artists come here to exhibit ice sculptures. One local artist has a glass blowing studio that you can visit and buy the glasses.

And year the Ice Hotel melts and is rebuilt in a different style for the next season. Not only is the Ice Hotel a surreal once in a lifetime experience but it gives you an opportunity to really bundle up in your furs. For those who have always wanted to sleep in their fur coats here's your chance!

Icehotel.com