After the extreme heat of Bali at Christmas, we thought maybe a cooler climate would be nice for half-term. A couple of years back we had some fun skiing in Holland (quite an accomplishment, I know) so this year thought we'd try it with real mountains. We took advice from our Swedish friend Malin and headed off to Åre, which is about an hour's flight North of Stockholm. We rented a super log cabin in the hills above Åre Björnen and spent the week skiing, boarding, sledding, snomobiling and generally having fun. At the start of the week it was around -2°C and we were wondering if we had over-invested in thermals, fleeces and ski-jackets. However by mid-week we were very glad we had as the temperature failed to make it much above -20 °C even during the day!