The Artisan Blog

Cold, dreary weather, post-festive season torpor, and back-to-work blues; welcome to the joys of January. How do we recommend you cure your mood?

Start planning your 2018 adventures of course!

We have a vast variety of bucket list holidays all around the world, skilfully designed by our Travel Experts with you in mind. We'll take you from the wilds of Finland to the sun-drenched island of Gozo; the fjords of Iceland and Norway to the volcanic paradise of the Azores.

Now I'm hardly known as a petrol-head amongst my friends and I have never been interested in motorbikes, but who hasn't been attracted to the thrills and glamour associated with the snowmobile?

Ever since I was I younger I can remember watching Sean and Roger in old Bond movies and daydreaming of cruising over crisp white snow, a trail of powder in my wake as I power over frozen Arctic landscapes escaping some imagined team of henchmen in hot pursuit.

The ICEHOTEL© has opened its door for another year and we believe that it is more impressive than ever. 

Founded in 1989, the ICEHOTEL© has developed into an internationally recognised brand, especially known for its incredible artwork. Each year at the start of winter the hotel is designed and built from scratch from thousands of huge ice blocks harvested from the Torne River which is then carefully sculpted into an amazing architectural building.

If you're anything like us, you’ll have been cancelling your Sunday night plans to spend it in the comfort of your own sofa watching David Attenborough’s latest masterpiece, Blue Planet II. Whether it is marvelling at the scenery, or wondering how anything can live in the depths of the ocean, we're sure you’ll have been on the edge of your seat and wanting to head out and explore the wonders of the ocean for yourself.

With that in mind, here are three holidays to help you experience the depths of the underwater world.

I caught up with Laura from our Marketing Team to chat about her experience of Madeira. Here is what she had to say:

So, what I imagine when I think of visiting ‘gardens’ is long afternoons spent wandering round protected stately homes, battered flowers and mowed lawns, but you can think again when it comes to the gardens of Madeira;  they’re something entirely different!

We know husky sledding is high on a lot of people’s bucket list, but when you’re there in the moment, it can be quite a scary experience for the first time. Here are our top tips for husky sledding beginners:

Here are our top tips for husky sledding beginners:

At this time of year, the sun does not set in Northern Norway. Whilst slightly disorientating at first, I soon came to really enjoy the never-ending days and the opportunities this opened. In this time of the Midnight Sun, Norwegians sleep less – they fish, they kayak, they BBQ, they island hop – more daylight means more time to enjoy the splendours of the land and socialise until the early hours.

At around 11.30pm the sun dips toward, but never quite reaches, the horizon. The Norwegian fjords and mountains are bathed in a pinkish golden glow and the scenery looks all the more idyllic, exuding a sense of warmth and serenity. As strange as it sounds, one of my favourite things to do was to simply sit on the water’s edge and enjoy the colours of the light.

One of the key highlights of the trip was the chance to spend time on the island of Senja. Having listened to colleagues rave about it for years, it was a place I was eager to see. I can confirm that it does indeed live up to the hype.

It didn’t really occur to me until afterwards, but to see a whale in the wild is truly a magnificent experience.

We were lucky enough to see four sperm whales up close off the coast of Norway (although, as Daniele our guide pointed out to us, your eyes play tricks with you at sea and what feels like 20 metres away is more like 80) and it makes you feel overwhelmingly humbled to witness an animal that has swum in our oceans for more than 5 million years.

The adjective ‘beautiful’ is banned in our office so I have had to delve into my thesaurus to accurately describe what I thought of Norway on my recent stay. Glorious, splendid, gorgeous, lovely and stunning are a good way to start, but perhaps most accurately, my overall thoughts on the parts of Norway we explored were that they were so easy on the eye that it was almost laughable.