Aera - Panorama Glass Lodge

We got taken away by the views of the 1 bedroom cabin on their website when we booked this. We have stayed in similar places in Kiruna in Sweden (Camp Ripan) and Rovaniemi in Finland (Santa Clause Holiday Village), this is definitely not in the same league. Consider this:- 1. You have to book for atleast 2 nights in Dec, this place is close to 30 minutes from the main city with nothing close by. 2. They offer an Electric Car as part of the room, BUT, the car has to be collected from a place that is close to the airport (the car company shall not deliver the car anywhere else) and it has to be dropped at the same place. Ultimately if you are taking a flight, you will end up taking a cab from this place to the airport also (although it seems close, you cannot walk and drag the luggage on a snowy road. 3. The dinner menu has only limited choices. 4. The Cabins seems to be newly built, but it seems that corners have been cut in quality e.g. in my cabin the table in the living room was already wobbly and one of the hooks for the towel in the bathroom was broken. As part of 4 nights in Tromso, we stayed here for 2 nights, on hindsight it would have been better if we stayed all 4 nights in the city.

We stayed four nights in the Glass Cabin hoping that we will be able catch a glimpse of the Northern Light in the comfort of our cabin. It snowed all four nights. Although the sight from our cabin was beautiful, it was not worthwhile staying so many days in the cabin. For the price we paid, the cabin was really tiny. We travelled with 2 large luggage. After opening up our luggage, we could hardly move around in the room. It has some basic kitchen facilities which was not useful to us. Although the cabin came with a rental car, the support for the rental car is almost non-existence when we encountered issues with the car. Having said that, it is still an experience to spend a couple of nights in the cabin for the excellent view.

We saw the northern lights 2 nights out of 3, and that was one of our goals. The room was nice and breakfasts were OK,some availability issues once for some selections. We did the King Crab dinner which was tasty. I think an an Aussie you have to put aside the expense because what you get in Norway for the price isn't up to Australian standards, but that seems to be across the entire country / region from what I have seen. The staff at Aena are friendly and helpful. Be prepared for a pretty sketchy hire car experience, they seemed like what I would expect in Africa or India, but we had no issues. This place has potential to be first class but is not quite there just yet.