Hotel of Ice Balea Lac: Romanian guesthouse made entirely of ice

With its frosty furniture and glittering white walls, Hotel of Ice Balea Lac in Romania certainly attracts visitors keen to experience the unusual surroundings.

Even the beds are made from ice, so guests best not bring a hot-water bottle.

And they can be certain of having a truly unique stay, as the Hotel of Ice near the glacial Balea Lac in the Romanian Carpathians is rebuilt every year, guaranteeing it never stays the same.

Every winter since 2005 the Hotel of Ice in the Fagaras Mountains is rebuilt from natural materials.

Local craftsmen painstakingly carve huge blocks of ice that have been cut and removed directly from the Balea Lac to construct the walls and are used to raise the walls and snow from the mountain blocks is packed in to keep the walls together.

In 2010 the builders constructed an Ice Bar and the Ice Restaurant at the hotel, which typically has between 10 and 14 rooms, which is situated at an altitude of 2,034m.

But this is not a place for those who feel the cold, as the temperature inside is about -4C – although the hotel offers warm and fleecy blankets for the beds.

The Romanian hotel – the first of its kind in Eastern Europe – offers visitors a North Pole experience where they even sip their drinks from glasses made of ice – so there is no need for ice cubes to keep the drinks cool.

Yet while it offers pillars, tables and chairs made of ice, those wanting to use the toilet will have to leave the hotel to visit ones nearby as the hotel cannot have them inside the structure.

And it’s not just blocks of the frozen stuff – local artists add beauty by carving sculptures in the style of Romanian modernist sculptor, Constantin Brâncuşi, in the hotel.

It even offers a hand-carved ice church nearby.

But arriving at the hotel is not as simple as getting a taxi from the airport to the reception -visitors have to catch a cable car in winter as the road leading to it is inaccessible by road during the winter.

Hotel of Ice Balea Lac