Before & after/Day & night

The past two weekends I visited the ice festival. On the first weekend, I caught the tail-end of the sculpting of the ice sculptures. Then on the following weekend I went at night, because I had been told that the ice sculptures are lit up.

I have to say, I really liked having the ice festival in town. And I really liked that it was free. But it also made me understand why I paid to get into the Fairbanks Ice Festival. These sculptures are cool, but the caliber of those in Fairbanks was in a totally different ballpark. Also, that one was a world art festival, and there were definitely sculptors from all over, including Scandinavia, so I'm not trying to imply anything about the origins of the greatest ice sculptors. Here is an old post where I included a couple pictures of the more impressive ice festival.