Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
So we are back on the road again and this time our journeys have firstly taken us to the capital of Iceland; Reykjavik. We landed on lucky Friday the 13th, which was very lucky for us as we got an amazingly cheap flight! After a 45 minute bus ride to town from the airport in the gathering 3:30pm darkness we copped our first hit of the welcoming 3 degree icelandic weather on our walk from the bus station to our apartment.
After settling in to our very cosy and comfortable studio apartment in central Reykjavik we headed out to begin our adventures, starting with a walk around town to get our bearings and then a warming meal of soups & bread (one of them being a very traditional reindeer soup).
The following day we had our biggest snow day of either of our lives, with the fresh snow falling heavy and almost coming in sideways. We battled on through this unfamiliar weather with stops at: a very cool cafe/bakery for an icelandic style brunch, Harpa (the national opera & arts house) where an amazingly diverse Christmas food & drink market was being held with ridiculously generous sized free samples of everything, and another outdoor Christmas market, before retiring to the warmth of our apartment for a home cooked meal! Unfortunately (in hindsight) this was not the end of our night, as we then went out on a northern lights hunting tour until 2am only to see nothing except our toes turning blue! The irony of the situation being that the only glimpse we caught was actually in Reykjavik while we were walking to meet the bus for the tour to drive out of the city to try to see the lights! Does that make sense? Hmm
Sunday saw us start the day with a climb to the top of Hallgrímskirkja, the tallest cathedral in Reykjavik with great views over the city and beyond to the surrounding snow-capped hills. Next was a stop at a great little independent cafe called Reykjavik Roasters for freshly roasted coffee and a cinammon scone. Following this had to be another visit to Harpa for a top up of free samples of food @ drink which peaked with our over-enthusiasm when a serving lady said to Ant "weren't you here yesterday?" Awkward... We finished the day with a visit to the national museum for some good old history lessons of Iceland and then topped it off with an amazing dinner at cafe Glo; a partly raw vegan cafe with great food! Part of our northern lights tour from the night before included a free re-booking on the tour the following night if you didn't see the lights. So off we trekked again into the freezing cold icelandic evening to search for green lights in the sky. Unfortunately we had virtually the worst weather and lighting to see the lights possible, and we trudged back to Reykjavik at about 12:30am in -4 degrees without any success again! Hopefully we will be more lucky when we spend our 3 nights in a log cabin in the southern Iceland wilderness!
Our final full day in Reykjavik on the 16th included a walk along the northern part of the city, another great coffee and snack at a nice little organic cafe, and a visit to a local cinema for a viewing of 2 icelandic documentaries; one about the country's history of volcano eruptions, and another following a photographers hunt for the northern lights. We also booked a glacier snowmobiling tour for this coming Wednesday which we are very excited about!
So tomorrow (Tuesday) will bring for us our car hire which we will drive south to the Blue Lagoon, a geo-thermal spa for a day of relaxing and then 3 nights in our log cabin complete with hot tub, log fire & a bottle of Verve champagne! Wahoo
- comments
karen Are we having a good time then??