I arrived on Saturday after a miserable easyJet flight. Having paid for Speedy Boarding, which got me through check-in in fifteen minutes rather than eight hours and then into my seat of choice - right at the back by a window, while everyone else on the plane fought over the front rows as usual, I got kicked out of my precious extra-price seat half an hour in because "a gentleman is very unwell" and the stewardess wanted him to lie down for a couple of minutes....

The final blog of the trip. I had breakfast, packed and went out into Reykjavik at dawn. It was a clear morning and felt far too warm for my usual five layers and I was very tempted to run back to the hotel to abandon my mittens and a couple of jumpers. I went down to the seafront. The snow on the way was deep and crunchy and very winter-wonderlandy. On the seafront, I stood and took more photos of Esja and the white mountains in the distance and then it struck ...

Having had another nice breakfast of rolls and apple juice, I was picked up at dawn (that is, 10.30 in the morning) and taken to the Blue Lagoon, the big geothermal spa and ultimate Iceland must-do. My favourite thing about the Blue Lagoon is that it's waste water from the power station next door. Svartsengi is a geothermal power station. The sea water comes up from below the ground at 200-300 degrees under high pressure, is used by the power station to generate...

I wrote this once and the stupid machine ate it. I am not pleased at having to write it again. Day three and I finally made it down to breakfast - bread rolls and apple juice. I didn't do anything this morning - vague plans to go into town were scuppered by darkness and then snow - a rarer thing than you might expect in Iceland, or so I'm told. At 12.30 I was picked up by a kind of armoured minibus and we went through the routine of driving to the IE office...

Today started quite late, as I didn't get home until 2am last night and there didn't seem a lot of point in going into town before the sun was up. I followed my map to the main shopping street, then got distracted by the view down a side street - blue sea, pink and white mountain and pink sky. Reykjavik has one of my favourite sea views - the bay is surrounded by real Arctic white mountains and it's spectacular. A little further along was a sculpture of a Vikin...