Iceland, December 26, 2010 - January 3, 2011

On Boxing Day 2010, Rob, Simon, Storm and I caught a flight to Reykjavik, Iceland with the lofty aims of seeing the Northern Lights and going dog-sledding. Ironically enough, while London had been freezing with average December temperatures in the negatives, Iceland looked positively tropical with temperatures of around 7-10 degrees. Needless to say, all the snow from around Christmas had melted in Iceland so it wasn't going to be quite the winter wonderland we expected. We got into the airport at around 10.30pm and met the man (Oskar) who was renting us the apartment at the airport. He went through the quirks of the apartment with us, gave us the keys and left us to it. Our first decision was bus or cab? We asked the girl at info and she said that for four of us it wouldn't be too much more expensive to take a cab. We didn't know how far away our apartment was from the bus station so that swung us in favour of a taxi. We negotiated a price of 12 000 ISK, around £70 (Iceland isn't cheap by the way...). Our taxi driver ("call me Bernie") was great, full of all sorts of information. He told us all about New Years Eve ("you'd think you were in Baghdad - but without the shooting"), Skyr (curds), and where to buy food ("Bonus"). As travelled towards the city he told us that we were driving through lava fields that look like the moon, but it was pitch black so we couldn't see them. We hit the city, and were immediately struck by the christmas lights that cover the houses and apartments everywhere. Apparently electricity is really cheap because the power station runs on the geothermal springs. So there is a lot of neon. Good thing too, really, considering while we were there the sun rose at around 11am and set at around 4pm. The lights are quite cheering amongst all that blackness. Before we got to our apartment Bernie took us on a mini-tour of the streets of downtown, pointing out the bars we needed to visit. Our apartment, once we got there pleased us no end. Modern and comfortable with a well-equipped kitchen, in a fantastic spot. This is the link to the apartment page - and I really recommend this place. Not badly priced for 4 of us for 8 days we thought. http://www.redappleapartments.com/reykjavik/en/apartmentdetail/view/idapartment/1143/checkin//checkout//guests//bedrooms/ Monday we slept late - we were to find that the strange hours of daylight were to really mess with our body-clocks. Our first order of business was to plan our itinerary, but this was postponed when dear Simon smacked his head on the windowsill in their room and split his head open. You can tell a lot about a country by their health system though, right? We taxied to the hospital but then quickly realised we were at the maternity hospital and the emergency room was in a completely different hospital. Luckily for us though, they had a free shuttle between the hospitals, so we took that and with minimal (for emergency room) waiting Simon was all patched up and only billed around £20 which he was ecstatic about after thinking he would have to pay hundreds. We went the the tourist information after that and learnt two important things:

1. There is only one guy who does dog-sledding and he makes them pull trolleys when there's not enough snow. There is not enough snow most of the year. We really didn't want dogs pulling us along a road in a trolley so we abandoned that goal.


2. The forecast for the Northern Lights was shite for the rest of the week. We had to keep coming back each day and checking.

We were slightly disheartened but booked a tour in a Superjeep which the tourism man assured us was the best one he knew of. It was to pick us up early Tuesday morning, so we decided we needed an early night. We went and picked up supplies at the Bonus, and had a wee look around town, with all of us looking longingly at all the lovely warm stuff in the shops (for London!) - fur and wool featuring highly. We had a quiet night, eating some of the supplies we had brought with us from London. We set out on our journey the next morning sleepy and not knowing what to expect. Our tour guide introduced himself as something that was much easier to shorten to Jon. Icelanders have invented a solution to the snow and ice and lava fields in the form of super jeeps - basically a 4X4 with massively oversized tyres. We all clambered into Jon's and we were off. Our first stop was only about 10 minutes into the journey when Jon drove into a residential cul de sac for us to see the lengths that they go to to decorate their houses for the christmas season. It was fantastic. But even better was to come when he stopped at a small church in the middle of nowhere. The cemetery surrounding the church had been completely taken over with lighting of all colours. It really looked magical in the dim morning. He explained that traditionally the Icelander's will decorate the graves every year. Our next stop was a volcanic crater lake that was last active over 3000 years ago. The rock was a lovely red colour rather than the typical volcanic black. It's also very deep, there were people down the bottom and they looked like little ants. Apparently the water is normally a deep blue colour but it was obviously all iced over when we were there. Our next stop was Geysir, the home of the famous Geysir geyser. This grandaddy geyser does not erupt so often now but another geyser there, Strokkur, erupts every 7-10 minutes. We made our way through bubbling little cauldrons of hot water and steam. Despite the thermal spot, the ambient temperature was icy and there were little bridges of ice over the streams coming from the main pools. When we got to Strokkur we joined the people standing with cameras at the ready and were not disappointed. The geyser eruption starts with the pool of water bulging, becoming a hemispherical bubble, then exploding in a fountain of water. Afterwards the water drains back into the hole, ready to start all over again.

Not far from Strokkur there is the blue pool, so called because the minerals in the water have turned it an intense blue colour. We made our way back to the restaurant/service station and had to take a snap with one of the superjeeps that were in our convoy. Our superjeep was cool, but it's wheels were nowhere near as big as this one's!

Although it wasn't originally in the tour description, we had arranged to pay extra and go snow mobiling. The boys were very excited. We had no reason to regret our choice of superjeep on the way to the glacier, as Jon took us down the steepest possible snow track, with ruts as deep as a person. We got there and got all snow-overalled up, and got allocated our snow mobiles.

We took turns at driving, and I found out it wasn't as easy as I expected it was going to be. You have to really use your body weight to turn, and when you are hurtling along on a slope next to ponds with thin ice you really don't want to veer over into them. The scenery was breath-taking, but it was pretty chilly - the thermometer in the jeep had said negative 7.

Although we all had a blast, we were quite looking forward to lunch by this stage. We stopped at Gullfoss, an amazing waterfall, but the first order of business was food. Apparently this place does the best Icelandic meat soup. It lived up to its name - it was amazing, and you could have as many refills and bread rolls as you wanted. We only had one or two bowls each though as the light was fading fast. We made our way to the waterfall and managed to get some photos in before it got really dark. Storm and I also managed to slip over on the icy path and both got some nice bruises.

The power of the waterfall was intense, and the surrounding ice gave it all a surreal atmosphere.

On the way back into town we all snoozed away until we got to a service station and had to have a hot dog. These are everywhere, and when had with potato salad and crunchy fried onions were a real treat.

We decided the next day we would take in some sights of the city. The National Museum is free on a Wednesday so we headed there. In the centre of the city there is a huge pond, which looked very pretty iced over with the lights of the building reflected in it.

We all spent more time making little figures with plasticine in the kids area than looking around the museum, but when we got to the museum part it was really interesting. We learnt all about the settlement of Iceland by the Vikings and their fascinating history.

I don't think dragons and penguins were in the history books, but snowmen and boats might have been.

We wandered around the city afterwards, managing to find the famous fisherman-run tiny restuarant that sells lobster soup and Minke whale. We all tried whale but Storm was not a fan. The rest of us found it very bloody and stringy - if it is cooked for too long it becomes very tough so it is basically charred on the outside and raw on the inside.

We walked up to see the church, Hallgrimskirkja. It makes a pretty striking silhouette.

That night we checked out some of the local nightlife, they have quite a few pubs with live music so we had a good time but didn't drink much because the alcohol prices are quite high.

The next day we had decided to go to one of the local pools. Because obviously Reykjavik (and Iceland as a whole) is a geothermal hotspot there are several local swimming pools that are heated. When we got to the leisure centre we were pleasantly surprised. The changing rooms to start with were high tech, with great (albeit communal - we're talking Scandinavians here) showers and very clean. Then we walked out to a relaxing warm pool where locals were lounging. Beyond that there was a slightly cooler activity pool with a hydroslide and basketball hoop which kept the boys occupied for ages. Then there was a lap pool (cooler still but still a very comfortable temperature), and four or five hot tubs ranging from 38-44 degrees. Needless to say I was in and out of the 44 degree one pretty quickly. There was also a steam room and a massage room with extremely cheap massages, although we didn't have one. And we got all of this for the equivalent of around £1.50.

Ever since I saw it in the in-flight magazine I had been determined to try the lamb's head (apparently also a traditional Icelandic dish). So after our amazing swim we went and I ticked that box. The others had cheeseburgers...

The lamb's head was good in that the meat was very tender, but there isn't that much of it - really just the cheek and tongue (it's halved). The next day was New Years Eve. We had a plan of attack - we needed to get supplies early in the day, as it is classed as a public holiday so everything closes very early. Then on New Years Day nothing is open.

So once we had everything sorted, we booked our Northern Lights tour (the tourism man had told us this was likely to be our best shot) and then went to our favourite cafe - Cafe Babalu, to spend the rest of the afternoon drinking hot chocolate, eating cake and playing Sequence.

We had to go to the bus station to get on our Northern Lights tour, and when we got there realised there were about three huge buses full of people going. We went to about three different places, all just out of Reykjavik, but alas the Northern Lights were not to be seen. The last place we went was up the hill, which was great because as we came down the hill we could see the city in front of us, and on New Years Eve everybody sets off fireworks. It is one hell of a show, the population of 200 000 spending two million pounds on fireworks, making for a three hour spectacular. It pretty much made up for not being able to see the Lights. The other tradition is bonfires, andwe also saw some impressive fires on our bus trip. But the fireworks were indescribable. The buses stopped at a service station on a rise so we got a good view.

It was after midnight, and Jon, our tourguide had invited us to go out with him on New Years Eve. He called again, so we thought why not, and he sent a taxi round to pick us up. We went over to his house before he took us to a party at his mate's place. Then we went into town and hung out in Kaffibarin (The Place to Be in Iceland, by the way), finally getting kicked out at about 6.30am. We decided to go home after milling around for a bit on the streets with the locals, and went to bed, eventually resurfacing at 1pm. We had decided New Years Day we would go to the Blue Lagoon, so we got out there at around 3pm. In contrast to the local pool we went to, it was around 28 pounds to get in. It was quite busy. Once we got out to the pool, the air temperature was freezing and the pool just wasn't that warm. We spent a little time being a bit miserable, seeking warm patches, and visited the sauna and steam rooms to warm up, then Rob and I spotted Storm and Simon in the middle of the Lagoon, where they had found the holy grail of heat! We happily relaxed for another hour or two, slathering each other with the silica mud that lines the bottom of the lagoon. Then we missed the second to last bus and the next one was just under 2 hours away. We were starving so were a bit miserable by the time we got dropped back off in town. We found a burger joint and managed to buy some burgers before last orders - they were some really good burgers.

We had booked a last tour for our last full day in Iceland, with Jon of course. This tour was to take in the Southern part of the island.

Our first stop on this tour was Seljalandsfoss. This waterfall is beautiful, you can walk behind it.

It makes for some pretty photos.

After this waterfall we drove along some eerie, isolaated highway. Jon pointed out where the volcanic ash from Eyjafjallajokull had fallen. Most of it has been cleared away now, but they have left one field covered so tourists can see the extent of it. The ash is like fine sand, and was quite wet and muddy.

Our next stop was Skogafoss, a 25m wide and 60m tall waterfall. Legend has it that the first Viking settler hid some treasure behind the waterfall but no-one's managed to get the whole lot yet. Because the waterfall throws up a massive amount of spray there is normally a rainbow visible - but not this day. On the way there and back Jon drove the superjeep like a mad thing, speeding through huge puddles so the jeep was engulfed with brown water. It was so much fun.

We climbed up to the top of the waterfall as well. In the summer this would be teeming with wildlife, but at this time of year there were only gulls around. Our next stop was at another glacier - while the other one that we went snow mobiling on was covered in snow this one was just an ice glacier, and we were all very impressed. At the first sight of this ice pyramid I couldn't help but think of Superman's Fortress of Solitude. The ice glacier was amazing, and dotted with ice caves, huge crevices and spectacular chunks of see-through ice. Jon told us some tragic tales of tourists that had met with nasty ends on the glacier.

The view of the glacier blew us away

Beautiful ice cave

After the glacier we went to the black lava beach, where Jon thought there was a whale carcass on the beach. It turned out it had been cleaned up already. The rock formations are amazing, and appaarently the church in Reykjavik was inspired by this cathedral-like cliff.

The sea was pounding, if you were crazy enough to go out into it you would have been swept away in seconds. The waves would smash onto the cliff furiously, so naturally we had to try and get photos next to it (unsuccessfully).

We thought that was the last stop on our tour but Jon surprised us by pulling into a track leading into a paddock with a herd of Icelandic horses milling around. They came up and nibbled at our boots, scarves, and hair. It was one of our favourite parts of our trip.

We ended our trip by grabbing a hotdog at the most famous hotdog stand in Iceland. Every time we had passed it it always had a massive line so had to try them before we left. They were good, but I didn't think quite as good as the one from the service station with the potato salad...

We left Iceland extremely early the next morning, sorry to be leaving this magical country.