Disclosure: there are affiliate links on this page. If you click on a link, find something you like and buy it, I may get a small amount of commission at no extra cost to you. Sometimes you might even get a discount!
Iceland certainly lived up to its reputation as the land of ice and fire while I was there at the beginning of February. Our flight landed during a short gap in a blizzard and was then stuck on the runway for four hours as it was too windy to de-ice the planes waiting to leave, which meant there was no free stand for our plane to pull up to. Eventually, we were able to taxi to a slightly more sheltered area and turned into the wind so the door could be opened and steps pulled up for us to disembark.
After getting the Flybus from Keflavik Airport to the Reykjavik Bus Terminal and a smaller bus into the centre of the city, followed by a short walk, we finally arrived at City Center Hotel in the centre of the city around midnight, which was about five hours later than we had originally expected.
Although it was still snowing the following day, it wasn’t too heavy, so we decided to explore Reykjavik using a self-guided walk we found online. We walked through the centre of the tiny city in the snow, admiring the coloured buildings and looking at all the food options. Several restaurants had Icelandic tasting manus, with dishes such as puffin, horse and whale. Needless to say (as we’re both vegetarian) we didn’t try them! Instead, we found a vegan restaruant for lunch called Vegan World Peace which had an excellent menu with a variety of Asian dishes. We did more exploring in the afternoon, popping in and out of shops whenever the snow picked up, and saw most of the key places: the harbour, Cathedral of Christ the King, Tjörnin Lake, City Hall, Austurvöllur Square, Rainbow Street, and Hallgrimskirkja church (from a distance). We even found Dillon (my family name) whisky and wine bar!
In the evening, we had decided to check out the only gay bar in town: Kiki Queer Bar. When we got there, just after it opened at 8pm, we were told there was a performance on so could only go in if we got tickets. Of course, we couldn’t resist a random show and we were very glad we stayed as the Heart Attack Drag Show was fantastic.
Luckily, the weather started to clear up the next day. We were very fortunate the rest of the week as it was mostly clear but cold (it got down to minus 9 degrees one day, but with wind chill it felt like minus 17!).
Sunday afternoon, we went to the Lava Show – a unique show where they pour lava at 1,100°C into the showroom and tell you all about it. There was also a video explaining about all the volcanic activity in Iceland, and the host was extremely knowledgeable about the geology of the island. We booked the premium tickets, which meant we got a behind the scenes tour after the show, where they showed us the furnace the lava was melted in and told us all about the process they go through. We also got a piece of lava as a memento.
Our Northern Lights tour with Grey Line Iceland had been cancelled on Saturday due to the weather, but we rebooked for free on Sunday. The coach picked us up from outside the City Hall at 8pm and took us to Thingvellir National Park, where there was very little light pollution. We were very lucky that we actually the Aurora Borealis appeared not long after we arrived at the park – it looked very grey with just a hint of green to the naked eye, but on camera it was much brighter.
It was really difficult to take decent photos – you needed to do a long exposure for the Northern Lights to show up clearly, and I hadn’t even thought of bringing a tripod with me. It’s pretty much impossible to hold your camera or phone completely still, even for four or eight seconds, and especially when the temperature is -11°C and feels like -17°C. You also had to change your settings for low light levels in order to capture the lights, which the tour guide talked us through on the way there. My photos aren’t great, but they give you an idea of what we saw. On the left are photos taken with the pro settings, on the right are the same photos with regular night settings, and these are more like what we could see ourselves. They’re a bit fuzzy, but it gives you an idea of what the Aurora Borealis looked like.
Despite the late night of the Northern Lights tour (we got back to our hotel around 1am), we were up early the next day for our Golden Circle tour, also with Grey Line. The Golden Circle consists of three key sights: Thingvellir National Park, where you can walk between two tectonic plates; Geysir Hot Spring Area, which has boiling mud pits, exploding geysers, and is where the English word ‘geyser’ comes from; and Gullfoss Waterfall. It was fascinating to drive around part of Iceland and see just how white, mountainous and desolate the country is. The most interesting part of the tour for me was walking between two tectonic plates – the Eurasian and North American plates – as that was something I’d never done before. It was also interesting to see what the park actually looked like in daylight, after standing at the viewpoint the night before to see the Northern Lights. The geysers and waterfall were all impressive, but as it was so cold, we didn’t spend too long outside admiring them.
The following day, we left Reykjavik for a hotel in Southern Iceland, a few days of relaxing, and more Northern Lights.