So Jaime and I were discussing a few months ago how we’d only gone to Canada outside of the US in 2013 and that needed to change.  As I’ve mentioned before, we are both subscribed to a lot of travel newsletters and just as we were thinking about where to go we get the weekly Travelzoo deals and see an insanely cheap deal to Iceland for three nights through Gate 1 Travel and couldn’t pass it up!

Our flight left at 3pm on Thursday, February 6th and arrived at 9am on Friday in Iceland.  Our plan was to all get some sleep on the way over, but Lydia decided against that idea.  The daylight this time of year is from 10am-5pm, so we picked up the rental car in the pitch black and were told “if there are any dents, just take a picture and email us”.  We get to the Best Western Hotel Reykjavik and while the lobby was packed, they were able to get us a room right away and we all crashed for a few hours.

We spent the remainder of the day wandering around the capitol.  We walked along the coast taking in the beautiful scenery and had a quick warm-up stop inside the unique Harpa concert hall.  It’s a building made out of tons of cubes that light up and dance with different colors in the evening.  We then cut up through the old city center and found a great lunch place full of locals.  It was our first and only traditional Icelandic meal.  We didn’t realize it at the time but our schedule was very demanding and none of the recommended restaurants seemed especially family friendly so we did a lot of take-out or diner-type food.  On the walk back to the hotel, we stopped at the imposing Hallgrimskirkja (church).  It’s only eight stories high but it towers over the city and offers amazing views from the top.  We stopped back at the hotel and booked a whale watching tour for Saturday and then picked up pizza from Gamla Smiðjan for dinner.  We attempted to sleep at around 10pm, but we ended up until 3 or 4am since Lydia was still on Chicago time.

Thankfully, the whale watching tour was at 1pm, so we were able to sleep in.  We got picked up from the hotel and then switched buses to leave out of a different port 45 minutes away where whales had been seen the day before.  Good thing we did because we ended up seeing five orca (killer) whales — four female and one male!  It did take a while to find them and we weren’t very optimistic until another boat spotted them and radioed our boat.  In all, it was about five and a half hours so we only had about an hour to find dinner and buy some wool for the Northern Lights tour that was part of the Gate 1 Travel package.  I bought some wool gear for the cold night ahead at the best named place ever — Woolcano, and then I drove around town like a maniac looking for fast food with parking nearby and finally end up at a deli that sold delicious paninis.  I made it back to the hotel just as the bus was loading up.

Unfortunately, the time zone change finally caught up to Lydia and she was um, expressing her displeasure, on a bus full of 80 people!  It was on and off on the drive out to find a dark, clear place but after a quick nap at our second stop she was upset most of the way home.  That stressful situation aside, we did get to see some amazing Northern Lights!  What you don’t know before seeing them is that you really need to hunt for them.  They aren’t everywhere and they aren’t always that clear.  Your camera picks up a lot more color and definition than your eyes do.  We did have an embarrassing moment where we (read: I) couldn’t figure out how to get our fancy Canon to take pictures at night!  Jaime luckily found someone with a similar camera that was able to change a few settings and give us lots of pointers on how to capture the lights.  They are very hard to keep in focus, but it was still a great experience.  On the way to a second location, we instead stopped when the lights started popping up behind the clouds like lightning!  It was quite a surreal experience.

Our last full day was spent driving all over the place.  We started off following the traditional Golden Triangle route to Thingvellir National Park where Iceland was founded and you can walk between still-very-slowing-moving tectonic plates.  Next we were off to a geothermal area called Geysir (where the word geyser comes from).  We were expecting a town, but it was more of a tourist trap visitor center next to the hot springs.  There were a lot of smoking holes in the ground with minor activity and one active geyser which erupts every 3-5 minutes.  After a quick lunch there, we continued to the last stop on the Golden Triangle — Gulfoss.  It’s the most visited waterfall in Iceland (or so the maps say), but it’s very underwhelming when you get there.  You can see nothing and the ground is flat all around you.  After walking down a path for a short distance, you finally get to see the wide, two-tiered waterfall.  It was a beautiful sight to see but the freezing wind kept our visit pretty short.

Instead of following the route back to Reykjavik from there we decided to drive down to the South Coast area to see some more sights.  Originally we had planned a full day for the southern area but the whale watching tour is only at 1pm during the winter so we shuffled things around a bit.  With the cold weather and short days, it worked out for the best anyway.  Our first stop was Seljalandsfoss, a high and wide waterfall that has a path where you can walk behind it!  Unfortunately, it was very icy so I stayed back with Lydia while Jaime attempted the frozen stair climb.  She made it all the way up the stairs and then the path deteriorated quickly so she turned back.  By the time she made it down the iced-over stairs she couldn’t feel her hands!  We’ll have to revisit here in the summer…  Our next sight was the volcano that tried to ruin our honeymoon in 2010, Eyjafjallajokull.  There wasn’t much to see as it’s tucked into the ongoing mountain range but we knew where it was thanks to a visitor center set up to commemorate the event (except that they wanted $7.50 to walk inside the tiny shack so we opted out).  Our last stop on the South Coast was Skogafoss, another famous waterfall that had a nice rainbow in the mist as the water tumbled into a stream surrounded by black sand.

After that, we headed back to Reykjavik and ate dinner at an American-style diner (but not the official “American Style” restaurant).  One word of warning — the food is insanely expensive all over Iceland.  For example, a simple chicken sandwich was $21, and that’s the norm!  This fact is another reason we didn’t eat out too much.  After dinner, it was dark out so we decided to go hunting for more Northern Lights!  Rather than head out to the middle of nowhere again, I had read about a lighthouse on the coast that had good views so we went there.  Right away we could see some and after having the camera almost blown over a couple times, we spent most of the time in the car enjoying the show.

We slept in on our last day in Iceland too.  After a quick breakfast at the hotel we drove down to the Blue Lagoon.  It’s a total tourist trap with high prices though I’d still say it’s a must-see.  It’s a huge, steamy lagoon that was created by the runoff water from a nearby factory.  It’s much more glamorous than it sounds, trust me.  After soaking in the geothermal waters for about 90 minutes, we showered, packed up, and caught our flights back home!  The flights were uneventful though upon returning home we found that Lydia had taken an Icelandic souvenir — the hotel remote control (which is now on another flight back)!

Categories: Travel