Iceland!

Dates: Feb 2016/ Dec 2017

Flights: Icelandair: 10/10 - even with a cancellation!

Hotel: Fosshotel Reykjavik - 10/10

I am lucky enough to have been twice but this is up there with one of my favorite places in the world. It's just magical, from the first steps off the plane I was just in awe. The landscape is incredible, even driving from the airport to the city!

I had 2 completely different trips both still as exciting;

2016 - 3 day snowstorm, no tours available, had to improvise. (Good aurora forecast)

2017- Perfect weather, extremely lucky, got stuck in Iceland for another 24hrs... (not ideal aurora forecast) - want to read about our experience with our flight being cancelled - jump to the end! :)

2016

Myself, my sister and our other halves headed up to Iceland in Feb 16! We were pretty unlucky with the weather, we have so much stuff we wanted to do but we had to totally change our plans. Snowstorms meant that pretty much every tour was canned BUT we did manage to go to the Blue Lagoon! we took advantage of this and went on our first day.

TIP - if you are staying in Reykjavik itself I would recommend seeing if you can go here on the way to the hotel - there's a tonne of luggage space etc and it will save so much travel time.

There's so many tours/packages available so I definitively recommend looking around and seeing what's best for you. We used Reykjavik excursions for each trip, couldn't fault them and reasonably priced too!

We got a package which let us have a couple of drinks, face masks and some free stuff to take home, as this was the only thing we could do really whilst we were there we thought we would make the most of it!

As for the rest of the trip we had to improvise, the weather was pretty grim in the city and apparently even worse outside. So what did we do.. walk of course. We had a good mooch through a forest, round the outside of the city looking at various sculptures, thermal pools and even found some sun loungers on the way. Although it was FREEZING, we did have enough clothes and sought warmth afterwards. I wouldn't recommend this if you didn't have the right gear. I had so much fun walking around though, it's not often we get snow here so running around throwing snowballs at each other was something of a dream.

We also visited Perlan - Wonders of Iceland. This was really cool, some funky high tech displays explaining literally the wonders of Iceland. Totally recommend, especially if the weather stops you exploring more!

The Food..

The food is so good. From breakfast at the hotel to eating out later on, I couldn't fault a thing. Be prepared to spend a little more than normal, especially if you are drinking, but it's so worth it! My personal favorite is the Hereford Steak House, for someone who can't eat beef, the tuna steak is probably one of the best meals I've ever experienced.

TIP - if you do want to drink there are apps you can download which will tell you which pubs have happy hour! Allowing you to plan around this and save some pennies on your beers :)

2017

Fast forward to December 2017 and the weather couldn't have been any different, beautiful crisp winters days and every tour we could pick from!

This time it was just myself and Matt, we decided to do the Blue Lagoon again (because why not) the Golden Circle tour and a northern lights tour.

Blue Lagoon - everything I remembered, so chilled, spent so long there and it was so worth it. We were in for a very long night on the northern lights tour..

I am obsessed with the northern lights, I just think they're amazing and I was so desperate to see them, we didn't even get a chance the first time (even though the aurora would have been high in the sky beyond the clouds) but I was rather pessimistic. The forecast couldn't have been much lower, obviously improving as we were leaving..

If you do ever get to go, WRAP UP, wear all your clothes, it is a bitterly cold, long night, depending on how lucky you are with the sky :). Luck must have been with us on this trip, despite everything we saw them! Just! With the naked eye it was like someone was waving a silver blanket in the sky and my camera picked up the greens pretty well! (after a bit of enhancement afterwards too) It was so magical but I mean given everything I was super happy to even see that! Was I dissapointed? No. Has it given me an excuse to go to see them again? Of course it has! Coming for you Tromso! :)

Golden Circle Tour

A great tour, highly recommend to see a few of the great places in one go. So we don't usually like planned tours but this one was pretty good! A short drive from the capital city, you see the most stunning sights at Thingvellir National Park, Geysir geothermal area, and Gullfoss waterfall - all in one day! Lots of information and no rushing around each area either which was lovely. We saw both the sunrise and the sunset, I'll let the pictures do the talking..

Not forgetting the main street of Reykjavik itself. So many things to see here too! leading all the way down to the harbour with some amazing views there! it's definitively worth some time here too.

Getting home..

Who knew the luggage handlers were going to strike on our way home, meaning our flight was CANCELLED. Although it was a frustrating, what can you do? Get in a massive pot at the airport and get a picture? That's what you were thinking? Me too!

I mean there's far worse places to be stuck. Once we finally got round to booking an alternative flight home (this took a few hours of queuing) and then being interviewed by Icelandic TV (I don't think I gave the response I was looking for, I was not outraged like some of the people around us) we went to the hotel we were being put up in for the day. They were seriously overwhelmed, people were pretty rude with them but it was no way there fault! We had 2 options, stay at the airport and not do much or make the most of the extra time in this wonderful country and go get pizza. Obviously pizza won.

Getting back into Reykjavik is a little expensive but it is about an hour away, totally worth it in the end. We got our pizza, explored some more of the area and just had a wonderful day really and I guess an unexpected day off work..

The only real downside of our delay was flying home via Gatwick, just adding another few hours onto the journey.. all potential overspend on my poor car awaiting our arrival in the car park. By the time we actually got back we were nearly 36 hours over the time limit and I was expected a horrendous overstay fee, sounded rather deflated at this point I described what had happened BUT the absolute hero behind the speaker just waved it off, honestly couldn't have hugged him if he wasn't just a voice.

Until next time Iceland...