Hello from Reykjavik!
We are here with my (Sheri) cousins, Christie & Chester, primarily to see the Northern Lights!
Leaving Houston a day early to make sure we did not miss our flight due to the big winter storm, we had a little time in Virginia (near Dulles airport) to see the Air & Space museum. This was an unexpected pleasure. Among the 250+ aircraft was the Enola Gay, a Concorde Jet and the Space Shuttle Discovery.
As Marieke informed us, there were many cancelled flights out of Dulles and delays were pretty standard. Our 7:40 pm overnight flight to Reykjavik finally took off at about 11:00. Apparently there were only two baggage handlers to unload and load AND shovel the snow that had accumulated. Once loaded, the de-icing took a minute as well.
We arrived at 10:00 am, got our car and headed to our walking food tour. Our guide's name was Burgersagdjckeuegvcn (sic) but we were to call him "burger". We stopped at five different places and enjoyed an appetizer of arctic char, cod, a hot dog (in Iceland the hot dogs are 80/20 lamb/beef), more cod and arctic char, meat soup and finally ice cream!
This was a great introduction to Icelandic cuisine.
After checking into the apartment and having a short nap we went to Bus Stop #9 to get the van for our Northern Lights tour. The 50 minute drive to the National Park started at 9:45, getting us far away from the city lights. The forecast called for clearing skies around 11:00. To see the Northern Lights you need three things: darkness, clear skies and luck (in the form of solar activity).
Guess what?!?!?! We had the trifecta and saw a beautiful display!
We will get pictures from our guide but here are some we took:
I'm not gonna lie, it was cold 🥶 - but hey, no pain - no gain.
Finally back home at around 1:00 am we fell in bed after this A+ day!
No need to get up early we have plans for Sky Lagoon at 12:30. This is a geo-thermal bath + 7-step ritual near Reykjavik.
The infinity pool looks out over the ocean (where we watched ice floating by) and has a walk-up bar of course.
The seven-step ritual starts with a cold plunge into 60 degree water! 🥶 Step two is dry sauna. The sauna was a large room with a huge window looking out over the water - gorgeous! Step three is a walk thru a cold mist. Step four is a body rub with bath salts. Step five is to shower, six is a yummy juice ... Seven is a return to the thermal pool. It was a fun experience!
After three hours we drove back and walked to get some food. Carsten is doing a great job driving (as always) but Reykjavik is a very walkable city, if you don't mind the cold ❄️.
So, high on the success of the night before, we decided to drive ourselves out to find more lights. We had clear skies and darkness but no luck. It was also much colder than the night before, we found out today that it was record low temperature for this winter! Our car thermometer said -18°C (basically zero)! 🥶 ❄️
Sunset near Sky Lagoon.
Headed out to find the NL
Nope.
LOL
The days are quite short here, sunrise is around 11:00 and sunset at 4:00. Today, while the sun is up we are on a Golden Circle Tour. Longtime readers of the blog may recall we did this tour in summer back in 2022. It is different in winter.
Thingvellir National Park where the Eur-Asian plate meets the North American plate. Well, actually this is where they are pulling apart 2 centimeters per year.
Next is Geysir.
These are Geysir like those at Yellowstone in the US. They seem to be reporting more frequently these days. Funny to see all this super hot water surrounded by snow.
Next we headed to Gullfoss, a waterfall. It is, of course, frozen over for the most part. It was windy and cold at the top of the stairs! ❄️
It looks so vastly different from the roaring water experienced in the summer.
Final stop is the Kerid Crater.
In winter it is frozen of course. It was pretty with the moon rising over the Crater.
Four happy travelers!
Sunset at 4:00 takes forever. This picture was taken before the Crater (above).
Finally a moment of over-sharing to talk about later and layers of clothing. I have on three layers on top before my jacket, on the bottom I have four layers starting with my boxers, long johns, jeans and waterproof pants.
Hope this panty pic does not offend anyone ... LOL
I will blog again in a few days, until then - stay warm!!
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