The Land of Fire and Ice

In February and March, everyone I know jets off to hot, sunny destinations to catch the last of the winter sun abroad. I've never been one to follow the grain and Iceland, and notably the northern lights, has been at the top of my bucket list since the list was started. So off to the to the chilly North I went, excited for the surreal sights and petrified of the native foods. Nothing disappointed.

It's taken me so long to get around to putting this post together but nevertheless it's done and I'm so excited to share my trip with you. We decided on a 5 night trip based in Reykjavik but really would have been fine doing one of the three night bundles you see on Wowcher and similar offer sites as we managed to cram quite a bit into each of the days we were there. One thing I will say is Iceland is pricey, either through the cost of the excursions or in hiring a car to do it yourself, everything is really quite spread out due to Iceland being such a vast country so don't expect to be doing it on a really tight budget. That being said it wasn't as expensive as people had made out before we went but the cost of living is generally higher than here in the UK.
That's the boring bit out of the way, now for all of the exciting things we did to fill our time in the land of fire and ice.
I would recommend everything we did on our trip and I've listed each of the places we visited to give you some inspiration. If you are thinking of going to Iceland it's worth bearing in mind that the city is quite small so it is a case of going out of the city a fair bit to see the natural attractions in the south and west of the island.

Sun Voyager, Reykjavik waterfront

Geothermal Pools, nr Blue Lagoon

Gulfoss Waterfall

Seljalandsfoss 

I would definitely recommend visiting Jokulsarlon Glacier Lagoon, it was the most silent place I have ever been with the only faint noise being the cracking of the ice blocks as they floated into each other, like a bowl of rice crispies! If I were to go again I'd make sure I went a bit further down the road to the beach front at Jokularson as it's here that there are huge chunks of glacier ice that littered along the beach. The stark contrast of the black sand beach and crystal, almost blue, ice blocks is something I was dying to see but we didn't realise it was in a separate place until we'd already started heading back to Reykjavik. Can't deny I can be a bit dim sometimes!

Climbing the Seljalandsfoss and Skogafoss waterfalls was so much fun and I'd really recommend going to Seljalandsfoss at dusk to watch the sunset from behind the waterfall as we did.

Jökulsárlón Glacier Lagoon

The best, and luckiest, thing by far was seeing the northern lights on the first try. We went to Iceland the day after one of the biggest winter storms the island had seen in a decade and every night was forecast for thick cloud and very low solar activity. There was one night just out of the blue that was suddenly set for really clear skies and the solar activity was okay so we booked on the trip, trying not to get our hopes up due to the pot luck nature of seeing the lights but a few hours before we were due to be picked up it was announced that there was going to a HUGE solar storm and the activity levels rocketed. We could see the green lights dancing above the city lights before the sun had even set so knew we were in for a great show and we got it! My camera wasn't quite up to getting photos of them but it did the job in getting me a keepsake. There's no words I could use to describe how utterly amazing and surreal it was.

One thing with this holiday was that my hair was constantly wet!

We had a night out in the city, drank hot chocolate from a sky bar overlooking the Reykjavik lagoon, climbed and trekked all sorts of terrains, watched the sunset from behind a waterfall, got faces full of sulphur-smelling water and steam at the geysers and watched the Aurora Borealis dance across the night sky, as well as taking a dip in a geothermal pool while it snowed. All in all, I'd say it's definitely worth visiting Iceland.

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