Iceland Holiday Day 1

Hellooo everyone!

It has been raining here all day. Definitely autumn in England. The other night we were sleeping with the window open, and it got down to a balmy minus 3 degrees celcius. Crunchy grass the next morning. :D

Shout out to Michael, Cindi, Steph and Chris who I caught up with yesterday. Was great to get into London and catch up with all of you. Driving around London was an experience in itself... I imagine a bit like Sydney, lots of one way streets all over the place, and it is not that well sign posted. But after living out here in the country for a few months, it was quite and adventure to be in the big city! The number of shops, restaurants and bars around made my heart flutter with excitement!

Now, back to the Iceland trip.

31/10/2007 cont...

This is what happens at Heathrow after a 5am start to the day

Finally at the boarding gate - Iceland Yay!

Despite feeling seedy on the plane due to the self inflicted lack of sleep because of the last minute tax return saga, the flight was relatively quick (3 hours) and easy (no problems and food was served!). On arrival at the airport we caught the "Flybus" to Reykjavik (40-50mins) with a stop off at the Blue Lagoon.

It's cold out here - someone get me inside....please!

The Blue Lagoon is an entrepreneurial exercise taking advantage of the natural geothermal pools in the area and turning them into a day spa... and it was the perfect thing to do after the stresses of the last few days.

Gideon - handling the cold weather a little better than me - outside the Blue Lagoon

The Blue Lagoon is basicaly one huge pool filled with milky azure coloured water which contains minerals that are supposed to be good for the skin. On contemplation of visiting the lagoon we had decided against having any treatments due to the cost. However, friends who had visited Iceland only the week before recommended a massage. Although it cost about 30 pounds each, the 10 minutes massage was heavenly.

There was something magical about being there in the bath-like water as the steam rose into the crisp air and the sun set leaving a dusky sky.

We went straight from the Blue Lagoon to check in at our apartment, then headed out on a tour to find the Northern Lights (Aurora Borealis). Both of us were really looking forward to it, photos would indicate that the Lights light up the sky with an amazing bright green veil.


Having assumed that we would spend most of the tour on the bus, we weren't quite dressed for it. After about an hour of driving and stopping intermittantly, we finally stopped at a carpark far away from the city lights of Reykjavik. There, we stood in icy cold temperatures for an hour waiting for the lights to start and our appendages to drop off. To begin with it just looked like really pale white cloud on the horizon. With clear skies it was perfect weather to see the Northern lights, but the half moon was extremely bright and made it difficult to see the subtleties.

Can you see it? Can you?

After an hour of freezing our fingers off, so to speak, we had seen some hazy cloud-like wisps moving around slowly and it was time to go home somewhat disappointed.

On the way back to the city, we made one last stop on the side of the side of the road, and lo, there was some sort of green wisp growing and moving as if someone was painting a squiggle in the sky. Pretty cool - but anywhere near as spectacular as the pictures. Still, it had been quite a successful start to the trip.