Day 1. We are already in love with Iceland. We arrived at 4:30 am and easily navigated the airport to catch the bus to our Galaxy Pod, where we are staying, which is amazing cool, to sleep in an egg (pod) which is like every kids intergalactic cool factor experience, so you can tell we have both tapped into our inner kid with just almost giddy excitement and awe. This place, Iceland, is beautiful, and we haven’t even gotten out of the city.
When we arrived this morning we went to catch our grayline bus into Reykjavík, which is about a 45 minute ride from the airport. The weather was this insanely, unimaginable arctic wind with crazy gale force winds. Our flight had been so hot we had gone down to our t-shirts and thinking it’s a short walk to the bus, needless to say, we dropped bags halfway and put on every jacket we could reach. Gale winds so fierce it would just move you with your bags across the parking lot and just cut through your clothing, it felt like we had only dressed for summer. Bitter cold winds.
The view from our Pod was amazing when first light came this morning and now in a matter of minutes we are shrouded in clouds and yet the suns is still shining bright. Then minutes later an amazing view returns. We are fortunate to have missed last nights snow and rain storm and the weather looks very promising. Unfortunately the kp index for Northern Lights is low, but you can have a burst at anytime. So we do know as long as weather holds, we will see them, though low. So do crazy happy lights dance for us!
Our flight in was such an aurora storm that we flew through auroras for over half our trip and watched them dance from the skies in waves and curtains seemingly as if a foreign form was living and breathing in a sky chase. As you can imagine the whole plane was awake and up and everyone was sitting in someone’s lap just to watch, so if you had a window seat, you did not have that seat alone. I had an aisle seat, even after months of planning and reserving a window seat was ultimately changed at check in but even still, what I was able to see and capture with just the iPhone was really a neat experience.
We are off to explore the city of Reykjavík today and chase lights tonight. Weather is very promising for clear skies. Just do a happy aurora dance for us for the lights to come out and dance in the heavens.
More to come! Follow along.
Day 1, part 2
So our hunt of the northern lights turned into a crazy hail storm and an amazing halo around the moon but to no avail our hunt into the early hours of the morning did not prove fruitful tonight. Our driver, Lucas drove us around and outside of the city for about 100km in our hunt. He even stopped at an amazing dumpster so we could try to photograph the moon halo, yet most of us were more concerned with the potential polar bear encounter since we were at not 1 but 3 dumpsters. As Matthew said, hopefully all a polar bear wants is a coca cola, right?
Though our hunt did not bring us lights we did experience a crazy hail storm that turned everything white in a matter of minutes with pellet size hail and all was very quickly a new scene of hail everywhere and about an inch of hail on the ground. That was such a crazy experience. Earlier in the day, our hail storms had been fast and no major accumulation. We have a video attached of our brief, if 30 second stinging hail storm. One of many we encountered yesterday.
We have enjoyed the quaint city of Reykjavik and it’s ease of navigation, very easy to walk around and get from place to place. We had a Nordic meal yesterday and it was very good, an adjustment of course as everything is cooked closer to raw than cooked well and most all things you think should be warm are actually served chilled, but the flavours are so preserved that the dining adventure is great.
Though we have not ventured to the rotting, fermented, peed on shark or dried fish with Icelandic butter, I am sure we will get that opportunity soon enough. I hear part 2 of that selection is quite good, the butter part of course. Naturally the verdict is not only still out but very hesitant for said shark experience.
We have failed miserably on the pronunciation of Icelandic words and that has proven for some unique moments. We loved our pod experience and will be back for night 2 for our next evening in a pod mid week. I will be sure to do a 360 picture so you can get the full ambient blue experience. We loved the pods.
So as you sleep, we are back on the move beginning day 2 heading south and into the golden circle for amazing views and chasing legends of trolls and fairies. It’s a very snowy, rainy day but adventure is on and in full force. Here is to loving our adventure. Enjoy the pics and short videos below from our afternoon in Reykjavik.
Much love from Iceland. Signing off from Reykjavik, Iceland