Iceland, as the name suggests, is cold. The coldest time of the year in one of the coldest countries, is January. So why have we chosen this time to visit? Apparently it’s the best time to view the Northern Lights, otherwise known as ‘Aurora Borealis’.
It has been on Linda’s bucket list for a long time and like other destinations Linda has ticked off her list such as India, Russia and Easter Islands, I went along with some hesitation (particularly Russia). Each of those trips turned out to be exciting adventures that I have had no regrets experiencing (perhaps a little too exciting in Russia).
Our flight from Charles De Gaulle got away on time and we arrived in Reykjavik three and a half hours later. Still daylight which made it a little easier for us to travel into town on the public bus. Snow everywhere! White on white, every direction you looked! I was not used to this. Sure I have been up to the Ski resorts on the odd occasion but for only one or two days before coming down the mountain to where I could once again see where the roads started and finished. But now we were staying for two weeks!
View from our hotel 
Reykjavik waterfront
Our accommodation for the first four days was a recently refurbished building run, and occupied, by a much younger demographic than ourselves, but it was in a great location right in the middle of town and our room overlooked the main bus depot. That may not sound appealing but I actually enjoyed the hive of activity below, watching people brave the elements dragging themselves to work while I didn’t have to! And being a small city it wasn’t overwhelming busy.
It is not totally foreign for me to wake up while it is still dark outside but waking up at 9am and waiting until 10am for daylight was weird. Once it was light enough we donned our snow gear and went for a long walk along the waterfront stopping for some brunch. Iceland, like Easter Islands, is quite remote and shares the same bugbear typical of isolated locations – everything is so bloody expensive. It is not unusual to pay the equivalent of AUD$7.00 for a coffee but as I was expecting that I decided I could live with it for two weeks, as long as the coffee was good-Sadly it wasn’t and on our first morning I got them to make it three times but it was still crap, and they wanted me to pay for them all!!! We didn’t go back there again.
The walk back to our hotel was along the Main Street. Iceland is geographically marginally closer to continental Europe than mainland North America and is generally included in Europe for cultural, political and practical reasons but I felt it to be more North American. It reminded me a lot of Anchorage from a brief visit a few years back. Maybe it was the style of the buildings but probably because my toes were freezing!
We didn’t need to be processed by immigration to enter but our Euros were no good so we had to withdraw some Kronas which caused us some confusion as we had become quite used to the Euro. Whatever the case, with the conversation rate at the time, they both seemed to make our currency resemble Monopoly money and I often found it to be less painful to hand over the credit card without doing the math.
We were here to see the northern lights, that’s why we were staying for two weeks. There are so many stories of visitors going to great lengths to view the lights only to be disappointed by excessive cloud coverage spoiling things. Travelling three or four hours from Europe or America and not seeing anything is quite frustrating but we had heard of Australians making the mammoth journey only to be very disappointed by a ‘no show’. Two weeks was going to give us a good chance. We booked a tour where a bus would pick us up from our hotel late in the evening and take us out of town away from the city lights for hopefully, a good viewing. Our first attempt was a dismal failure. The weather forecast had promised clear skies but it had clouded over by the time we arrived at our vantage point. They provided us with hot chocolate and a local liquor, you could run the bus on, but that was to be the only highlight of the evening before boarding the bus for the long drive back to our hotel.
Even though there was a guarantee from the tour company to take us out again until we got a good viewing, we decided we didn’t want to rely on that night after night so we rented a car for the remainder of our stay, to ‘go it’ solo.
What could go wrong? …especially as I had next to no experience driving in Snowy conditions!
White on white 
Lonely roads
I had a spell of rally driving in my younger days and I was going to have to call on all my skills, while allowing for a slower reaction time! What I found most helpful was all the Facebook footage I had viewed of Russian dash cam. It certainly reminded me to slow down at times as even though the vehicle was fitted with studded snow tyres, there was no stopping, especially on glazed icy roads. It was a matter of slowing down enough to take a corner. If there was something stationary in front of you, you were going to hit it.
I managed to pick the car up from the airport and navigate my way back to pick Linda up from the city. She had bought some famous cinnamon buns from a bakery in the bus depot for our journey- which were the tastiest, freshest cinnamon buns we had ever had.
We were heading out of Reykjavik in a south easterly direction. Our rookie status caught us out forgetting how quickly it gets dark so by 4pm I was squinting hard trying to keep between the posts as they provided the only clue that separated the road from the swampy fields in either direction to the sides. To say I was relieved to find our accommodation we had booked would be an understatement. It was a largish house/unit in a rural setting in an area which was service by hot springs that provided hot water for heating. The house was tropically warm inside and going downstairs where the laundry and boiler was located, it was sweltering! We washed our clothes and they were dry in no time. As with most accommodation throughout Iceland, there was a hot tub outside which was set at the usual temperature between 40 and 50 degree Celsius. The challenging part was running naked across the snow in sub-zero temperatures to get to the tub. Once inside though, it was most enjoyable. Too much cloud coverage that night again so no sky show but sitting in the tub after a stressful drive with snowflakes falling on your head was just perfect.
House in the snow 
View from our cabin
You will have to wait until next weekend to hear about the rest of our travels in Iceland. If you want a ‘midweek’ blog – we could be convinced by a show of comments below!
People often ask us about how we get our house sits. This is the main website we use: https://www.trustedhousesitters.com/refer/RAF147238/
If you use the link above you will also get a discount on membership.
If you have any questions don’t hesitate to ask.
Enjoy.