In Feb 2016 my sister and I had a quick stop in Reykjavik! Here’s what we got up to…
We flew to Reykjavik from Manchester and landed before lunch. We had booked to go straight to the Blue Lagoon so hopped onto our coach and arrived in good time. The lagoon is SO popular so you must book in advance, and even then there will be a queue to get in! We booked the comfort package which was fine for us – #basic – as weren’t bothered about dining at LAVA. The experience was fun – we swam for a while, had a mud mask, got a drink from the in-pool bar, and enjoyed the sauna. The worst bit was getting out of the pool and running to the changing rooms as it was obviously freezing!
We then got on a pre-booked coach to our hotel, which was the Arctic Comfort. It was great for 2 nights and all the main tours can pick you up from this hotel. After checking in we ventured to the local shopping centre to get food and had a look around (generally speaking everything is a bit pricey so be ready!). That evening we joined the Northern Lights tour with Grayline. Unfortunately, we didn’t see the lights but the guide was amazing and provided lots of history and laughter for us throughout the tour. It was a shame we didn’t see the lights and only a week later when we were in the UK the headlines said ‘Northern Lights spotted from Birmingham’, are you having a laugh?!
On day 2, we walked up to the Hallgrímskirkja church which is a big landmark in Reykjevik. You can take a lift to the top and get some great views of the colourful houses. We also visited the volcano museum, which was fairly significant for us as we were stranded in Hong Kong after the eruption of Eyjafjallajökull. Very interesting to watch a movie on the impact it had on the local area and how they had to react.
After visiting the museum we had a look around the Harpa concert hall before visiting an outdoor heated pool at Laugardalslaug, it wasn’t anything like the blue lagoon but was nice to sit in hot water for a while! We then had dinner at a sushi restaurant and headed to bed for an early flight home the next day.
Overall thoughts: Iceland is very cold so bring thermals! It’s an expensive place so be prepared, but it’s also a beautiful place so bring a better camera than what I had (I only took my 8mp phone camera). I don’t actually think a our quick stop of 2 days was enough to see everything. I would like to go back to see the Geysir’s and waterfalls.
