Iceland November 2017 - Day 5 - 3rd November

Day 5

I was awoken at around 6.00am with cries of excitement.  It was snowing outside and the decks were getting covered. Not a lot, just a sprinkling but the surrounding hills were already covered and it all looked magical as the sun began to rise above the mountains on the south side of Whale bay.

After taking loads of photographs we had breakfast, and got ready to go out for the day.  Today we went into Reykjavik and did a little exploring.  At first we felt a little diossapointed as it all seemed so grey and unwelcoming but we soon realized that that was more to do with the weather than anything else.

One of the main reasons for coming here was to book a midnight tour to find the Northern Lights so we headed to the Information Office.  After checking a few of those available, we booked one that seemed to suit our needs.  We were to be picked up at 9.00pm in a street adjacent so we then got on with the rest of the day.

We had come prepared to go to the Blue Lagoon so we  decided to head there now and set off on the 24 mile journey. The lagoon is a man-made lagoon which is fed by the water output of the nearby geothermal power plant Svartsengi and is renewed every two days. Superheated water is vented from the ground near a lava flow and used to run turbines that generate electricity. After going through the turbines, the steam and hot water passes through a heat exchanger to provide heat for a municipal water heating system. Then the water is fed into the lagoon for recreational and medicinal users to bathe in.

How disappointed we were once we had arrived to find out that there was no entrance without pre-booking. No way would they waver, they just said we would need book for another day.

As we were flying home tomorrow we decided not to do that and left the building and headed back to Reykjavik.   We decided that we would spend the rest of the day here in town before  going on the Northern lights this evening.  We were all getting hungry so we went to a restaurant called ‘The Grillehaus. Fantastic food and plenty of it. I can assure you we were not hungry when we left there.

Lunch in the Grillehaus

We also decided that we would go to the Secret Lagoon tomorrow as recently recommended to us by various people. So before carrying on we went online and booked three places just in case.

Kevin and Abi then went on a bit of a shopping spree while I went to the Icelandic Punk Museum. This was a fantastic museum, housed in a once grand underground toilet in the middle of Reykjavik. Located down below Bankastræti, not far from the harbor docks, this tiny museum is dedicated to the Nordic nation’s punk scene, from its beginnings in the late 1970s all the way to the break-up of the Sugar Cubes in the early ’90s. The exhibits are in the former toilets and washbasins, with a jammed-in collections of photos, posters, hand-bills, instruments, stage equipment, and streaming videos of classic club shows.

Later we all met up and went exploring some more before stopping for coffee and cakes . After a leisurely break we went off to meet the minibus to begin our evening adventure.

We parked the car on a side street and went to the allotted bus stop to wait for our mini bus.  It was freezing as we waited on the roadside  The bus finally arrived, about 15 minutes late and we got on and snuggled down in the warmth of the bus interior. Heading off into the darkness picked up a few further passengers and carried on into the night looking for the Aurora Borealis.  

After about an hour the driver, who had been entertaining us en oute pulled off road and gradually slowed to a halt.  After talking us through what was about to happen we all left the bus and stood gazing into the night sky.

We could all see it, the Northern Lights, but they were a white blanket effect to the naked eye.  But, first of all, Abi, then everyone who wanted to follow her, started to take photographs on their mobile phones.  These photopgraphs clearly showed the emerging colours of the Northern Lights. Incredibly I could not join in as my camera and mobile phone both chose to lose all power earlier in the afternoon and by the time I wanted to use them they were both flat.  Thank goodness Abi had taken some good shots using only her mobile phone.

I am not sure if you can get any idea of what we saw as these were taken at midnight with a full moon using a Samsung S8 phone camera.  It appears from what our guide was telling us was that the sightings that we have all seen images of rarely ever happen and he had only seen this phenomenon twice in his life.  Most images are captured using digital photography to very specific guidelines.

However, this did not diminish the excitement of going on a midnight safari to hunt the Northern Lights.

We eventually headed back to town at around midnight and then collected our car and drove home to Brekka Lodge.  After a late drink we eventually called it a night at around 2.00am.

Last day tomorrow and we are determined to make it a memorable one