Come Fly With Me...

Hello Lovelies! This month my husband and I celebrated our 21st wedding anniversary. We did something we haven't done since we had our daughters, we went away on our own to celebrate. We chose to visit Iceland and I'm so glad we did. Our hotel was wonderful, Reykjavik was wonderful and the Blue Lagoon was definitely the highlight of our trip.

I have a confession to make...two days before we flew out I was wishing that I had never booked the trip! I was overwhelmed with irrational fear that we were going crash. My fear was not about crashing but rather the thought of the emotional stress our girls would experience. I frantically got hold of my wise grandmother and confided my fears in her. Of course, her calm and logical response was what I needed. She is so wise!

Unfortunately, our flight out was rather eventful and did not do much to calm my nerves! A passenger three rows behind us passed out and was unresponsive. After much urgent shaking of the passenger by the air hostess, he came to but went straight into a violent fit. His poor wife was hysterical. I just closed my eyes right then and prayed. Fortunately, there were quite a few medically trained passengers so there was plenty of help around. The pilot wisely decided to turn the plane and land in Belfast rather than proceed to Iceland. Our flight was met on the runway by an ambulance and the passenger and his wife taken off to hospital. All rather disconcerting.

We finally landed in Iceland 4 hours later than scheduled. Thankfully our hotel transfers were not booked for a specific time so we had no problem there.

After checking into our hotel we did a little exploring of Reykjavik. It has some very interesting architecture. The Hallgrimskirkja Church is imposing and was designed to represent the lava flow from a volcano.

I found Iceland's landscape quite fascinating but very bleak. Being a volcanic island the land literally looks like and is cooled lava flow with moss and lichens growing all over the place. The earth is all black and I noticed that there were no trees about, it was only when we got into Reykjavik that we saw trees. Do you know how barren a landscape looks without trees?

The other thing I noticed was that there are hardly any gardens. I wonder what people who do love gardens do in Iceland. Is it because of the harsh weather? The nature of the land? I don't know, but it felt kind of sad.

The Blue Lagoon was amazing! Totally touristy but so worth every penny. I would highly recommend visiting if you ever visit Iceland

The colour of the water is just beautiful. Apparently, it gets its colour from the silica in the water that reflects the sunlight.

We went on a northern lights harbour cruise...twice. The first night we didn't see the northern lights so we got free tickets to come again which we did on Saturday evening. This time we were luckyish. We saw the northern lights but only a thin strand, even then it just looked like a cloud that was slightly tinged with green. Not the sweeping ribbons of green I was expecting. The camera picks up more of the colour than the naked eye does apparently so all slightly disappointing.

Other than that I just wish we had an extra day so that we could have seen some more of the natural beauty. The Golden Circle, or the ice caves perhaps. Iceland is totally geared towards the tourist. It's incredibly well organised.

 One thing I hadn't realised is how expensive everything is in Iceland so if you do go just bear this in mind. Eating out can see the costs quickly mounting up. Other than that it is well worth the visit. I would say that it is definitely a destination for nature lovers with so many interesting geological features. Reykjavik is a very interesting city but like I said, very geared to tourists with touristy shops absolutely everywhere which is not really my thing. I kept finding myself wanting to find out what the locals do, how they live and where they go. It felt like I wasn't always getting a genuine Icelandic culture. Either way, we had a great time and I'm glad that we chose to celebrate our wedding anniversary there.

Isn't this school just lovely? I love the steeply peaked roof and how Nordic it all looks. I bet that Iceland must look simply magical when it snows. Anyhoo lovelies, I'm going to wrap up our Icelandic adventure now. I hope you have enjoyed your armchair travels with me today. Until next time...take care.

Blessings to you all today.