I hadn’t been abroad since I went to Crete in 2013/14. As it’s my 21st this year, I decided I wanted to start travelling and booked two holidays for this year. Iceland for my birthday and Amsterdam.
In this post, I will be going over my trip to Iceland. (If I do anything particularly spectacular, I’ll write a separate post on it). I have also added the step counts at the end of each day. I’ve done this so you can see roughly how much walking different things take.
Day 1 – Traveling to Iceland
I arrived at the airport 3 hours early as the queues were supposed to be huge. We ended up getting through at 1:30. A lot quicker than anticipated. We had 2:30 to kill, so what else but some food?
There isn’t much to say about the flight other than I watched Dunkirk.
Arrived in Iceland – at 15:00 Local time
We were arriving through the clouds. We had the fortune of rain and mist. Quickly got through customs without a queue and headed straight to get the bus.
The rest of day one didn’t have much going on. We checked into the hotel and then went for a KFC dinner. After we ate, we headed back to the hotel to chill.
Step Count: 9351
Day 2 – Reykjavik
On day two, we were meant to be ping on tour around the capital, but it never showed up. We ended up walking instead. First, we went to the coastline but couldn’t wander along with it. So we went back and round towards Harpa, where there was more filming. We were allowed in here, though. Later, we found out they were filming for “Heart of Stone” (for Netflix).
We then walked around the old harbour and the centre to get hot dogs before heading towards Hallgrímskirkja church and getting ice cream along the way.
From the church, we went back towards the coast. The weather cleared up, so we saw the mountains over the water. They weren’t obvious, but good to see them. We were near the Sun Voyage sculpture.
We walked up to Perlan, which didn’t take as long as I thought, maybe 45-50 minutes. This place is excellent and a must-see if you visit Reykjavik. It has an Aurora Planetarium, a perfect watch, and I also learned a bit. There was also an ice tunnel/cave-type thing. That was -10 and had an Ice throne in it. Finally, going up the stairs, there was a café, and you could go outside, and you had a full 360 view of Reykjavik. The rest of Pelan is a museum about Iceland and its beauty.
We then had a 1.5-ish-mile walk back to the hotel. We were pretty tired at this point, so we just chilled and got pizza for dinner (it was one of the most excellent pizzas I’d had).
Step Count: 24325
Day 3 – The Golden Circle and Blue Lagoon
We got picked up at 9:15 for our golden circle and blue lagoon tour. This tour was excellent; the lagoon was so much fun and odd. The day consisted of waterfalls, amazing views of snow-covered mountains, volcanic craters, geysers and much more. I have written a whole post about this Golden Circle trip, so please read that too.
Besides the tour, we only had a huge breakfast and a Chinese dinner. Towards the end of the day, it started to nice snow. I love the snow, so it was nice to see it.
So far, this is the best day with some unreal views. The most memorable will be the Geyser erupting as you can’t see them everywhere. At the same time, waterfalls and mountains are a lot more common.
Step Count: 12329
We travelled 146 miles, according to my Google timeline.
Day 4 – Aurora Borealis (Northern Lights)
Today we got up a little later as we didn’t have anything planned till 13:15. We planned to walk down to the more complex and go whale watching. The snow had fallen overnight, and the streets had a thin dusting. Walking to the coast we saw the mountains that were covered in snow.
Heading to the harder, we stopped for my second Icelandic hat dog. These are nice. Getting more challenging, we found out that our whale-watching adventure had been cancelled due to bad weather.
What now?
Now we headed back to the hotel. We checked out a few shops on the way back to the hotel. The main one is the Kringlan shopping mall in Reykjavik. Before returning to the hotel, we got a coffee and a cake at a café.
Finally, we decided to see if we could book a northern lights tour. We booked it and are due to be picked up at 9:30 pm. We are also to get back to the hotel around 2 am. This is a bit silly of us to do today as we are up at 6:30 to go on our 14:30 hour black beach and glacier tour tomorrow. I have written a separate post on our Northern Lights adventure.
Step Count: 22657
Day 5 – Iceland South Coast, Jökulsárlón Glacial Lagoon & Diamond Beach Tour
After 4:30 hours of sleep from getting in super late from the northern lights adventure at 2 m and waking up at 6:30 am, I knew I would be shattered by the end of the day.
This was a great tour to do. We saw loads of Iceland’s waterfalls. I travelled through black sand deserts with sand storms (these were so odd as the sand isn’t what I’m used to). We also travelled to the Jökulsárlón Glacial Lagoon & Diamond Beach. These were the farthest points we travelled from Reykjavik (where our hotel was). We also spent so many hours sitting on a coach, 10+ hours.
This was a great tour to do. All the sights on this tour were amazing, and I will add some photos. I don’t want to go into too much writing as I have written a separate post about the South Coast, Jökulsárlón Glacial Lagoon & Diamond Beach Tour.
Step Count: 14966
We travelled over 450 miles by car on this day.
Day 6 – Traveling back to Manchester
There is not much to say about this as our plane was set to depart at 11:15, and the airport is a 50-minute drive from Reykjavik, and we also had to get to the transfer bus, which took an extra 20 minutes. So on this day, not much was done in Iceland.
We flew from Keflavik Airport to Manchester Airport. The flight was quick,k about 2:30, and I just watched most of season 3 of Afterlife that I had downloaded. We were worried as there were reports of massive waits at customs and baggage (Manchester Airport). We got lucky, though as we had little to no ques.
Step Count: 8257
Overview of my Iceland trip!
As a whole, I enjoyed my trip to Iceland. This country has many wonders, and I believe we saw many of them here. The Arora Borealis, volcanoes, glaciers, and so much more. I had such a great time and am shattered finishing this post the day after I arrived home.
I did a total of 91,885 steps while on this holiday.
Do I recommend Iceland?
Yes is the simple answer. If you go to Iceland and don’t want to feel like you have wasted your holiday and money, you will need to travel. There is not much in Reykjavik; it’s also not the most attractive place. The rest of Iceland is stunning, though. So if you want a chilled holiday, maybe Iceland isn’t for you. However, you may think about heading off to Iceland to see some amazing sights and have an eventful holiday.
Suppose you would like to see more about my time in Iceland. You can check out any of the posts below or visit the fantastic Iceland trip category.
