There’s a tradition when we’re flying out of the UK somewhere and that’s to have a drink in the airport before we take off. My wife is a fan of a Bloody Mary in these situations whereas I hunt down whatever’s closest to a darker ale especially if it’s one I’ve not tried before.

Breakfast eaten and Start of the Holiday Drink drunk we boarded the plane and were heading northwards for the few hours’ flight to Iceland soon after.

It’s not a great photo but we did like the air sickness bag provided by Wow Air.

We’d been keeping an eye on the Icelandic weather before we left so we knew that there had been occasional drops of snow in and around the areas of the country we’d be visiting for the few days there. In the main, though, the temperature was expected to be well below zero and subsequently too cold for it to snow much. It was lovely, therefore, to dip under the clouds on the approach to Keflavik airport and see the landscape looking white and frozen. There’s nothing quite like travelling and instantly thinking to yourself “I am somewhere very, very different from home.”

We had one issue in the airport on arrival in that we somehow managed to walk straight past where we needed to pick up our ticket for the bus transfer and ended up outside the building on the opposite side to where we needed to be. Eventually, though, we worked out what we needed to do, grabbed our tickets, boarded the bus, then were whisked off on the fairly short drive to the capital, Reykjavík.

On the way we were pleased to recognise Hafnarfjörður where we’d stayed during our previous visit to Iceland in 2015. We’d really enjoyed that stay but wanted something in the city rather than on its outskirts so this time we had chosen the CenterHotel Plaza located right on Ingólfur Square. Our room was spacious – perhaps bordering on the spartan but appropriate for the Icelandic aesthetic – and on the top floor of the hotel, and would have provided some lovely views over the buildings across the bay that formed the northern edge of Reykjavík to the mountains beyond if it wasn’t mid-afternoon with an already fast-fading light along with a chilly drizzle in the vicinity.

Our plans for this Friday evening in Reykjavík weren’t particularly exciting. We wanted to get something to drink, we wanted to get something to eat, and we wanted to just get our bearings ahead of a full day exploring to come. Probably the main road that any tourists to Iceland’s capital will wander along is Laugavegur – it’s off that road that you can find most of the shops and bars and things of likely interest to a first-time visitor – and with Ingólfur Square being at the western end of that road and a few minutes north of the large lake, Tjörnin, getting our bearings was pretty easy. We had the benefit of having been into the city on two occasions before so some things were instantly familiar too plus you can’t really get lost in Reykjavík anyway; it’s ridiculously small.

We didn’t wander very far from the hotel as we already had a place in mind to check out so after braving the bitter wind and unpleasantly persistent spitty rain for less than twenty minutes we quickly made for the Icelandic Craft Bar on Lækjargata. My wife was on a quest to have a cocktail in Iceland for some reason but I stuck with what I know and love: a local, red ale.

Of course, with this being Iceland those two drinks cost us a small fortune: somewhere just north of £20. Still, we’d known all about the country’s staggeringly high prices before we came and this was only mildly shocking.

We’d already spotted a number of places that could satisfy our food cravings, all of them very close to our hotel, and checked the map on the phone to pick one of them and a route. That’s when we noticed another place in the vicinity serving up local craft ales – the Skúli Craft Bar – so heading back past the Christmas decorations for the Yule Cat we made for the bar and exchanged money for alcohol once again.

We loved the glasses here and we had a decent talk with the barman who was happy to explain the various types of ale they had available.

After that it was time to get some food in us and the place we ended up choosing was the Sæta Svínið Gastropub, mere metres from the entrance to our hotel. We weren’t sure we would be able to eat in it at first as the place was absolutely rammed and standing room only but after asking a waitress about the possibility of dining we were led up the steep and narrow set of stairs to the first floor where in a nearly equally-rammed location we were seated at a small table and handed menus. Like several other people there we needed to use the torches on our phones to read the menu as it was stupidly dark but we picked some drinks and food, admired the star effect on the ceiling, then enjoyed everything that turned up.

The photos are about twice as bright as everything really was and there was a lot of guesswork as to what else I was eating with my Ling. Price-wise it was about par for the country, which is to say that we paid restaurant prices for slightly better than pub quality meals back home. That’s Iceland, though, and that’s what you’ve got to be prepared to do when you visit.

We finished the evening after the meal with a short walk to see if anything caught our eye but ultimately decided to simply head back to our hotel room to warm up and get a decent night’s sleep after about fifteen minutes of that chilly activity. A final, somewhat eerie sight of the night was this sculpture that wouldn’t have looked too out of place in an episode of Doctor Who.

Our plan for the Saturday was to hit cultural sights in Reykjavík and to take an aurora-spotting trip out on the water at night, all of which will be covered in the next post.

We decided to head towards the northern point of Reykjavík, Effersey, as a look at the map indicated that it would take us past a grouping of museums and we’re fond of a museum or two when we’re out and about travelling. Even though it was mid-morning the sky was dark with the sun barely creeping above the horizon. It was also windy and, of course, this was Iceland in December so it was extremely cold. The walk took us through some fairly industrial landscape but you’ll never find a terribly pleasing architectural style in this part of the world as practicality has to come first. Nevertheless, the views of the harbour area of the city and across the water to the snow-peaked mountains north were gorgeous.

One thing you will see a lot of in Iceland’s capital is street art. We’d had a good look at the street art in Reykjavík on our previous trip to the country and were pleased to see that even in the less tourist-inhabited areas of the city there was still plenty of really good quality work to see.

Reykjavík Maritime Museum

As we headed back from Effersey into the main area of Reykjavík we stopped in at the first of the museums we would visit during the day, the Maritime Museum. The museum has a coast guard vessel moored alongside it which can be visited at set times on guided tours during the day but we wouldn’t be around for those so just explored the museum on our own. The main features of the maritime museum were focused on the local fishing industry; indeed, the building in which the museum was located was formerly a fish factory. Following the main exhibition through the museum from room to room took us through artefacts from Iceland’s fishing history with explorations of the ocean, fishing vessels, and the fishing communities. There were a number of interactive elements too – we quite liked putting our hands in boxes to try to guess what was in them and taking broken plates and reconstructing them jigsaw-like – and the museum was a nice enough diversion (plus it was warm and dry) although it might not be that interesting if fishing isn’t something that particularly excites you.

Aurora Reykjavík

A very short walk from the maritime museum brought us to Aurora Reykjavík, an exhibition centre dedicated to the Northern Lights as you’ve probably been able to guess. It’s not the hugest exhibition in the world and you could probably walk through it all in five minutes but there are plenty of pretty photos of aurorae and there are some really interesting facts relating to the colours and patterns of aurora that you might be able to see in Iceland. With us having a nighttime boat trip out to see these for ourselves we found this very interesting indeed and we learnt a few things we hadn’t realised before. For example, we did know that when there’s suitably highly energtic particles flowing from the sun then aurorae happen all the time, day and night but, obviously, you can only see them at night because it’s dark. What we hadn’t realised was that the ones you see at night are from particle streams that have flowed past the Earth, curved around the magnetic fields, rebounded, then flowed back down the magnetic lines into the higher latitudes. That was fascinating to realise.

If you’re unsure how to take photos of aurorae then there are guides to how to do this and there’s even a dark booth where you can test your camera settings to see if you can take a picture of what’s inside. Finally, the centre also has a high definition cinema screen at the end of the exhibition which shows video of the Aurora Borealis from different locations around Iceland on a loop. This was a very enjoyable, very attractive, incredibly relaxing thing to sit and watch for about ten minutes.

Bryggjan Brugghús

We’d had another reason for picking the part of Reykjavík we’d wanted to start our Saturday’s wandering in and that was because we’d seen that the Bryggjan Brugghús was there, the first independent microbrewery and bistro in the country. We weren’t quite ready for any food at this point, having had a suitably large breakfast in the hotel that morning, but we couldn’t pass up the chance to try some very locally-produced ales. It’s what we do when we travel. The drinks were wonderful and the brewhouse was a very nice venue too. We didn’t do the beer tour because we wanted to make the most of our time in the city but that’s something we’d definitely consider when we return, as we surely will.

Reykjavík

The next two places we wanted to visit were across the eastern side of Reykjavík. We weren’t in any rush and Iceland’s capital isn’t very large, though, so walking was an easy choice for us. We headed back into the city and walked along the main drag, Laugavegur, towards the first of the two destinations we intended to visit.

The Icelandic Phallological Museum

One of Reykjavík’s most famous museums must surely be the Icelandic Phallological Museum, or as it’s more commonly described, the Penis Museum. In fact, we’d wanted to visit this museum when we’d come to Iceland before but had ended up missing it for some reason. This time we’d checked the map beforehand and realised how easy it was to find.

The museum houses penile specimens from nearly all of Iceland’s sea and land mammals plus examples from other mammals around the world and, bizarrely, some ones from the realms of fantasy too. It’s a place that’s worth visiting to say you’ve been there but it would be fair to say that all the exhibits are a little samey after a while and you get a look that spells danger from your wife after five minutes of saying “Mine’s bigger. Mine’s bigger. Mine’s bigger. That’s just wrong. Mine’s bigger.”

Reykjavík Art Museum

We’re generally appreciative of art so our final cultural destination for our day in Reykjavík was the modern art museum only about fifteen minutes away on foot south of where we were. We ended up walking past the road we’d intended to take to the museum’s entrance so approached the building from its south once we’d realised this but this meant we got to walk through Klambratún, a large park with some interesting art sculptures and play equipment. With the sun sinking in the western sky by this time there was some lovely light coming across the park area casting long shadows and reflecting golden warmth in the windows of the art museum.

The art museum was perhaps a little disappointing in what it contained but probably mostly because of the exhibits at the time we visited which just weren’t to our taste. That’s just a chance you take when you visit any art gallery. From an architectural perspective, though, we loved the brutalist design of the building itself and the cakes on offer in the building’s café looked very tempting indeed.

Food And Drink

By this time we were starting to get hungry and thirsty again so we decided to make our way back towards our hotel as it was very close to a number of dining establishments and some good places to get drinks too. We walked back through the centre of Reykjavík, detouring slightly so that we could pass by Hallgrímskirkja. We’d visited it before so didn’t go in this time and satisfied ourselves with a couple of shots as we headed back but you can read about our visit to Hallgrímskirkja in 2015 if you’d like to see inside it and the views from the top of the impressive landmark.

We dined just around the corner from our hotel then took a short stroll to the Skúli craft ale bar nearby that we’d enjoyed visiting on the night before. We didn’t want to eat or drink too much as we had one final activity planned for the night.

Reykjavík Northern Lights Boat Cruise

Part of the deal that saw us travel to Iceland included tickets for an Elding Northern Lights Cruise from Reykjavík Harbour. It had originally been scheduled for the day before but the weather had put a stop to that so we’d rescheduled the trip for the Saturday instead. With eating and drinking out of the way we stopped in our hotel room to start layering up then made our way down to the Elding office on Ægisgarður in the Old Harbour area. Tickets were shown and exchanged for admission slips then we were sent down the dockside to board the boat.

On board we were shown the red overalls we were invited to put on should we wish to. We decided not to bother but plenty of people did. After everyone was aboard and we’d been given a little bit of information from one of the guides the boat set out into the harbour. We elected to stay inside at the start as there didn’t seem to be much point heading outside into the cold when there was nothing to see but it wasn’t very long before we were told that there was an auroral band forming in the western sky. We headed topside and for the second visit to Iceland in a row we got to see the Northern Lights. We know plenty of people who’ve been multiple times and not seen them at all so consider ourselves very lucky. Of course, trying to take a photo on the phone on a boat that’s rocking on the water and in strong winds is not the easiest thing to do and doesn’t produce the best results but here’s what was captured anyway.

The aurora faded pretty quickly and there were only hints of more forming during our time out on the water. To the east of the city on the island of Videy the Imagine Peace Tower was throwing its beam of light into the night and provided the only other point of interest in the sky.

It was incredibly cold on the boat. I know, I know. It was December, it was night, it was Iceland, it’s what we were expecting. I was wearing two pairs of socks, long thermal leggings, jeans, a long-sleeved top, a hoodie, a double-layered coat, gloves, a woollen hat, and had the hood up on both the hoodie and the coat. It was absolutely bitter out there on the water and the main problems were with the toes and fingers and the hoods getting whipped off by the wind that was cutting across the harbour and battering the boat. For those parts that were coldest we don’t think that the overalls would have helped so my recommendation if you think about doing this cruise is invest in thermal socks and gloves.

We really enjoyed the experience on the boat and can now say that we’ve seen the Northern Lights from the land and the sea but if you’re mostly interested in photographing the aurora rather than simply seeing them then this isn’t the best way to go about it.

We’d originally planned to visit a bar after our boat tour but were so chilled to the bone by the end of it that we elected for a cup of tea in our hotel room instead. How dreadfully sensible of us. The next day, Sunday, would see us up early in order to take a tour of the southern coast of Iceland.

Gray Line tours depart from their main office to the north east of the capital city just across the water from the island of Videy. It is possible to make your own way there for the departure time but free pick-ups are provided around Reykjavík too using minibuses. Our pick-up was just a few minutes walk from our hotel at Bus Stop Number 1 – Ráðhúsið/City Hall. It’s worth noting if you’re looking at a map or arriving at the location that there are bus stops on both sides of the road but as far as we could tell – and certainly as far as we were concerned – tour buses were picking people up only from the southern side. Our excursion was due to start at 09:00 which meant pick-ups were commencing from 08:30 and when we arrived just before then there were a lot of people already waiting and trying to find somewhere that the wind wasn’t striking them quite so violently. We initially thought everyone was going on the same tour as us but it soon became apparent that there were at least a dozen different groups getting ready to explore the Icelandic landscape somewhere with different companies.

Of course, with this being Iceland in December it was dark at 08:30. And cold. Very, very cold.

Our minibus eventually turned up, our names were checked, we got aboard, were whisked across to the main office, transferred to the big bus, and very soon after 09:00 were on our way eastwards out of the city then south towards the coast. It was still dark but the sun was starting to create some lovely colours on the horizon.

Hvolsvöllur

The first stop was at the small town of Hvolsvöllur. This was strictly a toilet and refreshments break as there was very little else to see or do where we parked. But that’s a relative term when you’re talking about Iceland because the views are always spectacular in some way wherever you are, and since we neither required the use of the loo nor picking up anything to eat or drink, having sensibly done the latter at the shop near our hotel before we left, I snapped a few images of the Icelandic landscape while everyone else sunk some coffee and grabbed snacks.

Eyjafjallajökull

We passed Seljalandsfoss on our left hand side – this would be the last place we would visit during our return to Reykjavík later in the day – then made a stop by the roadside a while after, a photo opportunity to take pictures of Eyjafjallajökull. The almost unpronounceable Eyjafjallajökull is an ice cap which feeds several glaciers in the region. It’s far more famous, though, as being on top of the stratovolcano that erupted in 2010 and caused huge disruption to air travel around Iceland.

The long shadows cast by the sun slowly creeping into the sky were fabulous.

Skógafoss Waterfall

The next stop on our tour of southern Iceland was the first of the two waterfalls we would be visiting, Skógafoss. Its 60 metre drop makes it one of the largest waterfalls in Iceland and even if you’ve not visited it in person you might have still seen it anyway as it featured as a location in the movie Thor: The Dark World.

With the low, weak sun coming from the south our view of the waterfall and the huge amount of spray it was throwing up was accompanied by a rainbow. The waterfall area formed a small valley and the wind was bitterly cold as it thundered down it. Taking photos was a case of removing gloves for the briefest of seconds to take the picture then immediately replacing them and rubbing the fingers for warmth. That spray and the wind were the reasons we didn’t want to venture too close to Skógafoss although plenty of people did. If I hadn’t had my camera with me then I might have done so too. But when don’t I have my camera with me?

There are steps to the right side of Skógafoss that lead up to a viewing platform and form part of a walking route that heads as far back to the west as Eyjafjallajökull. Because of our tour duration limits we would only really have had time to climb to the top then come back down and with the light falling on the waterfall the way it was I decided we’d get better views from ground level. At a different time of the year or even day I might have made the ascent.

All that water cascading off Skógafoss has to go somewhere and it was into a river that flowed surprisingly slowly to the south of us. You can see just how cold it was from the lumps of ice floating downstream and the shallow edge closest to where we were was frozen over completely which encouraged some people to even walk on it and take photos.

In the second post covering this south coast of Iceland tour I’ll include the next two stops – the village of Vík and the black sand beach at Reynisfjara – and the third post will conclude this excellent Gray Line excursion with an unexpected stop at the Sólheimajökull glacier before our second waterfall of the day and the place we’d passed a little earlier, Seljalandsfoss.

Until this point we’d assumed that everyone aboard the bus was on the same excursion but this turned out not to be true. Four people travelling with us had booked a different trip; one that included the waterfalls we were visiting on this tour but which skipped the town and beach coming up for us with a walk on a glacier instead. After leaving Skógafoss we took a quick detour in order to drop these people off at Sólheimajökull where they were due to meet with local guides for their trip and from where we would later return to pick them up on the way back to Reykjavík.

After that we were on our way again and didn’t stop until we’d reached the farthest point from Iceland’s capital city that this tour would be taking us to.

Vík í Mýrdal

Vík í Mýrdal (or Vík for short) is the most southerly village in Iceland. Despite the small number of local inhabitants the village can hold several times its permanent number in hotels and other accommodations in the area as the location is often used by scientific teams because of some interesting features of the town. Drawing a line directly south there is no landmass at all between Vík and Antarctica. To the north lies the Katla volcano, currently covered by a glacier as it has not erupted since 1918. It is believed that when the volcano does erupt it will melt enough of the glacier to flood almost the entire village so evacuation drills are regularly held in order that people know how to get to the higher land in a timely manner. The prominent church in Vík is the congregation point for those drills.

The geology of the area around Vík comprises black basalt giving everything an odd look for a beach if you’re just used to golden sand elsewhere in the world but one that seems so perfectly right in Iceland. A few people from our tour group headed down towards the beach but the majority seemed keen to hit the large supermarket and store near where our bus had parked or wandered into the village to see whether any of the cafés or restaurants or wool shops were open. We had spotted a rocky jetty extending out into the sea and although we’d been warned that the sea conditions were often extremely dangerous in this area we could see nothing but calm conditions and decided to head down to it and see how far out we could get. We weren’t the only ones. We’re suckers for piers and jetties. I can’t exactly explain it but we’re just drawn to them. There’s a wonderful feeling being out from the mainland with sea in most directions and being able to look back and get a bigger picture of what’s ashore.

Due to the village’s sheltered positioning and direct face towards the Gulf Stream it is among the wettest and warmest places in Iceland, the former environmental condition not being a problem at all for us during our clear sky visit to Vík and the latter being something we discussed at the time as we noticed that the deadly chill from the wind we’d experienced at Skógafoss had almost completely transformed into something remarkably close to quite pleasant on the coast.

Once the rocks of the jetty became too large and uneven to easily progress without the fear of slipping off or turning an ankle and after we’d had a discussion about just what we’d do if we saw the distant glacier explode into steam ahead of a flooding event because the volcano was erupting (answer: hold onto a boulder and hope) we headed back onto land and wandered a little farther west of Vík as we’d seen an interesting-looking sculpture in that area.

That sculpture turned out to be one half of the Voyages Sculpture by Steinunn Thorarinsdottir. The sculpture represents the friendship between Vík in Iceland and Hull in England where a matching sculpture stands (although the one in Hull isn’t the original as that was stolen by scrap metal thieves in 2011), both places having a long fishing history together only broken during the Cod Wars. Voyages was jointly commissioned by the British and Icelandic governments. An interesting fact about Steinunn Thorarinsdottir – at least for us as it’s our home city – is that she was educated at the University of Portsmouth.

We headed back to the bus in plenty of time to take a look around a large and well-stocked shop for tourists and make use of the public toilets before it was time to board and head just along the coast to our next stop.

Reynisfjara Black Sand Beach

From the photos from Vík above you can see that there were some basalt sea stacks to the west of the village. Our destination was the other side of them which, because of the rocky headland jutting out into the sea and because buses don’t float very well, meant a drive north, then west, then south to get to where we needed to be. This reasonably short drive gave us a slightly closer view of the Mýrdalsjökull ice cap covering the Katla volcano.

A decent-sized car park was pretty full when we arrived and indicated clearly that Reynisfjara was a popular destination for tourists visiting Iceland. It was very easy to see why, though. East of the beach and beyond the basalt rocks on it were the prominent basalt columns jutting up from the sea while to the west there was a clear view of Dyrhólaey, a peninsula with a couple of very obvious arches of rock visible. Our guide on the bus had mentioned that someone had actually flown through the larger arch on a microlight craft.

We didn’t have anywhere near enough time to head down towards Dyrhólaey but it was the basalt columns that were of more interest to everyone anyway. They are known as the Reynisdrangar and Icelandic legend claims they are the petrified remains of trolls who’d dragged a three-masted ship towards shore but got caught by the sunrise. That’s so like a troll to do that.

The rocky headland that separates Reynisfjara from Vík is also basalt and is also fascinating to look at especially if you’ve never seen basalt rock formations before. We hadn’t. I love seeing geometric patterns and structures produced by natural processes. Just like the Reynisdrangar in the sea the basalt formations on land and the large but shallow cave in the headland were big hits with photographers amongst the tourists visiting this particular part of Iceland’s south coast.

Sea birds circled endlessly above the Reynisfjara headland. This area is home to puffins – a favourite bird of my wife’s for some reason I’ve never delved into – but you’ve obviously got to visit at the right time of year to see them and it didn’t appear that early December was it.

Iceland doesn’t really have rolling landscapes, or at least the bits of Iceland we’ve seen across two visits to the country don’t. The bits that aren’t mountains are flat and there are very few instances where neither feature applies. It makes for a land that often makes you feel small. You’re small against the vast, open flat areas; you’re small against the glacier-topped and snow-peaked mountains; you’re small under the night sky when it’s clear and especially when there are aurorae active. Distances look huge but everything looks within easy reach. We could see some of that very Icelandic view as we came back from the beach to the parking area ahead of our departure. Iceland is a country that gets to you and you can sense how it molds the people who live there.

There were a few buildings around the parking area at Reynisfjara, including a public toilet and a small dining establishment. We had no need of either and waited around to grab a few final photos until we saw members of our tour group starting to appear and board the bus.

In the third and final part of this south coast Iceland excursion we’ll hit the Sólheimajökull glacier to pick up the tour group passengers we’d dropped there earlier before our second waterfall of the day, Seljalandsfoss.

Getting back on the bus after our visit to Reynisfjara our guide told us that we’d all been very punctual and because traffic had been light when we were getting out of Reykjavík thanks to this being a Sunday we were running ahead of schedule. We knew that we would have to take a slight detour on the way to what should have been the last destination in order to pick up the tour group we’d dropped off earlier in the day for their glacier walk but we were now informed that since we’d have additional time there would be a chance for those of us who wanted it to get off the bus at the glacier and get a little closer to it. We were, of course, extremely happy to hear this. I mean, who doesn’t like glaciers?

Sólheimajökull Glacier

It was late afternoon as we pulled into the car park at Sólheimajökull where there were around a couple of dozen other vehicles and some buildings where those who would have been taking hikes on the glacier could get refreshments, drop off bags, and get changed into decent walking boots, etc. Our guide pointed us to a path heading northwards and informed us that if we followed it then we’d get to see the glacier and the river run-off from it, and that we’d be able to follow the path for about 15-20 minutes but that we shouldn’t go beyond where signs indicated guides were required. With only around 40 minutes before we’d need to be back on the bus we knew we’d have just enough time to get as far as it was possible to go, grab some photos, then make our way back so as soon as the bus doors opened we were off and making for the path immediately. Behind us the sun was barely above the horizon and was producing a gorgeous sunset over the Icelandic landscape but we were on a mission to hit the glacier so mostly ignored it.

The path we took was a reasonably easy one to follow. After an initial rise it mostly levelled off and although it twisted a little as it followed the edge of the valley into which the glacial melt was flowing it wasn’t a difficult route. The only problem was that this was December and the temperature was below zero and there were areas where rainfall had puddled along the path so they’d naturally turned to ice. We had to be careful getting past some of these icy patches especially where the path was quite narrow but I’m pleased to say we didn’t have any slips or falls heading to Sólheimajökull or back and we didn’t see anyone else struggle either.

The landscape of Iceland is deceptive. With such wide open spaces and huge natural wonders you can easily lose sense of scale. As we got nearer to the glacier its river run-off became more filled with large chunks of glacial ice. You knew they were large but it was only when you saw people at the ground level rather than on the path providing some context as to sizes that things become clearer as to just how massive everything was.

Sólheimajökull is a subsidiary glacier off Mýrdalsjökull which we’d seen from Vík during our visit there earlier in the day, lying to the east of Eyjafjallajökull which we’d stopped at to take photos even earlier in the day. This was definitely a tour for people who like to look at glacial ice caps. Sólheimajökull is one of the most popular glaciers to visit in Iceland on account of its relative ease of access although thanks to the climate emergency it is retreating at quite a rate so if it’s somewhere that appeals to you to visit or walk on then sooner rather than later would be the best advice here.

We’d seen glaciers before during our travels. The first time we’d seen one had been during our cruise to the Norwegian fjords in 2013 and our visit to the Kjenndal Glacier. In 2016 we’d then cruised the Chilean fjords and seen the Amalia Glacier. Sólheimajökull, to date, marks the closest we’ve been to a glacier and was probably the most impressive to see in real life. I don’t know whether that was because you could get that sense of scale sometimes when you spotted people walking on it in guided groups or whether it was because it was a surprise visit that just changed our appreciation of it in some way. I do know that we liked it a lot but locations in Iceland tend to have that effect, we find.

If you look on Sólheimajökull Glacier on the right of this picture below you can see a line of hikers walking across the ice to give you a feel for the size and majesty of the structure.

We got as far as we were allowed without guides on the path to the glacier. A rope across the path and signs marked this point and it was here that people not just from our tour bus but also from other groups or who had driven there themselves gathered to take some shots of the spectacle from as close as it was permitted.

You know it’s a good thing when the locals are still fascinated by what’s around them and what they probably visit on many occasions. We were acutely aware of how long it had taken us to walk to this point along the path but spotted that our tour guide had also made the walk along to see the glacier and take some photos too so we knew that as long as she was around we couldn’t possibly miss getting the bus back. As soon as she looked like she was about to head off we did the same. Our walk back took us almost directly south which meant that as we rounded curves in the path we were treated to the long, winter sunset of this region of the world.

Seljalandsfoss Waterfall

A fairly short bus ride once everyone was back on board then took us to the second waterfall of our south coast tour of Iceland and also the final stop for the day: Seljalandsfoss.

With a drop of around 60 metres Seljalandsfoss is about as high as Skógafoss that we’d seen earlier but considerably narrower. While it may not have had the impressive power of the other waterfall Seljalandsfoss does boast a walkway behind its fall allowing visitors to step behind the cascade coming off the top of the natural wonder. However, again, this was December and the temperatures were well below zero even at the warmest part of the day, let alone the early evening when we’d arrived, and the spray that was whipped and knocked about by the wind had frozen over the walkway to a quite obviously dangerous level. Nobody from our group was stupid enough to risk either falling or the danger of hypothermia that resided that close to the torrent’s edge and we satisfied ourselves with some more distant views of the waterfall in the rapidly fading light and increasingly freezing conditions.

There were other, smaller waterfalls along the escarpment and with more time and light there were probably some stunning views around the landscape but the sun had pretty much set completely by this time and we were more than satisfied with only a short time at Seljalandsfoss before reboarding our bus and heading back to Reykjavík.

South Iceland Tour Conclusion

Our bus ride back to Reykjavík was completed without any stops and was notable only in that for a sustained period the sky to the north had a long, green band of the aurora borealis across it. There was nowhere for the bus to stop and let us out to take photos at the time but it was clearly visible from inside, a nice end to the day, and marked the third separate occasion we’d seen the northern lights across two visits to Iceland.

Iceland is a country of contrasts. It’s both barren and it’s beautiful. At times you feel small and at others you feel like a giant. Even the prices of things in Iceland are wild with items like food and drink feeling sometimes criminally expensive yet a tour like this one, lasting 10 hours, working out at just 8 euros per person per hour; as people who like to take organised excursions when we travel that is extremely good value and we can highly recommend the service from Gray Line both on the day and ahead of the tour through emailed information.

This south coast of Iceland tour was excellent. If you’re visiting Iceland and its capital for the first time then we’d probably recommend the Golden Circle tour (even though it might feel like the too touristy thing to do) as there’s a bigger mix of things to see but if you’re in the region a second time then you won’t be disappointed at all with exploring the southern coast.

My main camera was packed away in our carry-on luggage for the flight so the few photos taken on this cold morning in Reykjavík were on the phone and required very swift removal of gloves, composition, and snaps because of the weather conditions. The strong winds that had accompanied us on the previous three days had dropped completely but the Feels Like forecasts we had seen put the temperature at -12 degrees Celsius. That’s pretty chilly.

With money spent and no room to store anything else we might have considered splashing out cash on anyway we decided to head back towards where we’d need to meet our minibus a little earlier than we needed to. Reykjavík’s City Hall, or Ráðhúsið, is on the northern edge of a large lake called Tjörnin and I suggested it might be nice to take a walk around it in our last half hour or so in the Icelandic capital.

Before we’d left for our tour of the southern coast on the previous day we’d seen some other people trying to crack the ice that had formed on the pond at the entrance to City Hall. It was easy to see the appeal as we came back on the same place. Ice just looks like it wants you to break it.

The sun never climbs very high in the sky in Iceland in December but those late morning sunrises are spectacularly wonderful with the crisp, clear air. We began our anti-clockwise circumnavigation of Tjörnin enthralled by the warm-looking yet decidedly not warm-feeling sunshine glowing on the southeastern horizon and reflecting off the lake. The reflection was bright enough that despite what you might see from the photos and video below it wasn’t clear to us that Tjörnin was completely frozen over. We could see what we thought were patches of ice on its surface but it took until we got nearly halfway around and the sun was behind us that we realised the extent of just how cold the lake was and how far that ice had spread and how thick it was.

In the photo below you can see how the wind from the previous days had joined with the plummeting temperatures to create frozen sheets of ice then push them onto and over one another to form spiked waves. I’m reminded of a hairstyle I used to sport.

In the picture below it looks almost like a snapshot of the crest of a wave and that one side of the surface of Tjörnin is frozen while the other remains in liquid form but that’s an illusion. Both sides were frozen but the right-hand side had been disturbed enough by the wind and water motion at some point to have fragmented a little more with flakes of ice then piling up to form a natural dyke.

You can’t go very far in Iceland without stumbling upon an odd art sculpture and in the month before our visit to the country a new one had been installed in Tjörnin. In case you haven’t instantly grasped that this sculpture represents democracy (what is wrong with you?) and you’re wondering just what this pink, erect thing jutting out of the lake in the centre of Reykjavík is then in the artist Steinunn Gunnlaugsdóttir‘s own words when speaking to mbl.is:

A sausage, sitting like the Danish mermaid on a small bread bun out in the pond, erect and happy, a small marine sausage without arms, a strange being that doesn’t realise it’s own power. It’s also a bit creepy. […] It’s both a mermaid, usually female, but also a penis, because it’s difficult to make a sculpture of a sausage that doesn’t resemble a penis in some way. But I don’t think that’s bad.

As we completed our circuit of the lake – really only the top half of the lake as we didn’t have quite enough time to cross the road and complete the full loop – we found a gathering of birds. Over forty species of birds frequent Tjörnin but of the few that were present in this small area that had resisted freezing through a combination of shelter from the northerly wind and water feeding the lake via pipes the one that stood out was the Whooper swan which was there in large numbers. They are noisy buggers.

I grabbed one last shot of the Reykjavík sunrise over frozen lake Tjörnin before we found ourselves back at the bus pick-up point and huddled together for warmth until it turned up. A quick transfer to the main terminal followed by a painless run down to Keflavík airport and by late evening we were back home.

This concludes our second short break to Iceland. All of the posts relating to this visit can be found here – December 2018 – and the posts from our first trip to Iceland are here – November 2015. It’s a fabulous country with landscapes and seascapes and night skies and a general way of life that you will find yourself totally absorbed by, and if you’ve not been there before then you really need to. Just save up a little before you make the journey. No, more than that. Maybe double that amount.