Welcome to Reykjavik

I flew through the night to Reykjavik via Icelandair. The flight was 5 hours long and fairly smooth with decent service from the flight crew. With it being a night flight, I reserved a window seat so I could sleep and see the rising sun as we landed. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to sleep and it was still pitch dark when I arrived. And although it was 7 AM in Reykjavik, it was still 3 AM in my brain so I prayed that by some miracle my room would be ready despite my early arrival. And it was! The 101 Hotel, located in the city centre, is a stylish little boutique hotel with fluffy, white beds, modern bathrooms and a gorgeous view of the harbour. After checking in there was a little part of me that wanted to forget sleep and get exploring, but that fluffy, white bed had me at hello.

After a short but deep sleep, I ventured out to the Kaffe Solon for a light lunch of salad and pasta with roasted root vegetables and then set out exploring downtown Reykjavik. The best way for me to describe Reykjavik is Amsterdam-meets-Halifax. It's a compact, Euro-style city built on a hill with cobblestone streets, colourful buildings and cute shops. At night, cozy cafes have candles lit in their windows to welcome you in from the cold. It's also an artistic place with lots of colourful graffiti, galleries, sculptures and unique architecture. It's a small city - housing a good portion of Iceland's only 300,000 inhabitants - and it can be conquered on foot in a single day. I started out at the waterfront near the beautiful new Harpa. Later this month, Bjork will be playing a series of shows here in support of her new record. You can check out some unique travel packages for it here if that's your thing. I also visited the Solfar sculpture of a viking ship by Jon Gunnar Arnason at the waterfront and followed that up with a visit to the Hallgrimskirja church. Here I took an elevator to the eight floor for a magnificent, colourful view of the city.
Iceland is extremely organized and it is quite easy to participate in organized tours, so I elected to do a Northern Lights tour that nght. Typically you learn whether the tour is a go by about 6 PM and are picked up at you hotel by coach at 9:30 PM. Once aboard we were warned that the significant cloud coverage over the island might pose a problem in seeing the lights. Still, the tour operator had some excellent intel that there were breaks in the clouds in the countryside. And where did they get this intel? Fancy computers? Satellites? No....they just called some local farmers and asked about clouds.  Unfortunately the Northern lights and I were not meant to be that night. We spent many hours chasing away clouds in the pitch dark, only to arrive back at my hotel at around 1:30 AM without seeing so much as a star. We were advised that we were welcome to join another Northern Lights tour free of charge. Which, to be honest, felt very fair. They aren't in charge of the lights. And, seriously, who could ever be miffed with an Icelander? They are the nicest, most genuine of people. I will see the Northern Lights some day...perhaps I just may have to visit Iceland on my way home in November?