My husband and I hoped on a plane the day after our wedding to head on a short mini-moon adventure to Iceland. He didn’t have a whole lot of PTO and November is one of the busiest months as a photographer for me so we needed to make the most out of the time we had. We caught a red-eye flight Monday night and got in Tuesday at 6a Iceland time (1a our time). We slept for half the day Tuesday and then had all of Wednesday and Thursday, and we flew back Friday afternoon. What was supposed to be a relaxing trip post wedding, was anything but that to be honest but we had a blast!
Day 1: Tuesday – Sleep & Northern Lights Tour
6a: We arrived from our flight. Customs was extremely fast which was great cause we were a bit out of it. We then got our checked bags and headed to the FlyBus pick up spot. Because we weren’t really going to need to do much driving ourselves, we decided not to deal with a rental car and just to walk and bus everywhere. More on that later. FlyBus is one of the easiest airport transfer services that we found and we were able to book pick up and drop off buses from the airport to Hallgrímskirkja (the famous church), which was a 3 minute walk from our Airbnb. It then picked us back up at that spot on Friday and took us to the airport. It was about a 45 minute ride from Keflavik Airport to the bus terminal in Reykjavik and then another 10 minute ride on a smaller bus to the church drop off.
8a: We made it to our Airbnb which was pretty much the cutest thing ever. It was this tiny loft with a private entrance, very cozy and perfect for the two of us. We immediately knocked out for what was supposed to be only a few hours but ended up being about 5 hours (again, it was 1a for us when we arrived at the airport).
3p: We got ourselves up and motivated and walked a short distance to the rainbow road. There are a ton of shops, restaurants and art galleries in that area. We grabbed a bit at Reykjavik Fish and both got the fish and chips which were amazing!! We walked to the water and went inside the Harpa Music Hall which is incredible. And then we headed to a small coffee shop called Reykjavik Roasters to hangout and warm up.
*Note about the weather: It was forecasted to be in the 40s and 50s, which felt like it wouldn’t be that different than home in the North East. But let me tell you, it was COLD. The wind chill brought it down to the 20s most days and we were not the most adequately prepared for that. So just something to keep in mind.
7p: We grabbed burgers for dinner at BrewDog before we headed to bus stop 14 to get picked up for our Northern Lights Tour.
8:30p-1a: We got picked up for our Northern Lights Bus Tour and headed about an hour out to the middle of nowhere where there wasn’t light pollution to interfere with seeing the northern lights. The tour guide provided thick wool blankets that did very little to protect from the wind and cold but maybe something? We stood outside in an open field for about 30 minutes before we started to see a little of what could be the lights. It took about an hour to an hour and a half to actually start seeing them.
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