Welcome back to episode 3 of our Iceland mini -episodes. We're doing a special series of daily episodes that will capture highlights from our trip each day. We hope you enjoy this format, and be sure to follow along with us on this journey. Today is our last full day in Iceland, and we are driving into Reykjavik this evening.
Good morning. I think we are still flying high on the adrenaline from last night. Just right outside our hotel, we saw the most magnificent Northern Lights display.
Yeah, absolutely incredible. So real quick, I think we need to share the story. We had gone to dinner and you said, hey, I think I see, like, I really think I see something through this window. And so I actually checked the app that I've been using, the Aurora app. And yeah, absolutely. So they had, they color code it to where it's like possible. They have like green for maybe a little bit yellow and then red if it's like definitely, and it was completely red. So I grabbed my phone and ran downstairs and I could see it then really only through my phone, but I told Scott to come on, let's go down. And they were very gracious. I think that's, that's just the kind of the norm here is for people to obviously be looking for the Northern Lights. And then by the time we got back down there, you could really see it with your naked eye, the pink and the green, which was amazing.
Yeah. And then we saw them shimmering. And, you know, normally the video won't pick that up, but Melissa got a great video of the lights actually shimmering because they were just so bright, even to the naked eye.
Yeah. And just all the way overhead. So just fantastic. We could actually see them from our room. But you couldn't capture it quite as well. So then, of course, we had to go back outside and you just don't feel how cold it is. So that was just absolutely fantastic. I highly, highly recommend this hotel. Again, we're going to link this again in the show notes. If we didn't have, you know, reservations the next night, already planned, I think that we would stay here another night. They have a couple of hot tubs out and a sauna. And it's just absolutely an amazing view of the glacier of the mountains. And so now we are headed to go back on the South Road and see what we can explore today.
We made a last minute call today and decided we wanted to get back to Reykjavik in time to go to the Sky Lagoon. So we didn't do as many of the stops as we had originally wanted to. But the ones we went to absolutely didn't disappoint.
Yeah, absolutely gorgeous. And I think that's the thing is when planning our trip is just, you know, like trying to look at itineraries and things like that. And I think looking to see what other people have done, especially on tours, just felt a bit rushed for us. So what we ended up doing is spending a little bit of time at the hotel. We had originally had thought about booking a glacier hike. going into some ice caves, but we really just felt like that we were going to need some time. So especially at the gorgeous hotel, which I'm going to put the link again in the show notes. No idea how to say it exactly, but it is the Glacier Lagoon Hotel. And so just spent some time there, had breakfast there, used their sauna and the hot tub before we left.
Yeah, neither one of us were daring enough to get into the little lake, but you can do that as a cold plunge option. I did take the cold shower. right outside the sauna.
Yeah. So that was just a lot of fun. Just having some extra time. Cause I mean, we have just found that, you know, when you're doing a trip like this and you do book, you know, these nice hotels, and that was probably like Scott had mentioned in the last episode, are probably the nicest one is just working in some time to just, you know, experience that. So leaving there, we actually went back to the diamond beach to experience it in a little bit different light because it was getting on towards sunset. And I think even though we do live at the beach, And we've talked about how much the beach changes and how much it changes with tide. Just to see this one in a different. The tide was coming up. It was almost going to be, as we were leaving, it was almost going to be where the beach part was going to be absolutely isolated. And if you didn't get back across, you would kind of be stranded out there, but a lot less ice because the tide was coming up. But we did get some really good shots of that. So just, you know, if you have the opportunity to, especially at a beach location, experience it at some different time periods. And then right across from that is the glacier. So just seeing the big chunks of ice and walking. around that for a little while. And so then we decided that we were going to do one more thing because it was actually about a three and a half hour. drive back to Reykjavik and so decided that we would just have to pick one more thing and so we actually drove a little bit off the beaten path to a canyon where you could walk not a long hike but to a waterfall and it seemed to be a lot less maybe big tour groups there was a bus coming as we were leaving but just kind of wanted to get somewhere a little bit more off the beaten path so this the name of this is complicated
And so I'm going to put the link to that in the show notes. But we really enjoyed that.
Yeah, we had to kind of choose between a couple of different options. And the research that we did said that the one we went to was less visited by tour groups. And so we just kind of wanted that experience because there has been a lot of tour groups here this week. And so I wanted to get a little bit off the beaten path. And we did. And we didn't regret it at all.
No, it was absolutely fantastic. So we'll put the link to that. And then we did make kind of a last minute decision that we would like to come back and visit the Sky Lagoon. I will be honest, it was a lot of driving for Scott, doing the Golden Circle, driving out to that South Road, then driving back today. So I think it was a really nice way to end the day. But we did, once we decided to do that and kind of calculated, okay, we have time to do one more thing. We did stop in Vic to get some gas and grab some lunch. But then... booked a time online, which I think was, was necessary. There's just the last two time slots by the time we got back. So really enjoyed that. It was completely different. So I think we mentioned before that we had kind of been told, you know, don't visit the blue lagoon and don't, this one is completely different. And so we're glad that we did both. It was just a completely different experience. We got there before, I guess the sun had probably, or was setting about to set, but it was still very light. We actually booked the one that included the private. changed rooms and the seven -step ritual. And I'm glad that we did that. It didn't take a real long time to do the seven -step ritual. We had plenty of time. We had a couple of hours by the time we got there to do everything. And so that was just neat. Cold plunge. We have the Lagoon, which is warm. Cold plunge. The sauna, which had an amazing view. 100 % glass. Amazing view. And then you go through the other rituals and then have some time to do that. And so then just made our way into downtown Reykjavik. Tomorrow we have a food. to our plans, and then we fly home in the afternoon.
Yeah, one thing I will say is we learned the value of when you pass a gas station, if you aren't on a full tank of gas, just go ahead and pull in and top that gas tank up. We blew into Vic on fumes. I mean, there was no more little lights left on the fuel gauge for the last probably 10 minutes, and I was worried that we were not going to make it to Vic. That's just my one thing is gas stations are few and far between when you're on that ring road. So stop and top up that tank often whenever you get a chance.
