I Am a Polar Bear

It seems a bit redundant to post my February Week in Reykjavik Itinerary towards the end of March, especially when it had some up-and-down moments, but that’s just when Iceland Itineraries comes up in my posting schedule. Anyway, by now you’ll have seen most of what I did but I’m going to put it all together as an itinerary anyway.

As usual, you can either follow this to the letter (I recommend not, because some of it is a bit… just time-filling, which is partly because things went wrong) or you can pick and choose. All these things worked well in February, there’s plenty of indoor stuff and an amazing trip out into the countryside.

Day one – Friday

I arrived at Keflavik Airport and got through passport control and down the corridors etc just in time to burst through the door at 4:02, two minutes after the Airport Direct bus I’d booked had left. They run once an hour. No problem to transfer me onto the 5pm bus but it did mean I had to wait an hour. Now, I could have got on the FlyBus, operated by Reykjavik Excursions but I feel a certain loyalty towards Greyline, who I used extensively in my early Iceland days. Little over 24 hours later, I was to fall out big time with RE and my determination to be loyal to Greyline turned out to be a good and correct thing. Anyway, I went to the little shop and bought my favourite crisps and then I sat outside in the snow and ate them until my bus was ready. I was wearing all my chunky cold-weather stuff and then I ran through the airport so a cooling-down was necessary.

I got the bus into town, went up to my room in a nameless guesthouse in downtown Reykjavik, dropped most of my bags and went out again twenty minutes later. Most important was to get to the supermarket on Laugavegur before it closed to get enough food and drink to keep me going overnight, and then to continue to Sundhollin, the convenient city centre swimming pool. That was a good decision – after a long day and a stressful flight, to just sit in some hot water. I didn’t swim but I enjoyed the lazy pool and I spent a long time in the rooftop hotpot, which I’ve always previously found too hot.

Day two – Saturday

I had down “exploring Reykjavik” for most of today. I stopped at Tjornin, the City Pond, which was just behind my guesthouse. I always stop here to appreciate the wealth of waterfowl forced into the one tiny corner kept ice-free by a warm water supply. So many geese, swans, ducks, gulls and other birdies, all honking and squawking and flapping, slipping on the ice, bothering the spectactors and yet being so chilled. I stood on a goose’s foot here once and rather than try to murder me, it just gave me a dismayed look and carried on with its day.

Then I thought I’d walk up to Perlan. It was on my list for the trip but I was exploring Reykjavik, here was a thing in Reykjavik I wanted to do and it made sense to combine the two. So I walked up to Perlan. You can read about that here. It’s about 4km the way I went but you can go by car, bus or tour company if you prefer. Then I walked back, got some shopping and went out to be picked up for my tour.

This is where it all went wrong and where I fell out with Reykjavik Excursions. The plan was the Warm Baths and Cool Lights tour – Fontana plus a Northern Lights hunt, except it was cloudy and the Lights part was off. But somewhere along the line, I was picked up by the wrong driver and delivered a minute after the Fontana bus had left. If I’d got on the right bus, that would have been later, otherwise I’d have already been on it, and therefore delivered even later. Getting on the wrong bus was partly down to me but I was angry because RE hadn’t bothered to check they had all the pickup buses before departing and mostly I was furious because the customer service lady saw me waiting for the bus and said:

The Fontana bus has gone. It left at 6. You arrived 6.02. *shrug*

That’s not good customer service! That’s appalling customer service! I didn’t arrive late! I arrived on your pickup bus and as the biggest tour company in Iceland, you should do a lot better than *shrug*!

The lady who was actually at the desk tried to be helpful but it took ten minutes for her to figure out what had happened, by which time it was too late to get the bus back. She offered to have me delivered there but pointed out it would cut into my time in the water – by now we were 21 minutes late and I know it would have been another 10 minutes at least before we got a transfer bus out and the more she faffed and went back and forth, the more she was visibly thinking this was a bad option. So eventually we transferred my Fontana booking to the Sky Lagoon for Monday (“as a gesture of goodwill, we’re not charging you extra although this tour is more”. I summoned up all the snark I’ve ever possessed and said “Very generous…”) and they transferred the missed Northern Lights to the ordinary coach trip the next night. This, to be fair, is standard procedure for when the Northern Lights bit gets cancelled or when you don’t see anything and would have happened even if everything had gone to plan, given the cloudiness. You can rebook for the ordinary tour any time in the next two years. Then she said “Would you like to be taken back to bus stop 2 now? Or go somewhere else? Where would you like to go? You can go anywhere”.

It was like having my own personal genie. I opted for Laugadalslaug, the big swimming pool at the other end of the city, and a bemused dropoff driver turned up and gave me my own private dropoff at the pool in exchange for a purple token. I sat in the social pool because it was far too cold to scurry over to the hotpots half a mile away and the snow swirled and spiralled dizzyingly. So I got my night in the snow in hot water; it just wasn’t the hot water I’d been looking forward to. Then I dragged myself out of the hot water, through the snow and back inside and took the ordinary city bus (number 14) back to my guesthouse downtown.

Day three – Sunday

I didn’t sleep much on Saturday night, mostly because I was furious at Reykjavik Excursions, and seeing if I could leverage my tiny following to destroy them, which meant I was very tired and miserable when I got up on Sunday. Nonetheless! Plans were to be made!

I’d discovered the existence of Iceland’s newest hot springs, Hvammsvik, and I decided to book their tour on Monday. Unfortunately, due to a new EEA regulation, I can’t book it online because there’s something that means my card can’t be processed. I’ve fallen foul of this before but at last I had an explanation for it, which I’ve never seen before. So I went out in the morning for a short walk and to restock my favourite crisps, got blown over trying to walk around Harpa and then came home to phone Hvammsvik to book online. Yes, a millennial making a phone call to an Icelandic company – which answered in Icelandic despite “For English, press 2”. Once that particular nightmare was sorted and the trip was booked, I went out into Reykjavik. I was going Northern Lights hunting this evening so I was after something to fill the afternoon. To go to the pool? Was it worth it? Did I have time?

I went to the Settlement Exhibition, which is part of Reykjavik City Museum. Underneath what you think is the museum you’ll find an early Icelandic longhouse, in situ. Over the years, ground level has lifted and now the old house is two or three metres underground. An exhibition has been built around it. Then there’s a tunnel leading to more exhibit and it pops out in the end in an old house, with an old-fashioned shop and the living room of the bishop’s house and if you peek out of the window, you’re now about five doors down looking out at Ingolfstorg, the big brick square overlooked by the Center Hotel Plaza.

That took me to mid-afternoon. I dithered about the rest of the day – and frankly, wasted it. It poured with rain, it was cloudy, it snowed and I checked and re-checked RE’s website every ten minutes to see that the Northern Lights tour was cancelled. It wasn’t. It wasn’t, it wasn’t and it still wasn’t. I didn’t want to go. It was cloudy, it was wet, it was cold and I didn’t want to sit on a packed bus next to a stranger to stand out in the cold and not see any Northern Lights. I eventually went back to Sundhollin instead. Joke was on me – I learned the next day that there were indeed Northern Lights, purple-tinted ones, the only ones I think visible in cloudy snowy rainy Iceland the whole week I was there. But I was in the pool, slightly dismayed to see clear skies and stars overhead and I was warm and comfortable. If all had gone as planned on Saturday, I wouldn’t have seen Northern Lights anyway.

If all had gone to plan and I hadn’t been tired and angry, I’d have woken late after an evening at Fontana, gone for a food top-up, phoned Hvammsvik at 11, gone to the Settlement Exhibition, gone to the pool in the afternoon and been home in time to eat before going out to look for Northern Lights. It’s still not a spectacular day and maybe I’d have popped into the Culture House to see the sagas, but at least it’s a day.

Day four – Monday

This was where it all started to pick up! I successfully got on a tiny bus with two strangers at 9.30am and went off to Hvammsvik. I’ve already written a blog post about that, so suffice it to say we headed out towards Þingvellir, then turned left on the 48 (a road that was all gravel and terrifying when I drove it in the summer of 2014 and is now all tarmaced but a bit terrifying because of the snow and ice) and made a quick stop at Þórufoss before arriving at a gorgeous hot spring on the edge of the Whale Fjord. This is now my favourite geothermal experience in all of Iceland and I want you to know about it but I also want it to remain really quiet and peaceful.

When we got back, I did yet another food stock and wandered the city under a blue sky and was ready for my pickup for the Sky Lagoon. This was not quiet and peaceful. Arriving on a tour bus didn’t help; we all had our individual bookings and everyone had to have the spiel – where everything is, how everything works, would you like to link a card to your bracelet to pay for your booking. I’m looking at my watch thinking I was picked up from Reykjavik at 7pm and the bus departs at 9.30 which already isn’t a lot of time and how much time am I wasting in this queue?? Well, anyway, I highly recommend not going to the Sky Lagoon in the evening. It was very busy, we were packed into the steam room and had to queue for the showers to wash off the body scrub and it was all very infuriating. I love the Sky Lagoon but don’t waste your time coming here in the evening. Get here first thing instead when there’s actually room to breathe.

One idle observation – no one, at any point, checked whether I actually had a booking when I got on the transfer bus, either on the way to the Sky Lagoon or on the way back. If you’ve booked the Sky Lagoon and are wondering the best way to get there or back… well, I’m not saying you can just hop on the RE transfer bus for free but I’m just saying no one checked I was allowed to be there. On the way back, I definitely witnessed the driver tell someone who didn’t have a booking that they could just pay to travel rather than strand them outside the city at night. It would be 100kr (that’s about 60p) and when they said “oh… I don’t have any cash with me”, the driver kind of shrugged and looked the other way and said it was fine. Just an observation.

Day five – Tuesday

Boring, perhaps. Unoriginal. But I haven’t been to the Blue Lagoon since 2017, except a brief hour after the Reykjanes tour last April where it was too foggy and windy to enjoy it. So I was on the pickup bus at 8.30, delivered to the Blue Lagoon for 10am and stayed there until 3.30, in time to get dressed and take a quick tour of the gift shop ready to be on the 4.15pm bus back to Reykjavik. The buses back are actually odd times – I was on the 9am bus but the first bus back to Reykjavik is 1.15pm, which means you have to stay at least three hours. Then there’s a 2.15 bus, then it jumps to 4.15, then to 6.15 and the last bus is at 8.15. Given that there’s a bus arriving every hour first thing in the morning and every hour first thing in the afternoon, you could throw on a few more transfer buses since the bus is already there.

It was very misty. Hot water + cold air makes a thick mist just above the surface but it was met by a thick low-lying cloud. The result was floating around in hot water in a white nothing, like in a film where the main character is dead and goes to an empty white room where there’s no up, no down, no time, no space. It’s quite disorienting. I found a quiet corner and despite it being so touristy, I had a really lazy relaxing day.

In the evening, despite spending far too many hours in the hot water, I should have gone to Sundhollin again. I washed and scrubbed and applied conditioner but the Blue Lagoon water leaves you feeling sticky and I’d have felt so much more comfortable if I’d gone to an ordinary pool and had a proper shower with proper non-Blue Lagoon products. What I did instead was walk along the seafront. Someone in the Blue Lagoon said the KP was going to be high tonight and the sky was going to be clear – to put it another way, perfect conditions for seeing the Northern Lights from the city. So I walked down Laugavegur to stock up on food – I only buy a day or so at a time, so I’m there every day! – and then down to the seafront. That’s north-facing, looking towards Esja, more or less. I checked my Northern Lights app. The KP was currently 2 but would be 5 in an hour. Ok, so I thought I’d go home, drop off my shopping, put on some more layers and be ready to see the Lights in an hour.

Just under an hour later, I checked the app again. KP 2 now, 5 in an hour. An hour later, losing faith, I checked again. KP 2 now. In an hour… 2. By now it was 10 in the evening. I know the chances of the Northern Lights increase as the night goes on, and between 10pm and 2am is probably the best time to look but I was tired and it was cold and the app was telling me not to expect much. So I didn’t go out again.

Day six – Wednesday

This was actually the first day I had planned and I packed a lot in. I took some food and I went to Grandi, the neighbourhood on the far side of the Old Harbour. I walked it – it’s about 2.5km from my no-name guesthouse but you can take bus 14. I’d booked the Lava Show and FlyOver and intended to just walk in to Whales of Iceland. Actually, I got over there pretty early. I was at the harbour and it wasn’t yet 10am. My Lava Show was 2pm and it wasn’t going to take four hours to admire the whales.

So I went in Aurora Reykjavik. This is a small museum dedicated to the Northern Lights – lots of posters and comfy sofas and a kind of plasma tube which formed miniature Northern Lights if you put your hand close to it. I adored that. I want one. It had a small aurora cinema – you can sit on the chairs at the back if you like but I opted for the pillows and beanbags at the front. It has a long Northern Lights photo slideshow with some amazing pictures. The thing is, photographers like to get the scenery as well as the Lights so lots of them were at full moon and while, yes, it’s good to see the surroundings, the light sky washed out the Northern Lights a bit. I’d have liked a bit more vivid colour.

Past that was a dark box, a photo simulator where you could test out your camera settings to see if you could get a photos of the lights inside the box – I couldn’t. Oh, tell you what. I took a photo on their machine and sent it to myself. I’d forgotten that. Did it go in my spam?

After that, I went across to Whales of Iceland. I’ll write a blog post about it in the coming weeks and link it here so I won’t go into too much detail. Suffice it to say it’s a big warehouse filled with whales, dolphins, porpoises and other related marine creatures, hanging from the ceiling and life-sized. Supposedly. I can’t believe beluga whales are only about the size of me. On the other hand, the blue whale has to be in a bent and twisted position to fit in the warehouse at all. If this is genuinely life-sized, I had no idea orcas or sperm whales were that big and actually, the blue whale is smaller than I’ve been imagining. QI has very much given the impression it’s an impossibly huge giant rather than merely really big. It would have been nice for the cafe to be open – I didn’t have enough breakfast and it smelled amazingly of hot chocolate and I couldn’t have any.

By the time I emerged, it was snowing heavily. I went into the Netto for some fresh baguette for lunch and found there was nowhere to eat it. I sheltered around the size of the building, out of the worst of the snow but that wasn’t really comfortable, not least because I had to eat standing up and holding onto everything. So I went to the Saga Museum, which I should have done years ago.

That’s another one that’ll get its own blog post. It’s a series of wax models displaying scenes from Iceland’s history and sagas, with an audioguide talking you through everything. At the end, there’s a rack of clothing, a box of chain mail and a rack of weapons and you can try them on. So of course I did! I found a nice red tunic and waved a sword. I found a really nice brown dress. Tried to add a red apron-thing over the top but even if it had fitted, I had no idea how you actually wear it so I settled for a green apron-thing and then I waved an axe. I tried the chain mail but it was really heavy. There were instructions about how to put it on, bearing in mind it was so heavy. I couldn’t lift it out of the box. I don’t know if it was too heavy or if its rings were caught on something but I figured if it was too heavy to pick up, it was too heavy to put over my head and too heavy to take off again.

By now it was gone 1pm. I could go to the Lava Show and wait in their sheltered lobby. In fact, they easily and happily gave me permission to eat my fresh bread and cheese in there, so a win. The Lava Show already has a blog post so I’ll just link that.

And last – for now – I went to FlyOver Iceland. The blog post for that one is coming soon but for now, suffice it to say that it’s a ride. You sit in a rollercoaster/plane seat and the whole row is lifted up and swung over a gigantic projection of a flight across Iceland. It swings as the helicopter/drone turns, you get misted with water and fans blown at you as you fly through clouds, you swoop down into rivers and waterfalls and it is magnificent. Sadly, you’re not allowed to take photos – mostly because copyright but also, you’re risking dropping your phone into a massive screen from whence you can’t retrieve it and you’ll never capture even a fraction of how amazing it is. Instead they take a photo of you against a greenscreen outside and you can buy your “ride photos” afterwards. I did.

Then I walked back home. Snow had given way to heavy rain. I was going out to a show at Harpa this evening, the first time I’ve ever actually seen anything in there and before that, I ran out in the rain to join a friend for a drink at Hafnatorg, at the new food court in the centre of the new building in the new development between Laekjatorg and Harpa. When I first came in 2011, this was all car park. I went to see comedian Ed Byrne, a favourite you may have seen mentioned before on this blog. That was a one-off so there’s not a lot of point in recommending you add him to your Iceland itinerary but if you’re in Scotland in March, Australia in April or New Zealand in May, then go for it. And of course, I’ll always recommend a trip to the theatre, so maybe take a look through Harpa’s website or the website of the National Theatre of Iceland and see if there’s anything at either that catches your eye for an evening out. One day I’m going to catch How to become Icelandic in 60 minutes.

I finished the trip with an evening at Kaldi bar, a few minutes up Laugavegur, just round the corner from the Lebowski Bar. It’s the sort of dimly lit, bare brick wall, proper beer bar that’s perhaps more popular with locals than tourists and I understand that its story goes that something along the lines of it being a microbrewery, and there were once only two of those and something to do with either the beer ban or a beer monopoly? Anyway, it’s quite a pleasant place to spend an evening and I got a couple of extra pages for my Iceland book from three Icelandic lawyers, including “Denmark is our colonial power”, “Viking is a verb” and “the actual profession of the early Icelanders was tax evasion – as a profession!”.

Day seven – Thursday

On day seven, my alarm went off at 4am. Just after 4.30am I was picked up by the Airport Direct transfer minibus and taken to the terminal, just after 5am the big coach departed Reykjavik for the airport and at 8am, my plane lifted off to take me home.