Hi All!

After our lovely week in England we were lucky enough to have a day layover in Iceland, so we got to see a little of this exciting country! Icelandair, the airline, is both very nice and very heavily interconnected with the Iceland Tourism people. The Iceland tourism people are also extremely active – the flight contained lots of beautiful videos of things to do in Iceland, the airport had lots of local goods and the overhead lighting on the plane even re-created the northern lights!

 

We flew via Keflavik airport, which is both adorable and tiny. It’s also located way over in the South West of Iceland, near all the fun stuff.

45 minutes away is Reykjavik (pronounced reck-ee-a-vick), the capital and largest city in Iceland, with a colossal population of around 120,000. For comparison, London has a population of over 8,500,000…

Also nearby are some of the most exciting things-to-do, including:

A Tour Inside a Volcano –

A Tour Inside a Glacier –

Several Whale Watching Tours –

And finally, the Blue Lagoon:

Our layover was only for about 16 hours, 8 of which we were asleep for, so did not allow for all of the above. We opted to do the Blue Lagoon, and hope to get a chance to do the rest on future visits!

First, we arrived into Keflavik airport around midnight, without much hassle. The low cloud cover in Iceland had made for a pretty exciting landing – you break though the clouds about 10 seconds above the runway, so it comes up pretty quickly. It also does not get very dark in Iceland this time of year, so it seemed like dusk when we landed. We had booked a nearby hotel, so took one of Icelands many super-expensive taxis (£30 for 8 minutes) and went to sleep. The hotel was really lovely, and the views out to sea were amazing!

So, off we headed to the Blue Lagoon (£45 for 20 minutes, damn you taxis) with our swim gear ready and our tickets in hand. The idea was to do something lovely and relaxing before our long flight back to Colorado, and boy did it deliver.

We were dropped off outside the entrance, and got to enjoy a beautiful look around at the Volcanic rock and billowing steam…

And then we headed into the Lagoon itself. The Lagoon contains a large amount of Silica, which gives it its amazing blue colour and contrasts beautifully with the black volcanic rock:

The idea behind the lagoon is that the Silica and other minerals in the water give it excellent healing properties, especially in the treatment of Psoriasis. There actually seems to be quite a lot of evidence to support this, which was quite interesting. We’re not convinced that it will have added years to our lives, but floating around in the hot water was pretty amazing.

We started our trip with a shower, and applying lots of conditioner since the water pretty much destroys your hair. We then headed into the pool for a nice walk around, and a long soak.

It was pretty busy, but without being too crowded. The water was also just the right depth to walk around in so that your head was comfortably above the surface. I however chose a different method of transport, which was to rest my head on Rob’s back and let him float me around the pool. It was truly divine.

We then went over to enjoy our complimentary silica face masks:

I even managed to convince Rob to partake, which he described as “strange”. After letting the masks do their work we then went to wash them off in the lovely waterfall:

Before it was time for round two, the Algae face mask! Rob also found this strange, but was also pretty sleepy from the hot water at this point so went with it:

After that we left the masks to soak again while we enjoyed one of the seated pools, which were unfortunately cool enough that Rob had a chance to come to his senses…

So we waterfalled again and Rob went to enjoy a drink, some nibbles and the seated relaxation area. Meanwhile I went to the lovely floaty area at the back, where they give out pool noodles and you can just pass out while floating around looking at the sky. Finally, a tasty smoothie from the floaty bar area:

We then got out, and I took a shower just long enough to make us almost miss our flight. Happily though we found the coach going back to the airport, and managed to convince the bus driver to take us by handing him all our remaining kroner and looking at him sadly. He sort of went ‘Pfff!!’ in a way we took to mean ‘Silly English!’ but kindly let us on.

We then enjoyed the scenic ride back to the airport, and got our flight back without any issues. Icelandair were once again flawless in their service despite a small delay, and off we went! We’re now nicely settled in Colorado again, and excited for our next adventure 🙂

Much love! Xx