To celebrate this year's Significant Birthdays, last month my mum and I went to Iceland!  Very exciting, as I've wanted to go there for years We flew Easyjet from Bristol, and stayed in Reykjavik at Hotel Leifur Eiriksson.

Unfortunately (but not surprisingly) we managed to pick a rainy week so a lot of the beautiful panoramic scenery I'd hoped to see (and photograph) was hidden behind large amounts of cloud.  But I've been to Wales on rainy days, so this is nothing new!  Didn't stop me taking about a million photos, of course..

Mid June is also (almost) midnight sun, but again this was sort of obscured by cloud - certainly it was the same level of light at 3am as it was at 7pm, but no actual sunshine.

Must of the first day was spent at the Blue Lagoon, which is sort of in between Keflavik airport and Reykjavik.  If I'd gone on my own I probably wouldn't have bothered, despite it being a "must do" thing, purely because it's so expensive.  But mum really wanted to, so we treated ourselves and went for one of the packages that included lunch, scrubs/face masks and bathrobe hire.

The lagoon itself is pretty weird looking - bright milky blue water, almost glowing in the cloudy drizzly weather.  You could barely make out the power plant next door -  some might argue that's a good thing.  The lagoon wouldn't exist with out it though.

After floating around in the steamy warm water until our skin shrivelled up, we went for lunch at the Lava restaurant, where I had what was possibly the tastiest lamb I've ever eaten.  yum yum!

When we arrived in Reykjavik, I had to have yet another shower to finish washing the minerals/salt/conditioner out of my hair.  yuck.  When you turn on a hot tap, the water smells of sulphur, on account of it being geothermally heated.  So that's a bit weird at first!

We went for a wander around town, mostly along the shoreline.  This is Sólfar, which I'd seen photos of and was quite keen to view in real life.  I like the simplicity.

This next one is Harpa, the concert hall. Such a cool building!  Inspired by basalt columns, I believe. All sorts of colours and reflections, changing depending on where you look from - I had great fun playing with my polarising filter (there's even a video...)

Next up... several days of touristy stuff.  But not until I've edited another few hundred photos, argh

tags: holiday Iceland