Iceland, the country which was supposed to be our last European stop on our adventure. In our infinite wisdom, we decided that late November was the ideal time to visit a country with the word “ice” being the principle part in its actual name.

We landed in Reykjavik in the evening, but outside it appeared as if it could have been 2am. A shuttle transported us to the car rental place and within an hour we were on our way. On our first full day in Iceland, we visited Reykjavik. We began in Perlan, a small museum detailing the history and geography of the country. It featured an ice cave which we walked through as well as an interactive calendar which showed just how much the ice had receded in recent years. Worrying, but not without hope, as they also talked about all of the conservation projects going on at the moment. After the museum, we went to central Reykjavik to see the statue of Leif Erikson. After taking our picture, we walked down the hill and explored a little.

On our second day, we took the car out of the city to the national park to explore. The drive was almost two hours one way, but the scenery made it fly by, even with a few stops to take pictures. Once in the park, we walked towards the Silfra Fissure, which is actually a gap between the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates. The fissure is a popular diving spot and I think if we had more time we would have liked to do that. The divers have a platform which is in between the sides of the fissure, so we stood on this and took some pictures which was really cool. After that, we did some more walking and found a really pretty waterfall, before driving a further hour to Gullfoss, which is a really big, really pretty waterfall. Gullfoss was cold and wet, so we didn’t stay long. We quickly moved on to the Great Geysir, which was completely spectacular, like a water cannon from the ground. On the way back, we decided to drive away from all of the lights from the main roads and take a route which led us to the south coast of the island. On this road we saw the Northern Lights! The view wasn’t amazing as it was a cloudy night, but it was definitely a really cool experience, and one that had been on my bucket list for a while.

The final full day in Iceland we took a trip to the Blue Lagoon for Henry’s birthday. The Blue Lagoon is a spa near Keflavik consisting of an impossibly blue pool in the rocks. It smells very sulfuric and it is really warm. We stayed there for a while, had our complimentary face mask and drink, before heading back and getting ready for the flight.

The reason Iceland was only *meant to* be the final European stop on the trip, and wasn’t actually the final stop is that our flight to Thailand had two layovers; in Riga, Latvia and then in Abu Dhabi. On this trip, the flight to Riga got pushed up three days, so we actually had a few nights there as well.

Latvia was a really cool place, and seemed like it had a lot of history, albeit very cold and rainy. We managed to see most of the city in the three days we were there. The old town was really lovely, quite reminiscent of Krakow and Prague. We even managed to find an Indian restaurant for Henry’s birthday meal!

This isn’t overly relevant to the Iceland/Latvia post, but I would just like to say that we both had a great laugh at the fact that while one of the layovers on our flight was three days, the times between our landing in Abu Dhabi and the time next flight boarded were only 20 minutes apart, meaning we had to sprint across Abu Dhabi Airport, just about making it in time.