The Quest for Aurora Borealis

So today’s view waking up was from the bubble- I woke up with the sun and somehow Sara slept right through until 9am. We set our alarm (chariots of fire) for 2am… went outside… nothing… 3:15am… went outside… nothing. Except then in the morning when I was looking at my photos I was like omg what is that? Gummi said it is common for you to see the lights better on your camera than in person. But I was clearly half asleep… a little anti-climactic though. 

We headed back towards Reykjavik and stopped at a lovely bakery where we got some pastries and I learned a very important word- succuladi (this is without all the fancy Icelandic letters I don’t have on my keyboard). I am actually getting better at pronouncing words here but they are so long! 

It was bittersweet to see Gummi go… it was such a great day yesterday and we miss him already. Today was a chill in Reykjavik day. We went shopping on the rainbow street… got some gifts and bought myself a few too. This amazing wool shawl at a place called Myuk which means warm (according to the shopkeeper but google says otherwise).  She said that each item is handmade and there are only a few made of each thing. I wanted to buy all the cozy winter gear, too bad I will never need it. And we went into another cool jewelry shop called Frida and I bought this awesome ring with a topaz stone and the design was inspired by the molecular composition of silver. 

We meandered up to Hallgrimskirkja which is at the top of a hill overlooking the city. Built in 1996 and architect was Gudjon Samuelsson… the exterior reminded me of the basalt columns we saw yesterday. The inside was super simple but the volume of space was so impressive. We went up to the clock tower which gave amazing views of the city. 

After that we headed down to the famous hot dog stand that Gummi told us to try. Baejarins Beztu Pylsar. He told us to get a dog with the works and a chocolate milk (kokomjolk) so I tried it. It was actually pretty good and I’m glad we didn’t have to think about all of the stuff she was putting on it. There were crispy onions and raw onions and a few different mustards and catchup. And the hotdogs here are all lamb.  From there we went to the Icelandic Phallological Museum which has literally hundreds of penises of all sorts of animals in vats of formaldehyde- it’s pretty impressive actually, and crazy famous around the city. 

From there we headed back to the hotel for a quick break and decided to book a northern lights tour for tonight. We went to dinner at our old hotel because it was recommended… it was pretty good, seems like people here love waffles- every place we went has them in some form or another. 

So we headed back to the hotel to get ready for our nighttime adventure.

Ok so the SuperJeep tour- is not a tour in a Jeep- it is this crazy huge tire Mercedes bus that looked like it could drive through the thick of the jungle. Our driver - Hjortur Hafsteinn Krisjianson (son of Krisjian- get it?) aka @adventure.jim was awesome and we sat in the front row and probably annoyed him the whole time with our questions and commentary. 

We left the city at 9:30 and he gave all the prep- it seemed like the conditions were pretty good but there were a few important factors. The first is the actual weather- like there can’t be clouds in the sky to block the lights. Then there is the IMF- the Interplanetary Magnetic Field- which is super important, and has to be in the negative  hi. And finally we wanted a Coronal Mass Ejection. So I almost failed physics but I’ll try to explain- basically there is Solar wind filled with charged particles that are trapped in our magnetic fields and drawn to north (northern lights) and south (southern lights) poles. When you see the northern lights the particles at a high altitude are excited green and red and at the Lower altitudes you see purple pink yellow and blue. So long story short it ended up being an amaaaaazing night for the lights- like the best end to the season possible. Hjortur told us it was as good as it gets. We stopped 3 times and each time saw the lights in a super different way. The first time he randomly pulled off road and told us to get out kind of abruptly. We walked out of the bus and it was spectacular- reaching across the whole night sky. It flowed and moved but in complete quiet. Then some horses came over to us to check out the scene. It was so cool to see it evolve. I laid in the ground to get a whole view of the sky because the lights went from one side to the other. We had hot chocolate with Aquavit (Icelandic liquor) under the lights for a little while.

The second time we stopped there were like 3 layers of lights. 

And the third time we stopped, there was this continuous line of lights across the sky, and this amazing starburst straight above us. Then a cross appeared too! 

All in all a huge success- so cool to see, and we were home at a respectable 1:30am! And side note- android took better photos of the lights! Argh!!