Iceland: Northern Lights, Jules Verne, beaches and frozen waterfalls

One of the great things about Iceland, is that it gets dark early and the sunrises later, which means lots of sleep. So, I was asleep by 9pm, then at 11:30, there was a knock at the door, the Northern Lights were shining! I wish I filmed Ali, she was wandering around the room in a daze, didn't have her snow trousers, nor her rab coat, nor her tripod. We ventured out, down the road to get away from the lights of the hotel and saw the halo in it's full glory. The green lights were dancing around. Magical. It's quite a coincidence, but at 11pm last year, we saw the Northern Lights for the first time, at the Northern Light inn.

A late start after being woken half way through the night. A gorgeous breakfast in such an elegant setting. We waiting for some light, then set off for a walk to the beach. The dog from the hotel joined us for our walk along the coast and up to the black church. Graveyards seem to be a theme of the trip. Today's was amazing, looking onto the Atlantic. The snow was incredibly deep and I couldn't feel my hands, but it was a lovely morning dog walk.

There has been quite a bit of snow overnight, so I drove for the day. Luckily the snow poles show the edge of the road, or you wouldn't know what was road and what wasn't, it was just pure white. We explored the peninsula. Our first stop was back to Arnastapi to look for the monument to Jules Verne and Journey to the Centre of the earth. We couldn't find it first of all, but took some great shots of the sunrise at lunchtime. We eventually found it, behind a petrol station. The signpost shows the distance to places, via the earths core. Randomly they had New York...then Stomboli.

On the ventured, through snow showers. We next visited a black beach, but couldn't get down to the beach due to snow and wind. To get there, we travelled through a lava field and very small road of soft snow, which I secretly enjoyed, Ali held tight to the car. We drove for over 3 hours and didn't see a single car. On route we saw frozen waterfalls, so many mountains and loved the bum warmer seats!

We made it to Grundarfjordur, our overnight stop. We had a walk before sunset, the houses are so Christmassy!