One of my most favorite Icelandic Christmas traditions is the exchange of books on the evening of the 24th of December. After a feast, which begins promptly at 6p, presents are opened by all. Included in the gifts is always the traditional gift of a book. The rest of the evening and the entirely of Christmas Day is spent...
During our entire eight day trip to Norway, we only ate at three restaurants for a total of three meals. Everything was either closed, insanely overpriced, or unappealing. That means we lived off of snacks and were starving the majority of the time. We devoured our meals on the Hurtigruten, and Pepe’s Pizza at the airport filled a very...
When we visit a new place, we love living as the locals do - participating in local customs, eating the native foods, walking through their neighborhoods, and everything else. When we came to Iceland for Christmas, we wanted to have an Icelandic Christmas. We wanted to eat skate on Þorláksmessa, (dish of putrefying shark), and reindeer on Christmas. We...
Iceland is an enamoring country where in winter the locals walk outside to go snowboarding, in summer they write books under the midnight sun, have a crime rate that is so low even the police don’t carry guns, and celebrate Christmas in Iceland with 13 different Santa Clauses!
Iceland is one of the top 10 most festive places to celebrate...
When we traveled to Iceland, during the middle of December and the dark of winter, we had to pick our activities deliberately. With approximately four hours of daylight we couldn’t see everything, it just wasn’t mathematically or cosmically possible. The Golden Circle is 300 kilometers of Iceland’s most popular sites and attractions, including incredible sites that you can’t find...
In the winter, Tjörnin Pond, in the city center of Reykjavik, is a gathering place to play ice hockey and soccer, and to go ice skating. This can be done formally or informally, as there is no where to rent ice skates for the pond. This means you’ll want to either bring your own skates or step out in your boots...
Though we didn’t particularly enjoy our stay at the Icelandair Reykjavik Natura Hotel, we did love the classic and festive Icelandic Christmas dinner spread offered Christmas Day. Considering everything else in the city was closed, we didn’t have many options for sustenance, so we were fortunate to be staying someplace where the food was exceptional.
► Ranking: #cleandiaper
Icelandair Reykjavik...
Driving in Iceland in the winter can, and most likely will be terrifying and treacherous. Many of the roads are actually closed during the winter because driving conditions are so poor, including the entire northeast region. Driving in Iceland isn’t too bad in the city, but once you leave Reykjavik, country roads aren’t a priority for snowplows. In addition...
Flights didn’t look good departing from Oslo to Amsterdam on December 30 but if nothing else we are risk takers. What do a couple too few seats even mean to a standby traveler? Anything can happen. After all, we made it on a flight from Kirkenes to Oslo that morning when the odds were against us, and not just...
Our family trip to Norway was one of those standby adventures gone wrong, but one we probably should have known better to anticipate. I was stressed for weeks leading up to this vacation. We had three flights to take after disembarking the Disney Wonder cruise ship, and making our way to our Christmas destination in Norway. That meant three...
