I was picked up at the crack of dawn today by an Iceland Excursions minibus from right outside my hotel door. Well, not the crack of dawn exactly - dawn doesn't crack around here until the middle of the morning. I was picked up at 8am, taken to the IE office and told to exchange my printed confirmation for a ticket and then be back in half an hour. Half an hour later, the minibus had transformed into some sort of all-wheel-drive truck thing. The driver kept up ...

I was picked up along with three other people from the hotel door and we made the now-familiar journey to the city centre for tickets and got on a coach this time - lots of people wanted to see the Northern Lights. Our guide also commentated for the first half hour and is also overly proud of her ability to pronounce a word in her own language - amazing how many times the Icelandics feel the need to say Eyjafjallajokull in a sentence. She also decided to teach ...

I keep hearing about what a surprisingly mild climate Iceland has - protected by the warm Atlantic current, maybe a bit of snow in winter occasionally, but not as cold as you'd think - no colder than New York, according to the inflight magazine. I haven't seen a lot yet but I think Iceland is a very appropriate name. My view from the sky was of a frozen white wasteland (although I mean that in a nice way - it was spectacular.) It was also still light enough to se...