36 hours. What can you do in 36 hours? As it turns out... Arrive in Stockholm, stow big bags in lockers, get immediately onto airport bus to city, walk from central station to old town (Gamla Stan) - discovering incredible Asian/Japanese buffet restaurant along the way (memorise for dinner purposes), buy postcards and badge along the main shopping street en route to lodge - point out town hall/palace/parliament along the way. Get to lodge 2 minutes after code bec...

Keflavik, Iceland - We weren't sure if 11 nights in Iceland would do the trick. But it has! We are relaxed, rejuvenated, full of scenic memories and have, quite possibly, hot-tubbed ourselves silly(er). We spent Monday enjoying the cabin and pre-packing... which actually turned into packing... so Tuesday was a chill-ax day before we drove to Keflavik for our final night's stay (and our final chance to see the northern lights... which was snowed out. (Northern Lig...

We chilled out yesterday and essentially watched the snow piling up around the cabin, the car and the hot tub. We periodically dug a little path 2 metres from the back door to the hot tub and nipped out for par-boilings as the snow fell. Today however dawned very bright and very early and the blue sky beckoned. We defrosted and de-iced the beast and went for another look at Gullfoss and Geysir. There aren't fees for 99% of the natural attractions (I think the...

Blue Sky! Sunshine! Alert, Alert, Alert! We've been sleeping with the blinds open on the off chance the northern lights dance for us. The by-product of this is that the sunrise wakes us up between 6.30 and 7 am every day. Today was officially, freezing. Actually minus freezing at around minus 6 degrees. We had the compulsory hot tub and breakfast then rugged up and headed out to defrost the car with bottle after bottle of cold water. It was so cold, the water w...

After two days of nigh on continuous hot tubs and enjoying the Arctic scenery all around us, we dusted a couple of inches of snow off the 4WD and actually left the house. The access road to the cottage is gravel and was six inches deep in untouched snow - so we are super happy that we rented the 4WD - it crunched down to the 'main' road quite happily. Today's big outing? Two of the big-ticket items on Iceland's Golden Circle - the Gullfoss Waterfall (which is l...