The room was warm and the bed was comfortable but still I didn't sleep all that well for some reason. Looking out we saw that it had snowed overnight and was, thankfully, dry and a bit clearer.

We went up to the 8th Floor for breakfast in the Sky Lounge and there are indeed some beautiful views across the city from up there. We knew that the hours of daylight would be very few, but we were surprised at how intensely dark it was, even at 9am in the morning. The breakfast buffet was perfectly adequate, if not inspiring, and we had a good meal.

At around 10am we saw the first glimmers of light in the sky, and by 10.45am it was as light as it was going to get and the streetlights still stayed on. It was a cool, grey/blue light, reflecting off the snow and the water, very lovely.

We booked a whale watching tour in the afternoon and set off for the old harbour at about midday, trudging through the snow. After the driving rain of the night before it was quite exhilarating to be out in the cold, bright weather and Reykjavik is a pretty city to walk through. We reached the check in on time and were told that the weather was too bad to leave from this harbour so we would be bussed to another harbour 20 minutes away.

On reaching the new departure place we boarded the boat, ever careful of the icy decks, and went downstairs to put on our special warm suits, made courtesy of the Norwegian rescue service. They were very puffy and warm, and we put them on over the top of everything, anoraks, the lot, then went onto the top deck to see if we could spot whales. After half an hour or so it was very clear that we weren't going to spot any whales today, but we did spot cormorants, gulls, Eider ducks and lots of snow! It was quit surreal to stand up on the top deck watching the cold, grey sea and seeing the driving snow hitting us sideways on with great force while feeling completely toasty warm inside our suits. Definitely an interesting experience. Down below we guzzled hot chocolate and ate Bounty bars before returning to the upper deck to battle the elements.

After our north Atlantic experience we were feeling a little hungry so went in search of food. We found a very nice restaurant serving Icelandic food and were glad to get in out of the weather. On the menu there were interesting items such as horse, whale, puffin and cormorant but I was happy to stick to mussels, which were delicious!

Back at the hotel we had an hour to turn around before being collected for our northern lights tour by bus. (we had booked by boat but this was cancelled due to bad weather). Once on the coach we were taken somewhere down south to a little bar/cafe which was right in the middle of nowhere. As we arrived we could already see the lights in the sky, eerie green swirls in the sky, constantly changing. There were also reddish tones, very lovely. So glad we have seen them! It was very, very cold and we were in and out of the building all the time, warming ourselves up before facing the cold again, warming ourselves up once again with hot chocolate and schnapps.

The clouds rolled in and obscured the view so we were happy when it was time to leave and head back to Reykjavik, a very busy day!