The next morning, we were ready for our 4 day tour around Southwest Iceland with Extreme Iceland tours.  One of the reasons we hired a tour company was because I had read a few horror stories about driving around Iceland in the winter and how fast the weather can change.  Being from California, and not having much experience driving around in ice and snow, we decided on the safe bet of having an experienced tour guide do it for us.

We were picked up around 9am to begin our journey and had beautiful views of countryside on our way to our first stop.  (see below)

​We also learned a few fun facts about Iceland from our awesome tour guide - Didi. 

• The population of Iceland is only around 300,000 people but they have over 2.3 million tourists a year!  Obviously, tourism is their biggest industry now but fishing used to be.  
• The weather is unpredictable, so they have many green houses in order to grow food.
• Energy is cheap and they use a lot of Geothermal energy.  Factories and manufacturing have actually moved to Iceland because the cheap price of energy outweighs the other costs (cheaper to import materials and pay the high cost of labor).
• There's very little crime in the country and strict gun laws.  In fact, they've had 18 murders in 15 years and only 3 have been from guns.  Most have been due to domestic violence and is actually balanced out between male and female offenders.
• Lots of earthquakes and volcanoes (hence the land of Ice and Fire).
• They were a popular spot to try and occupy during WWII since they were half way between Europe and the US.  They also were attractive because their bays have shallow entrances but are deep further inland.  German submarines would have to come above surface in order to enter the bay so it helped add protection.

After the Blue Lagoon, we decided to explore the capital of Iceland, Reykjavik, before we started our tour around Iceland the following day.  The first landmark we strolled past was the Harpa Concert Hall.  This is one of Reykjavik's iconic landmarks and sits right on the water.  It was designed between Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson, and the Danish firm Henning Larsen Architects and opened in 2011.

Looking up into the geometric windows and the different colors glimmering off from the reflection of the sun was quite stunning and a pretty cool design for a building.

Iceland - the land of fire and ice!  This has been on our bucket list for a long time and was one of three countries on our arctic adventure.  Our goal was to see the elusive, majestic Northern Lights and see some of the beauty of the arctic.  

After WOW canceled our flight 3 weeks before we were supposed to leave, we got a great deal on Norwegian Air (thank god!).  After our layover in London, we had a quick 3 hour flight to Iceland.  We got our bags and  decided to brave the icy roads with our rental car.  As soon as the airport doors opened, a gush of freezing air hit smacked us in the face.  As Californians, we were not prepared but we needed to man up!  This was the first day of our 2 week trip!   Luckily, after an uneventful drive into the capitol of Reykjaví, we checked into our hotel and began walking around downtown to look for some grub.