The Aurora Borealis

Last week my Husband and I went away for a few days.  Our objective was to see the Aurora Borealis.  Seeing the Northern Lights has been on my bucket list for a long time and to be honest it seemed like one of those dreams that might be unobtainable.

I cannot tell you how bad the rain was on our drive to Gatwick!  At times we could hardly see the road in front of us!

It was good to get above the clouds and now we could enjoy the view. :)

 Our destination was Iceland, somewhere I have always wanted to see.

One of our first glimpses of Iceland were the snow-capped mountains and glaciers.

 Almost there!

 Our package trip was booked through Secret Escapes and they had arranged everything.  Our transfer to the hotel was smooth and these photos are part of the beautiful view from our bedroom window.

We walked into Reykjavik centre; only a 5 minute stroll.

My Husband wanted to find the famous hot dog stand by the harbour.

 We then strolled along the harbour front and looked at the Opera House,

Sólfar/Sun Voyager

 and adimred the views, before heading back to the hotel where we were being collected for our trip to see the Aurora Borealis - hopefully!

 We were so fortunate!  Our first night in Iceland and we were treated to the most spectacular display!

 I took so many photos!  The naked eye can't pick up the intensity of the colours like a camera can, so most of the aurora is seen as white, tinted with green, purple and red depending on the altitude of the lights.

 We were treated to rippling curtains of light.  

 At times the colours were quite distinct, even to the naked eye.

 As I have mentioned before I don't have an SLR camera, but my camera allows me to set it to manual.  I started off with these settings:- 10' F3.5 ISO800 and later changed the ISO to 400 and then took these photos.  In all we were outside for about 2 to 2.5 hours, until approximately 11pm.

After a couple of hours my fingers and toes were starting to feel the cold, as it was only 4'C that night.  We were fortunate that Iceland has been having warmer than usual temperatures for this time of year.  During the day it was 10'C and sunny throughout our holiday.

 I still can't quite believe how lucky we were to get the perfect weather conditions and for the aurora to be active on our first attempt at seeing them.

Dreams do come true after all.

Pj x