[The plane taking off.] Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking.

This is episode number six of my English compass podcast, and it’s going to be about my trip to Iceland and everything that I remember about this journey and this amazing experience.

So let me start by saying a few words about this amazing country now. Iceland is known as the Land of Fire and Ice, and it’s absolutely breathtaking. I need to admit that I have been convincing my husband for a very long time to go there. My husband prefers, well, let’s say that far more, far warmer locations than extremely cold and unfriendly Iceland. Yet I finally get to convince him, and we managed to plan this trip, and again, I need to admit something, my expectations were extremely high. I set the bar really high because I read a lot of things previously.

I saw many videos, pictures. I was simply, well, my high, my hopes were very high when it comes to this particular location. And I’ve heard only positive opinions about Iceland, how amazing it is. And well before we visited the island, I knew that it is famous for, among others, let’s say, dramatic landscapes, and that you can encounter the volcanoes, glaciers, like geothermal, hot springs. And even though it’s a part of Europe, it has a relatively small population. Yet it offers vast, untouched wilderness that includes, apart from the men, the already mentioned, volcanoes or glaciers, also waterfalls, beaches, including black beaches, as well as mesmerizing Northern Lights, which honestly I hadn’t hoped to see before a trip there, because I read and I knew that well, summertime is not the best time to see the northern lights.

We visited Iceland in September, so it was still, at least in theory, well, summer, but you will learn later on how lucky we were when it comes to the Northern Lights. So let me start with the nature, because my highest hopes were about the natural landscapes that Iceland can boast. And I’m not a city person, of course, you know, I’m into visiting London unlimited times. I’m also a fan of such places as fairness, Paris, Bangkok, Sydney, and a bunch of other places, but in general, what the majority of places I have visited in my life are great about, are the natural landscapes, not the cities. So even though we slept in Reykjavik one night, we didn’t get to see the city, and that was our choice. Well, first of all, I know that, you know, there are probably a lot of interesting places to see in Reykjavik, we didn’t bother visiting them because we, well, honestly, we simply were not interested enough. We preferred to see the natural landscapes rather than the city, because you get to see the city everywhere else, especially in Poland. So what impressed me the most, I think, was the the vastness and the impressiveness of everything we saw in Iceland, starting from amazing waterfalls, ending with glaciers. And honestly, like you know, you can get waterfalls also in many other places, in locations on the earth. We saw waterfalls in in Canada. We saw waterfalls in Bali, in Asia. And of course, the waterfalls we saw in Iceland were also impressed. And we also visited a bunch of them, but it was the glaciers. It were the glaciers that impressed me the most. You don’t get to see glaciers that often.

Of course, you can watch, see, admire the glaciers, also in Europe, in continental Europe, for example, in Austria, when we went skiing to Selden, we also saw glaciers there, but it’s nothing to nothing compared to the Icelandic glaciers. We could actually get so close to the glaciers that I was truly, truly impressed. And it’s also quite sad and pessimistic to watch them melt, because in the glaciers that we visited, there were also some graphics presenting the process of melting, and you could actually see in those photographs that they are getting smaller and smaller, hopefully, that will be stopped, or hopefully they will cease to melt that quickly. Another aspect of the natural wonders of Iceland are, of course, the volcanoes. And we didn’t, we didn’t get to be close to the volcano, either an active one or already a dead one. Well, you cannot get close to an active volcano because it’s too dangerous.

But what was absolutely breathtaking, and it was very unusual rare, was watching the remains of lava, like all around Iceland, you can actually see how well dominating the volcanic landscape is, because if lava covers something, it’s basically gone. It’s dead, disappears. It’s very also raw in landscape, there are like, you know, the conditions for a natural world in Iceland are very cold, dry. It’s like tundra all around and there is basically nothing when it comes to plants, apart from heath and moss, and you get it all over Iceland, but very rarely you get to see trees or bushes. I’ve read that there is, let’s say, a desire of the Icelandic government to reforest the island, or actually forest the island from scratch, but it’s not so easy. And that brings me to another, let’s say natural wonder of Iceland, which is the wind. And as some of you know, I grew up by the seaside. My hometown is darwar, and it’s located just by the sea and the north of Poland. So I know what it’s like to experience a real storm. You know, I lived by by the seaside for many years of my life, including my adult life, but nothing prepared me, nothing, literally nothing prepared me for wind we experienced in Iceland, because it’s more like like a tornado or Gale. It’s not wind, it’s not regular wind. We for two days, we were pretty unlucky to go through weather that where wind was so strong that I couldn’t leave the car because I was otherwise full down to the ground. We were trying to walk in this wind, but it was absolutely pointless. Well, at least for me. And you don’t realize how weak you are, how small you are until you actually experience this type of wind, because it was literally making me fall to the ground. And it’s really hard to imagine until you go through this experience like truly, because I really, really knew what it’s like to have a stormy wind, or wind in general, but it’s nothing compared to Icelandic, unpredictable, ever changing winds and generally weather conditions. So it was gale or tornado when it comes to the speed and strength. We were pretty lucky, though, not to go through almost any wind, any, sorry, any rain, because the only rain we experienced was on the second day on the Island, and it was really nothing. It was just like a shower for like an hour or so. Yeah, it was nothing.

The the rest of the days were very sunny, or just Sunny. So of course, you know the gale, tornado like wind. It was really howling. You can, you can literally hear the wind in Iceland. It’s howling, as simple as that. It’s like a whirlwind, not a typical wind. But apart from the two windy days that we had, it was like sunny all the time. So you can just imagine how amazing it is to drive around, walk around when it’s sunny.

Okay, in every single location, not only Iceland, it’s better when it’s sunny outside. So we were very lucky. And of course, we had whole plan of places we wanted to see. I will not bother you with the names of those places, like the names of waterfalls or mountains or volcanoes or glaciers, because they are so difficult to pronounce that I’m not even I don’t even remember one single name, okay, they are so long and so unfamiliar to any other language that I know that if you ever go to Iceland, which I truly recommend you, will you will know what I mean now, there were also places like because in Iceland there are, let’s say the you know, must see locations, and we went through almost all of them. But then there is a magical border, like a boundary that is not physically visible that when you go past this place, and this place is actually diamond Beach, if you look past diamond beach, there is like 70% of all tourists just stay behind, and only 30% move forward, and we moved forward. So after that magical border, or magical boundary, we really could experience like emptiness you can never get anywhere else, because literally, there were like no people. Those places were untouched by nature, but untouched by humans, but also not there was like not a single person living there.

They were literally unspoiled.

So we also drove in the interior of those magical places. And you know, I think even my words, even the photographs, the videos, are nothing compared to your true experience. So even though it may seem sometimes very maybe not mundane but monotonous, every single place you go through is different. And I simply, I simply believe that everyone should visit Iceland at least once. We will definitely be back. We will be back because we only visited part of the island. We were, we were there for seven days, and we managed to see just the south and a little bit of the interior, but just a little bit.

So we do realize that there is much more to explore, and this time, we’ll rent a different car, a car that can get us across also the rivers. And what surprised me as well. Because, you know, you can read articles, books, watch videos, you know, see photographs, and you read that. You know, summer in Iceland is not like a regular summer in the rest of European countries, because it’s still much colder. But I think I wasn’t really ready that it would be that cold, because two minutes without a hat on my head, and I would be too cold, and then five minutes without a jacket, I also would be too cold, even though in the sun it will was, of course, pleasant and warmer. It still was like Polish winter, even though we were there, mind you, in the beginning of September. So I maybe was not like chilled to the bones. It wasn’t like extremely cold, but it was simply regular winter cold temperatures. So you will rarely walk around without a jacket or a hat. I think the hat is the the game changer because of the winds as well. Yeah. So. So it was colder than I expected, even though the clothes we took with us were absolutely enough. So, you know, I didn’t, we didn’t get any frostbites or, you know, we were not like bitterly cold.
No problems with that, even at night.

And one night, you know, I had the application on my phone for this day, which was about watching Aurora. Aurora in English, are simply the Northern Lights. And every day I checked the application, and the chances for to see the northern lights that night were like four or 5% and then one day, a friend of mine, who lives in in Iceland, she wrote me, oh, you have to see the Northern Lights today. And I thought, Ah, come on. You know, it was like a couple of days already, and none of the nights was even close. And then she said, No, no, no, you have to watch the Northern Lights tonight, and then I opened the application I had, and the percentage of probability was 100% and it’s a pity you could not see my face, because I immediately started to smile so wildly. And I was like, I showed it to my husband, and I thought, Oh, my God, we’re so lucky. It’s 100% you know, not 70% 100 and we were, we were double lucky, because that night, we stayed in a hostel that was in the middle of nowhere. Generally, there are not that many buildings around in Iceland. But this time it was even, you know, we were really secluded, we have to drive something like four or five kilometers from the main road to this location, and it was truly like surrounded by nothing, which was just perfect for watching the Northern Lights, Because the darker, the better. So when you are far from any city lights or whatever, the better the view. And then we had dinner, we put on extra clothes and went outside, and we waited for, like, I don’t know, maybe five minutes, and the dancing that happened on the sky was absolutely breathtaking. I get none I think I will never find enough words to describe what it’s like to see Aurora in reality, it’s again nothing, or even not as close, not close to my expectations, because I thought that it would be like, you know, some lights, like the stars on the sky, but it felt like someone was throwing magical sand from above on the sky, because it was changing So dynamically, like it was like green in one second, and then it became greener, greener greener within the next 10 seconds, and suddenly it disappeared, and then it became pink on the other side of the sky. And again, it was changing very, very dynamically. And it was like a dream come true, because watching Aurora was one of my bucket list as well. And honestly, I was again convincing my husband to go to the north of Norway in December just to see and watch the Northern Lights, because I knew that Summertime is not the best time in at least in theory, to to watch to, you know, be lucky enough. And then suddenly, without any expectations or whatsoever, we went through this amazing experience.

We are truly, you know, over the moon, on cloud nine,
about this extremely amazing and unusual experience. Yeah, so Iceland was on my bucket list, and it was my 47th country, but watching Aurora was like a separate wish, separate dream, to be to make it come true, and yet we managed to also experience it when we’re in Iceland. So now I don’t have to go to the north of Norway anymore, because I already saw the Northern Lights. Of course, you know, the more the better. But since going to Norway, going to Iceland, is not the cheapest experience in your life,

I think I’ve, I have, I have had enough for now I don’t have to go to any northern country in the nearest future, at least not in winter, because winter is a better time to watch the Northern Lights. Yeah, so Iceland was very raw when it comes to natural landscape, when it comes to. Food here, we didn’t have expectations, to be honest. We just hoped to eat some fresh fish, and we did, and it was really tasty. It wasn’t as expensive, and here, I mean not only food, but generally, all the expenses, all the prices, it wasn’t as expensive as we thought it would be. So, of course, it’s not cheap. But then, you know, I’ve read different things about prices in Iceland, and it simply made me go crazy. Of course, you know, accommodation was expensive because we paid something like 150 or 180 euro per night in a hostel. So it was just a room with two beds, one big bed, no bathroom, with shirt on the corridor, on the on the floor, and so yeah, so you get to see the perspective of the prices, but food, it was, let’s say in shops, apart from bread, because bread was extremely expensive. For some reason, the rest it was relatively similar to, let’s say prices in Germany or in other European let’s say Western European country,
accommodation was extremely expensive,
but fish was, let’s say, decent when it comes to pricing, and it was very good because it was simply fresh.

So that’s more or less my expectations and the reality that met those expectations when it comes to Iceland, I think I can recommend it to everyone, even if you are a city fan, if even if you don’t like cold temperatures and this type of weather conditions, I think it’s still worth it. I think it’s still worth it to experience this amazing, breathtaking, unique island, because it’s unique for a lot of reasons.

And this is it from me now, and let me know in the comments or email me whether you like this podcast, whether you share my experiences about Iceland, and perhaps whether you’re going to visit this amazing and mesmerizing city in the nearest future. Have a good day. Guys. Bye. Cheers.

[Cabin-crew announcement for landing]