What did you do on your last birthday? Did you celebrate a milestone? What is a milestone?
A milestone Birthday would be one that marks a point in your life that you feel great about achieving. Usually you have celebrations on your 18, 21, and then many people stop celebrating with the same enthusiasm and not alot is made of them until we reach 90 or 100. They do not rejoice at having lived for 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, or 80 years.
I say rejoice, celebrate. Take this time to reflect and enjoy where you are. Plan a trip to reinforce the milestone, plan ahead and have it to look forward to. That is what I did and let me tell you about my trip.
2018 was my 50th birthday and I wanted to do something to make this turning of half a century special. After much thinking I decided the Aurora Borealis would be a magical thing to experience. I did the same research I would do for any client. I found what dates would be the most favorable and found a great tour package that took us to Iceland and allowed us a great chance to see the northern Lights and so many other Iceland wonders.
My wife and I along with our friends booked this trip and got ready for a memorable experience.
Our plane left at 6pm for an overnight flight to Iceland. The flight was on WOWair and was great. I would recommend them, but they are gone. We arrived in Iceland at 5am local time and made it to our hotel the Radisson Blu Saga by 7:30am. We had a city tour leaving at 10, and our rooms were not going to be ready until after 3pm, so we decided breakfast would be a great idea Breakfast was included everyday, but this one, so we decided we would go ahead and get it at the hotel (we were very hungry). My wife was in the lead and they told her how much it was in a thick accent and when we sat down she said she thinks they said breakfast for the 4 of us was 24,000. We all were like umm what. We talked a minute and then thought about it, and realized it was in Icelandic Krona. Which makes sense since we were in Iceland. The breakfast was 14000 krona which made it expensive but not sell your car expensive. It was really a great spread and soon we were ready for our city tour.
We loaded on a bus with our tour guide and our new friends that we would be spending the next 6 days with and started looking around Reykjavik. On this tour we visited the Parliament, the harbor area, and the Hallgrímskirkja Church, whose steeple is a Reykjavík landmark. Then, we visited the Pearl a glass dome constructed atop huge tanks in which natural hot water is stored for heating the city. Next, we visited the Northern Lights Center and we got a preview of what was to come. So many cool exhibits and information about the northern lights and how they have shaped our culture over the years.
We returned to the hotel to check-in and head up to our rooms. Very nice rooms. We relaxed napped and got up for dinner. It was already dark before we got dinner. We did not want to miss our northern light adventure (they do it the first night so if you do not see anything they can try again for the next day) so we ate at the hotel. The food was very good.
We loaded onto the bus and headed out to find the aurora borealis. We headed to a remote area away from the city lights and watched the sky. It took almost 4 hours and our guide had given up, but then he called everyone back off the bus and man was it worth it. The picture above was taken by my friend John Yates and it is amazing.
Having seen the lights and being very tired, it was now 1 am we headed back to our hotel for a few hours rest before our Blue Lagoon experience the next day. More on that in the next article.
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