Iceland Advice Needed!
 

We will be spending 5 days in Iceland in mid-January - our current plan is to spend three days in Reykjavik (including one day doing the Golden tour from our hotel there, Hotel Borg) and then we have two more days to spend elsewhere with high hopes of seeing the Northern Lights...we are focused on either Hotel Budir or somewhere like Hotel Ranga or Glymur but are having a tough time deciding...we tend to think Budir as we could also a do orca tour to see them in the bay and the like...but not sure which hotels of our choices offer the best overall scenery, chances for Northern Lights and the like...ANY advice would be appreciated.

My wife and I have been thinking of doing something similar. Seeing the aurora is going to be a gamble, but one could luck out. Can't help you on your decision, but have you seen this site:

http://en.vedur.is/weather/forecasts/aurora/

As of this moment the aurora forecast is '4', active! First time I've seen it at 4, it's been mostly 2 for the past few months. BUT, the only place you'd see it is the SW corner of the island, according to the cloud cover forecast.

Good luck!

Hi Yallie,

due to accommodation issues elsewhere we ended up at the Glymur for a couple of nights - it's a lovely place with some great food [head and shoulders the best we had in Iceland, but that ain't saying much] but I'm not sure that it's ideally suited for whale watching; i checked on their website and it's not mentioned which is a pretty good clue that it's not easy to do from there.

We didn't stop at The Budir but it's in a much better place for exploring the Snaefellnesses peninsular, and has a good reputation for food, which is an important consideration for Iceland. The only problem might be getting there in bad weather.

We never stayed in Reykjavik itself, but had a great day at the National Museum of Iceland - one of the best such museums I've ever been too with loads of very interesting and well presented information.

hope you have a terrific trip!

My plans to do a similar thing in January have fallen through, but in doing the research I found a couple tour companies out of Reykjavik that will take you to see the northern lights. They don't decide where exactly to go until that night, so you have the best chance of avoiding cloud cover. If you don't see the northern lights you get a refund (kind of like whale-watching, I guess) or a coupon to try again another night. Something to consider ...

And are you sure about orca tours in January? I thought they migrated to warmer waters in the winter ... ?

Actually it is prime time for Orcas..see www.lakitours.com

and to be clear, the orca viewing can only be done in combo with Hotel Budir!

yalie - we were lucky enough to see a pod of killer whales on our trip to Iceland a few years ago. We went in July/august, so i don't know how the winter-time experience would compare with ours. our boat went out of Grundafjordur on the north coast of the Snaefellnesses peninsular and we were nearly on the way back when we came across the orcas. They seemed very comfortable with the boat being near them, and played around it for quite a long time; when we started to move away from them they followed us for a while.

if you've got the chance to do this, grab it!