Yahoo travel sucks! I just typed a long description of my first day and it didn't ask me to save it before taking me off this page! What a waste of time and effort..Anyway,

We arrived in Reykjavik about an hour late. The first thing that we were encouraged to do was shop at the large duty free shop. They had a wide variety of alcoholic beverages and chocolates. Lady in front of us bought enough of the former and we a little of the latter. You could tell why it was known as a party capital.
Since Iceland expects a lot of tourists in all seasons, they have a very efficient and well functioning bus service to almost all hotels downtown and surrounding Reykjavik. They run every 10 minutes and have you transfer to smaller buses to traverse the narrower streets of downtown. Also, in case you planned your trip in a hurry, don't worry..they have enough brochures to fill a suitcase, which we nearly did!

Our hotel was 'room with a view' ..a very well located, clean and friendly staffed hotel. I would recommend it to all future visitors. All everyone speaks very good english, most hotel staff help coordinate between you and any day tours. The good thing is the day tours pick you up from your hotel lobby; very convenient.
Because of our amazing location, we were able to walk to most places. Just near our hotel was the #3 best restaurant recommended by tripadvisor. It's icelandic name is Sjavargrillid , that means Seafood grill. Most sit down restaurants close after 3 pm and open again around 5.30-6.00 pm..so be aware of that if you are arriving from a diff time zone. The good part is most restaurants stay open till late; sometime 2 am and beyond. We had some amazing fish and desert made of Iceland special yogurt called skyrr. 

Our first day ended with our first tour of the special northern lights. During our stay in Iceland, we heard about a 75 yer old who had traveled to different parts of the world to get a glimpse of them and had not been successful yet. It's like our tour guide said; this is nature; not disney world! they are spectacular but maintain their own schedule of mesmerizing you.check out the pics we got of them.

Since we returned around 1 am from our first display of the northern lights, we slept late. it helps since there's no sunlight till 10 am anyway in winter..so sun lovers, come at your own risk :-)

We decided to go somewhere local within walking distance and decided to visit Iceland's latest news. You all might remember that it's been in the news a few times in the recent years..it was the first country to go bust due to the mortgage problems. A tour guide explained this very logically to us saying: Iceland 's main profession is fishing; we had a banking crisis because fisherman decided to become bankers, a very bad idea indeed!. How wise. Their current president  has promised them nothing except keeping polar bears (in or out; I forget which) of zoos. The economic condition had become so bad that no one expected any miracles out of him. Keeping that in mind, they are quite happy with his work.
Again it was in the news because of the volcano that brought air traffic in Europe to a halt over 3 weeks or so. To prove that I have visited Iceland and learnt something, I can pronounce the hence before unprounancable volcano name. It's written as Eyjafjallajökull and pronounced as: AY-yah-fyah-lah-YOH-kuul."
But, the most recent news item from Iceland is it's beautiful opera building called Harpa . It's a very expensive project and built with a lot of love and planning. It has 4 main music halls that can handle all kinds of music. They are based of different parts of Iceland; there's one called the northern lights, another colored red for volconoes and a conference hall painted silver to signify water, geysirs etc. Snippet from wiki:

Harpa was designed by a Danish firm. The structure consists of a steel framework clad with irregularly-shaped glass panels of different colours. The completion of the structure was uncertain until the government decided in 2008 to fully fund the rest of the construction costs for the half-built concert hall. The building was given its name to signify both spring (known as Harpa in icelandic) and based on the instrument of the same name. It is really worth visiting.

We had dinner at a local fish and chips restaurant which was amazing because the fish was so fresh. We ended our day with another tour of the northern lights. This time we chose Reykjavik Excursions, they took bigger buses; more comfortable than the previous days and drove 1.5 hours into the interiors to get an even clearer sky and better viewing. I would recommend them highly.

After seeing a great northern light sight, we decided to give it a break and just hang around downtown Reykjavik. It was such a beautiful place and we were in such a good location. We started our day by walking along the main shopping street, called Laugavegur. We had brunch consisting of tea, hot chocolate, spelt bread with cheese at a small coffee shop. It was quite cozy and even provided nail polish of various colors for its lady customers to use while waiting for food! How interesting and nice!

The church we visited was called: Hallgrímskirkja. This church is their empire state building; in other words, the tallest building in downtown. You get really amazing views from the top most floor. It's a very simplistic church with good organ pipes.

Next we took a cab to the Perlan restaurant. The good thing to mention here is cab service is very good in Iceland. Every major place, rest has a direct line to cabs that show up in less than 5 minutes after being called. Very reliable.
Coming back to the Perlan, it is owned by Iceland's energy company. That's because it used to be the site of Geothermal heat. Geothermal heat is the most significant resources available to Icelanders, providing inexpensive, reliable, and environmentally safe energy. Today about 70 holes provide the capital area with hot water. On the 5th floor is a revolving restaurant considered one of the top 10 fancy restaurants of the world! We enjoyed Perlan  and the inside situated Saga museum  without visiting the restaurant.

And the reason we didn't have dinner at Perlan is because we were saving our appetites for the Fish Company ; considered the #2 restaurant in Reykjavik. Although the fish was very good, the style of cooking wasn't very local. We enjoyed the other local restaurants much more. Overall, a good meal and a good place.

First time we woke up early, at 7 am to go on a whole day tour of areas around Iceland. This trip is very popular and referred to as the Golden circle because they cover three prime beauties of Iceland: Gulfoss waterfalls, Strokkur Geysirs and Thingvellir national park. For the longest time we kept thinking Thingvellir and Pingvellir are two different national parks, but one is just the icelandic name and the other is the engish version of the same.

The link below covers the golden circle in good detail.
http://www.icelandtouristboard.com/index.php?page=the-golden-circle

What we enjoyed most were the constantly erupting geysirs and going through tectonic plates in both europe and north america. Lake Pingvellir lies on both and the tour bus takes you through the surroundings of the lake basically covering both plates.

Good day followed by a good snow storm that cut short our attempt at viewing northern lights one more time.

We decided to be adventurous and try the #1 attraction in Iceland..namely, riding the beautiful beasts known as icelandic horses! And we sure did get an adventure which involved visiting the emergency room.  The ride was fun, the horses were fun and very well behaved. The landscape was breathtakingly beautiful and white.  We are both recovering and in the end we will be left with no regrets so that's good.

Icelandic horses are very popular here as a sports in all weathers and when they can't be used for that purpose, they are happily transferred onto a plate! They are much smaller and cute looking and have 5 different walks such as gallop, strut, trot, turr and walk.

Since we were both recovering from our fall from the horses we decided to just stay around town. The one good thing we did is move to a room with a better view; we had the bay, Harpa on one side and the church and colorful rooftops on the other side. The room was also much bigger and luxurious.  We walked in the cold weather to a local restaurant where someone (not me) sampled puffin meat and took revenge on the horses by eating one. I stuck to good old boring salmon :-)
Then we came back and cover the whole market street, saw carolers singing, shopped in many stores and tried our best to be impartial to all the tourist stores. We got dinner from a very fancy but good indian restaurant  called Austur India Felagio. They had such good dishes that we had a dinner picnic in our room and had it for brunch again! Definitely try it..

We had breakfast from a nice bakery called Sandholt. The coffee in Iceland is always amazing because the milk is so fresh and good. Before leaving we had to visit the #1 tourist destination; the blue lagoon . Although very touristy, it's very nice.
It's a naturally formed but man made geothermal spa. The water is very aquamarine in color. It's on the way to the airport and so it's very convenient (made that way) to stop there, take a spa, shower, swim before flying in or out. it's water has many different minerals in it and is changed every 40 hours. it takes up about 5000 sq. meters in area and is open year round. The Blue Lagoon is one of Iceland’s most visited sites with more than 400.000 visitors annually.

Over all, Iceland is amazing. Where else will yu find 800 hot springs, 10,000 waterfalls, 15 active volcanoes and 4500 square miles of glaciers!