Iceland

You can not control the weather but look to go when there is a new moon and try to book for then. Unless the northern lights are particularly active it can be drowned out by light from the moon.
 
Guest2 said:
No point in booking the northern lights until you are there. If you book ahead and its too cloud then say goodbye to your money.

Might aswell do what we did and book a private tour with a guy in jeep to take you out one night. Costs a bit more but if weather is bad you can go the next night at no extra cost. Plus on a coach tour you have to put it with 30 odd other people - With a private jeep you can go anywhere, usually to better spots that are not crowded, as we did.

Also make sureto book the blue lagoons and Snowmobiling. Snowmobiling is excellent
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We went with a smaller group of 8 people on our lights tour. Had to book weeks in advance as they get fully booked quite quickly. Much better than doing it on the coach groups though, I don't think we would have been offered a refund if we didn't see them mind you.
 
^ Maybe it depends on the time of your you go. We went in February a couple of years ago and booked everything when we got there - Lagoon for the morning with lights in the evening, day after was golden circle tour with snow mobiling (went on a huge 'jeep' for the whole day that was more like a monster truck!) the following day was glacier walking, ice climbing and some sightseeing and hot springs. We ended up seeing the northern light on the last day as weather was the best.

To be honest the lights were good to see once but IMO were not amazing how everything thinks they are going to be. I have been far more amazed at the stars on a clear night in somewhere very remote
 
My 2 bob, if you stay in Reykjavik and only do guided tours you are massively missing out on Iceland as an experience. We did Reykjavik in a day, that was plenty as it's a fairly small city. We stayed in a self catering place in Fludir (45min drive), amazing log cabin in the middle of nowhere and the owner who met us on arrival gave us the best piece of advice: "don't do the guided tours, all the things they take you to see are there and best down on your own. The lights are there if the conditions are right, no need to have someone drive you around chasing them."

I personally didn't think it was outlandishly expensive however with the exception of one lunch we either made our dinner or ate well outside Reykjavik but a main meal (full rack of ribs and chips etc) was equivalent of £14. Booze is expensive but there is a duty free in baggage claim on arrival, use it! Blue lagoon is well worth seeing but for a true experience look up the secret lagoon. The glaciers are immense, the one trip we went on was a guided snowmobile one which we did enjoy.
 
http://www.gi.alaska.edu/AuroraForecast/Europe/

Bookmark this page, anything 5 or above is a great time to see the lights provided the weather conditions are correct. The advanced predictions seem to be accurate too as they never changed for the days we were concerned with. I booked our trip on a 6 rated day about 2 weeks in advance and it was still a 6 on the day in question and our keep driver found us a great spot and we caught a fantastic display.
 
Windle said:
My 2 bob, if you stay in Reykjavik and only do guided tours you are massively missing out on Iceland as an experience. We did Reykjavik in a day, that was plenty as it's a fairly small city. We stayed in a self catering place in Fludir (45min drive), amazing log cabin in the middle of nowhere and the owner who met us on arrival gave us the best piece of advice: "don't do the guided tours, all the things they take you to see are there and best down on your own. The lights are there if the conditions are right, no need to have someone drive you around chasing them."

I personally didn't think it was outlandishly expensive however with the exception of one lunch we either made our dinner or ate well outside Reykjavik but a main meal (full rack of ribs and chips etc) was equivalent of £14. Booze is expensive but there is a duty free in baggage claim on arrival, use it! Blue lagoon is well worth seeing but for a true experience look up the secret lagoon. The glaciers are immense, the one trip we went on was a guided snowmobile one which we did enjoy.
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Great tips, we have never done guided tours anywhere we have been and have always seen far more on our own. We have booked a hotel in Reykjavik with included breakfast so thats one thing less to pay for.

We booked flights and hotel through Expedia part of black Friday.
 
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Guest2 said:
No point in booking the northern lights until you are there. If you book ahead and its too cloud then say goodbye to your money.

Might aswell do what we did and book a private tour with a guy in jeep to take you out one night. Costs a bit more but if weather is bad you can go the next night at no extra cost. Plus on a coach tour you have to put it with 30 odd other people - With a private jeep you can go anywhere, usually to better spots that are not crowded, as we did.

Also make sureto book the blue lagoons and Snowmobiling. Snowmobiling is excellent
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That's not true and is very poor advice. A lot of the tours get booked up, you'll see signs saying "tour full" for the day on the shop window. If you don't see the northern lights they refund your money anyway so the only risk is your time being wasted.
 
Sorry...totally forgot about this thread. Background is I want to take my fiancee as a 30th birthday present. She'll be 30 in July. Ideally we want to see the lights/hot springs/everything else.

I thought January would be a decent time to try and see the lights, and it'd be after Christmas so we'd have something to look forward to once the festivities had died down. I assume Reyjavik would be the best place to stay?

I'd like to get flights and accommodation booked ASAP.
 
I'm pretty sure from memory that the lights are best between October and March. We went last February and flew from Manchester with Thomson. It was an introductory offer and we got a good price for flights and hotel. I imagine the cost has gone up now.

We stayed in the 3 star Skuggi hotel which was brand new and everything was immaculate. The room was excellent but the hotel is fairly small so not many facilities, however the prices in the bar and restaurant were very reasonable and it is well placed in the city.

http://www.keahotels.is/en/hotels/skuggi-hotel

We paid for some of the Thomson tours and packed a hell of a lot into 3 nights. The only thing we didn't do was the blue lagoon, but we would love to go back in the summer to see the Island at another time of year and would do that then. We were taken out for free to see the Northern lights every night but only saw them on the first night.
 
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Adam said:
That's not true and is very poor advice. A lot of the tours get booked up, you'll see signs saying "tour full" for the day on the shop window. If you don't see the northern lights they refund your money anyway so the only risk is your time being wasted.
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Mine didn't refund but offerred free tours on subsequent days until the lights appeared. Was reasonable enough.

Blue Lagoon gets busy; so you can try Secret Lagoon (near Golden Circle) for a not as popular alternative.

South Coast tour was also deffo worth it.
 
Avoid April 6-8 this year if you don't want to share your holiday with a thousand drunken EVE Online fans.
 
I might switch Jan for the end of November. I highly doubt I'll be renting a car. So...

Golden circle
Blue lagoon
Secret lagoon

Going to book tours with http://discover.is/ I think, as Bennie suggested. How's public transport?
 
So booked a place called Guesthouse Galtafell. It'll be from Sun 12th November - Friday 17th. Now for flights etc!
 
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