3 - Happy New Year!

Dear readers,

I am writing this third blog from my new home! My dad is in the plane back to Amsterdam right now, and I have slept here for the first time in my own new room. My new room is lovely. I live with 4 other girls on the same floor. We share a nice kitchen and a bathroom together. One girl is from poland, the other from india and two others are from Lithuania. They are all friendly people. I already feel quite at home here as I have made my room look nice with posters, pictures and other little things which I got before I left from my closest family and friends. My house is situated in the middle of the centre! It's such a good location, I can almost not believe it.

Now I will start with writing what I have done the last few days with my dad. on the 31st of december (the last day of 2018!), we woke up after having a bit of a lie in. We didn't really have plans for that day but we started of walking to the edge of city centre, because this place gives you a fantastic view of the mountains surrounding Reykjavík. It was a wonderful sight, but very cold because it was pretty windy! After walking along a bit further we came to one of the most famous sculptures in Reykjavík by Jón Gunnar Árnaso. It is called 'The Sun Voyager' and it looks like a Viking boat. It is described as a dreamboat, or an ode to the sun. The artist intended it to convey the promise of undiscovered territory, a dream of hope, progress and freedom. I took some lovely pictures at this site.

Now we started to get a little too cold and hungry so we went into the city centre to look for a place to have lunch. We ended up in one of the main streets and had a club sandwich and an (expensive) cappuccino (€4,65!). The place was called Joe & The Juice. I wasn't really surprised about the price of the cappuccino, as drinks in Iceland are just really expensive (food has an okay price though!). So I will just have a drink outside on special occasions and spend the rest of my money on lovely trips to beautiful places in Iceland, haha!

After our lunch we decided to visit the Vulcano House. This place has a small exhibition on vulcanoes, you can feel and see rocks and look at impressive pictures of vulcanoes. The exhibition is free. I would really recommend to also watch the documentary while you are there, this is not for free but it was really impressive. It gives you an insight on how impactful vulcanoes are on the environment and the surrounding villages. When the documentary was finished we had a glass of champagne at the café next door to celebrate the end of 2018, and the beginning af the (almost) new year! We had some more time to spare before our New Years Dinner so we decided to have another drink at the Hard Rock Café. The staff was so nice here and we really enjoyed the ambiance. After our drinks we made our way to Bryggjan Brugghús, where we were going to have our dinner. It was really lovely, I had fish soup and salmon for dinner and it tasted really good. We also had quite some fun with the Americans sitting next to us, telling the bad jokes we got out of our Christmas crackers. Next, it was time to follow the New Years tradition of the Icelandic people: go to see a bonfire at 8.30 pm. This was absolutely stunning! The fire was huge and there were lots of people which felt really cosy. The fire was about 10 meters high and really warm. When we felt it was time, we moved on to walk to a better place to see the fireworks at midnight. People in Reykjavík buy so many fireworks! It was unbelievable! And so pretty, watching all those

fireworks light up the sky. HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!

The day after, the 1st of january 2019, was the last day with my dad. We started off by moving into my new house and decorating my room. After we were finished we went to visit the 'Perlan'. Perlan ('The Pearl') is a museum and rotating glass dome built on top of six water tanks that together store 24 million litres of Reykjavík's hot water, heating the building. It was really impressive, because we got a 360 degrees view of Reykjavík on top of this building! It also has a rotating restaurant on the top floor, but sadly this was closed due to the new year. After looking at the view we watched an impressive movie about Iceland and it's Northern lights. Then, we went to the exhibition on vulcanoes, the animals of Iceland and the exhibition on glaciers! This included a walk in a man-built ice cave. This was so cool! -15 degrees and it was great to have spent some time in a ice cave. It feels kind of unreal if you have never experienced this before. I would definitely reccomend a visit to this museum.

It was time to have dinner so me and my dad had our last evening meal together at a cosy american-type restaurant. I want to thank him for spending my first few days here together with me. It made it a lot easier to move here and we had such a great time exploring Iceland. I can't wait to let you all know about my next adventures and I would like to wish you all a great, healthy and happy New Year!

Love,

Camille