For the graduation gift of a friend of ours, we decided to go all together to see the northern lights. One of the best places to see this magnificent event is certainly Norway, but the main problem is that it is not easy to reach from Italy and it is also very expensive. Therefore, we decided to visit another place that is just as beautiful and where we were likely to see the Northern Lights: Iceland. We looked for tickets to Iceland departing from Bologna, but the cost was extremely high so we checked if there were any airports within driving distance where it was cheaper. The cheapest flight we found was from Vienna. From where we live, it takes about 8 hours by car to get to the Austrian capital, and since we were four and we could share the cost of the trip and the driving hours, we decided it was better to book this flight. We left after work at around 6.00 pm and drove all night to get to the airport at around 4.00 am. From there we took the plane and landed in Reykjavik.

Iceland is a quite big country and we had 5 days available, so in order to be able to see as much as we could we had rented a car in advance. Obviously in Iceland the weather conditions are quite adverse, and change very frequently, so much that it can happen to wake up in the morning with the sun and after an hour find yourself in a blizzard. So if you want to travel you have to move with a car of important dimensions and above all that has a four-wheel drive. We rented a Ford Kuga 4 x 4 with automatic transmission, a very good car in hindsight.

I clearly remember that the first thing they told us at the rental was to be careful every time we opened the doors of the car, since the wind could be so strong that if we had not kept the door close it could have easily uprooted it. This gave us immediately a clear idea of what would have been the climatic conditions to which we would have been submitted in those days. Of course, we were also informed that the car was equipped with different types of sensors positioned in various parts that detected any bumps or collisions, even in the lower part of the car, something I had never heard of before.

We went to Iceland towards the end of March, so during the beginning of spring and therefore with slightly more favorable weather conditions, although coming from Italy we didn't notice it at all. Along the road it was really difficult to spot a little bit of "green", everything was covered from the snow and/or ice. But even so, the landscape wasn't less beautiful, but rather much more fascinating.

Iceland is a very wild country, with huge expanses of land where for kilometers and kilometers there is not a living soul to be seen and no human constructions. It is a land rich in waterfalls, volcanoes, geothermal springs and wild animals. Having the car at our disposal we were free to move around and above all to stop wherever and whenever we wanted.

One thing that left me very surprised was the fact that although the temperatures were very low, even several degrees below zero, the cold was still bearable. This was probably because there wasn't too much humidity and the climate was dry. Where I live, in the Po Valley, the temperatures are never so low, but because there is constant fog that loads the atmosphere with moisture, the perceived temperatures are actually much lower and the cold you feel is much more uncomfortable than what I felt in Iceland.

Obviously this is not to say that the weather conditions in Iceland are better than in Italy, since as I said before the weather conditions are very variable and in at least four of the five days we were there we encountered a blizzard, with winds so strong that it was impossible to keep your eyes open as the snow was coming at high speed and hitting your face directly.

But that is part of the charm of this wonderful country, a hostile and rugged land covered in ice and snow for most of the year, but with views and sights that take your breath away when you get there.

We toured a lot with the car and saw a lot of very cool places. We also always slept in different places, sometimes even booked on the spot. But let's start to describe some of the places that we visited on the first day.

_{Kirkjufell (Icelandic: Church Mountain) is a 463-metre-high mountain located on the north coast of Iceland, on the Snæfellsnes Peninsula, near the town of Grundarfjörður set in the fjord of the same name, and is part of the Vesturland region. It is considered the most photographed mountain in the country and was one of the filming locations for seasons 6 and 7 of the television series Game of Thrones.}