Hotel Natura, Reykjavik

It's not much to look at from the outside, but I think Hotel Natura will probably be one of the coolest hotels we have ever stayed at! The hotel rooms are included in our package, and Icelandair actually owns this hotel.

I was surprised to find out that they actually have ICELANDIC BEDTIME STORIES every Thursday at 9 pm. Each week’s bedtime story features a different theme from Icelandic literature - the perfect way to spend a cosy evening and start your weekend in Iceland.  They are free for guests to attend, presented in English and... they encourage you to wear your pyjamas! (although everyone is welcome - whether with striped pyjamas and bunny rabbit slippers or not) They provide the hot chocolate and some blankets under which to snuggle during the readings. Hope I can stay awake long enough to hear the story; I'm sure we'll be suffering from jet-lag by then.

Another thing they do is show a movie called AMAZING ICELAND every night in German and English. The film is about an hour long and "captures the magic of Iceland, a land where nature paints in powerful strokes and strong colors. The country is full of massive and wonderful extremes, thundering waterfalls and dramatically spouting geysers as well as tranquil lakes with rare-breeding bird life and powerfully active volcanoes that lurk menacingly beneath silent majestic glaciers and towering misty mountains overlooking lush-green pastures". It even has volcano scenes from the 2010 Volcano eruption in Eyjafjallajökull Glacier. I'm not sure that is something I want to think about too much while touring Iceland, so maybe we'll wait a few days before we go see that movie, lol.

The indoor pool is filled with salt water, and there is also a cozy fireplace near the pool. Hmmm, that makes me think it might be cold in there. But no, almost all the pools in Iceland are geo-thermically heated, so they can keep them warm at relatively low cost.

Right now I'm waiting for Jeff to pick me up and the two of us will meet Jim, Liz and Boris at the airport. It's only a 5 hour flight, then we'll arrive at 6:30 am Icelandic time and hit the ground running!