Day 18 - The sun and the northern lights finally appeared

This morning we could see some blue sky for the first time of my stay here.

We decided to go back to Bolungarvík, the town where I was almost blown away a few days ago. This time it was much more pleasant.

Even the sun came out at some point.
On the way there we stopped at Ósvör open air museum. It's a reconstructed fishing station with a fisherman's hut, a salting house, a hut to dry the fish and a couple of other buildings. It is open only during the summer season so there was nobody there the fish was hanging there to dry. There was no gate or a fence so I walked around it, it was on a pretty small area. After we came back we picked E's little girl from the nursery and drove partly through the same tunnel as yesterday but we took the turning for Suðureyri about half way through the tunnel. Suðureyri is a small fishing village where visitors can get involved in the regular village life, they can go out on working fishing boats and visit the fish factory. That's obviously during the summer season. At this time of the year it seemed like a sleepy little village by a beautiful fjord.
When we got back to Ísafjörður E suggested that I should climb another mountain. This time it wasn't for the view over the town. She wanted me to experience the feeling of being close to a plane, which turns around those mountains before landing at the local airport. I climbed about half way up and waited for the plane to arrive. Unfortunately the wind changed and the plane was landing another direction so it didn't come anywhere close to the mountain I was standing on. Well, it was a good workout and I got a nice view of the town from a different angle. For dinner we had roasted lobster tails with garlic for starter, an Icelandic fish dish for the main course and pancakes with cream for dessert. It was a very nice "going away" dinner.
Later in the evening E's fiance thought that this could be the night when we could see the northern lights. I've always wanted to see them but the weather was against me. It's been always cloudy and relatively warm and they can be seen only when the sky is clear and it's freezing. So we took the chance and drove out of the town lights. The sky was mostly clear with thousands of stars but there were also few clouds around. After a short time something started to appear. Not very strong at first but then they got stronger. They looked more like long thin clouds than the stripes of colour as you see it on pictures or tv. They moved very slowly and then they faded and new ones appeared. It was a surreal experience. I kept taking pictures of them. The strange thing was that when I watched them they were milky colour but they are green on the photos!! After about an hour of standing in the freezing cold, dark night and watching the lights dancing we went back home. It was my last night here and the last chance to see them. When I flew from London to Reykjavik a week ago, about an hour before we landed the cabin lights were switched off even though they are normally on during the flight. I looked out of the window and saw a light strip of something like a long thin cloud and then another one above it. It moved very slowly and gradually faded away. There was no way there were clouds out there at 36,000 feet at 11pm. The northern lights were saying "hello" to me but I wasn't sure it was them because they were not coloured. And now they were saying "good bye" to me.

And here is a proof that I was there... :-)