Golden Birthday in Iceland — Life of Ada-venture

Does anyone else remember how golden birthdays were such a huge deal growing up? Your golden birthday is when you turn the age of your birth date. I'll use my dog as an example, he was born on January 28th, so his golden birthday would be when he turns 28.

Growing up, my friends and I used to always fantasize about the magical golden birthday. How this birthday is the most special out of all birthdays and something amazing or magical will happen. All my other friends who had earlier birth dates said that when they turned their golden age, it was the best day of their lives. So the magic of the golden birthday has been instilled in me since childhood.

When I found out we were going to Hawaii

Well this year I get to experience Harrison’s golden birthday with him. For my birthday last year, Harrison surprised me with an unforgettable amazing trip to Hawaii. I wanted to do the same for him, a surprise trip in which he had no idea where he was going until we got to the airport.

I scoured the internet looking for trip ideas on where I could take him. My criteria was that:

I wanted it to be the opposite of Hawaii, so instead of a relaxed tropical beach vacation, it was going to be an adventurous cold winter wonderland (makes sense since my birthday is in the summer and his in the winter)
I wanted it to be an obscure random location that we never even mentioned as a place we want to go so that it would be so far off his radar that he wouldn’t be able to guess it.
I needed it to be magical and unforgettable because this was for his golden birthday.

Iceland fit the bill so perfectly. Obviously in the winter, Iceland is cold. It’s also a location in which Harrison and I never even mentioned to each other. We have a list of countries that we would like to visit and Iceland was not on that list. I don’t think we’ve ever even said the word Iceland to each other before. And lastly, Iceland is a beautiful country, so beautiful that it almost feels unreal and out of this world.

Simulating the northern lights on Icelandiar!

In fact 50% of Icelanders believe in elves, trolls, and other mystical beings. Multiple tour guides explained to us that with such amazing natural phenomenon in Iceland such as the northern lights, the natural hot springs, the charming terrain, how could anybody explain this land? The only explanation has to be mystical beings that inhabit the beautiful region! So back to my criteria, we have: cold, random, and magical, all check!

Since his birthday was coming up soon, the flight prices were increasing everyday. I decided to just buy the tickets and make it a long weekend trip where we would leave on a Thursday and come back on a Monday. All I really knew about Iceland was that it was a great place to hunt for the Northern Lights and to take a dip in the hot springs. Little did I know that Iceland has so much more to offer and my little weekend trip would not be able to accommodate everything I wanted to do.

Furthermore, I didn’t think that too many people went to Iceland. How wrong I was. Iceland’s a pretty well oiled machine when it comes to tourism, so much so that it has become a significant part of their national economy. There are so many companies that offer vacation and touring packages that I had to keep an excel sheet to keep track of which ones I was interested in and which ones I contacted for inquiry.

So much to do yet so little time. To keep my sanity, I decided to pick one thing that we absolutely had to do to explore Iceland’s beauty and landscape, one thing that Harrison would enjoy, one thing that I would enjoy, and one thing that we can both enjoy. With this, I jam packed my itinerary as best I could. Before this, I had an even crazier itinerary that I emailed to several Icelandic tour groups who were very quick to shoot down my ideas and tell me it’s not possible to pack everything I wanted to do in 3.5 days.

In the end our Iceland itinerary included: Snorkeling, The Golden Circle Tour, Dog Sledding with a dip at the local pools, and lastly Horseback Riding.