We have tips for seeing the Northern Lights with kids in Iceland!
If you really want to see the Northern Lights, you’ll want to do everything you can to make that possible. This is especially true if you’re based in Reykjavik and need to get outside the city to see them!
Here are a few tips that worked for us:
Visit during the right season - September to April.
Stay at least 3 nights. Of course the more nights you stay, the higher your chances of seeing them. So we’d suggest at least 3 - more if you can swing it!
Book a tour for your very first night in Iceland. Going with a guide is the best way to find the lights, and you may need a few chances. Tours are usually cancelled if the guides don’t feel the chance of seeing the lights is very high that night. So if you book a tour for your first night, you’ll be able to reschedule for another day if it gets cancelled. Or if your guide is not able to make a reschedule happen, you have time to find someone else your next few nights. If you really want to get aggressive, book a tour for every night you're there.
Find a dedicated guide. A guide is key since it's hard to see the beginning of the lights, and they don't always last very long. So you want to be in the right spot. But if you REALLY want to up your chances, it's key to find someone who is super excited about making sure you see them. Our guide was actually a former chaser who spent all day with us and then decided it was his mission to make sure we saw them (as we missed them the prior two nights) on the way home from our all-day tour. This guy was on his radio with his buddies sharing information on different spots and then (literally) racing to get us there. The lights can hang around for a couple minutes to a couple hours, so it can be a challenge to make sure you get to the right spot, see them, and then of course take a picture! I’m thinking not every guide is as passionate as ours was, so read reviews and find someone who sounds committed!
Don’t give up!
Now if all this still sounds too risky to you, I’d suggest making the leap to stay outside the city for a couple nighst! If you’re doing the south coast, you can stay anywhere near the glaciers and have a much easier time finding those lights - and some hotels even offer a wake up call when you can see them from the property!
And lastly, the northern lights are definitely awesome to see, but remember that your camera can pick up colors of light that you may not see… meaning sometimes the pictures look cooler than what it looks like in real life! Plus sometimes (clearly) it's also tough to capture the humans in the pictures (and you might have a giant lobster in the background lol). But this is just a note as you set your expectations - again, it's definitely worth the chase!
Have fun!
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