Pre Iceland: Packing & Cold Weather Essentials

1. Tuesday Scarves, made by a local Seattle artisan, were a life saver in the often windy, chilly Iceland weather. Besides the flannel one below I also wore a similar, faux fur one too. Highly recommend buying them! They were easy to pull up and over my ears too. Two of my favorites in her Etsy Store now: Flannel Cowl Scarf and the Faux Fur Cowl Scarf.

2. Pack Layers. it was great to be able to mix and match items too, so pack and buy in the same color families. This Athleta top was a big favorite to wear underneath a thermal or with my vest. Also, this top is pretty cute (and practical!) too. Don't forget your gloves too! No need for huge skiing gloves, it's not that cold or snowy out there.
3. Camera and underwater camera too. Having a fancy pants camera to capture the northern lights was key. hands down, absolutely necessary. We also were able to grab some landscape and scenery pictures that we plan on blowing up and framing. If you plan on snorkeling or going in the blue lagoon, I recommend buying the underwater camera before your trip... it cost us about $20 to buy the $7 camera. Also, buy an (european/ two prong) electrical outlet adapter... we got ours at Radioshack, but they're cheaper online (Grounded Europe Adapter) if you plan ahead! Remember you can only plug things in there that are rated at 220-240 volts - most modern/new laptops and chargers are.
4. The travel basics: leave your big bag at home, and invest in a small purse and a backpack. Our backpack came in very useful: kept papers from getting folded or lost, had lots of room to pack extra scarves and the camera, my purse even fit in there too!

Ben, the official backpack wearer

5. Phone Info: once on the airplane, set your smart phone to airplane mode and keep it there the entire trip. Your carrier will probably charge you for any text or call made or received during your international roaming. Airplane mode will prevent this. The cool thing is that there is a ton of free Wi-Fi in Iceland (hotels to coffee shops). So turn on your wi-fi and do internet from there. If you don't have a smart phone, just keep the phone at home or off the entire trip. Side note, the GPS/ maps feature was useless in iceland unless we were connected to the internet (I still have no idea why it didn't function well). So it leads me to my last pre-trip advice: 
6. Buy a Travel Mapand one of those touristy Travel Guidebooks. Then cross check all the restaurants to the internet to verify they still exist - because sometimes even a year old book is outdated!