Iceland

Christmas is celebrated on Dec. 24th by going to church, then opening gifts, and special time with the family playing games or cards.  The Folklore abounds for this holiday. They have not ONE Santa but  there are 13 to be found! Yes,  Iceland has 13 Santa Clauses, called  Yule Lads (and family) . Christmas season starts when the first Yule Lad comes to town (13 days before Christmas Eve), and finishes when the last one leaves town (Twelfth Night). (These Yule Lads are part of a family tied into the Christmas Cat and Gryla mentioned below).   There is this cat folklore tale. It is a bit foggy to me though I have heard it twice. The cat belongs to some ugly (and horrible) old woman named Gryla who lives far away in the mountains and eats children. There is a display of this Christmas Cat quite prominent downtown. Here's where it gets unclear - If children are naughty by not being nicely dressed for church on Christmas they risk two things. 1) they will only get a potato for Chris

Dec 7:  Sunrise 11:01a - Sunset 3:37p Arrival KEF was even a bit early. We disembarked and headed to customs, which was pretty quick. It was a long way to baggage claim or it felt long to us anyway. Soooo thankful that our suitcases made it! The shuttle FlyBus that we booked was just outside the terminal door, with 4 seats left, and departed KEF in moments after we boarded. It is weird that it is pitch black dark and NO snow to be seen anywhere. The way this shuttle works is quite efficient. First they check your ticket and give you a color coded ticket for you next shuttle bus. This bus will take us to the main terminal in Reykjavik. I bought our tickets ahead of time at home, and happy I did because there was quite a line in the terminal to get a ticket. Now we are on our way to the hotel. There was one drop off outside of Reykjavik and then on to the bus terminal. Almost everyone got off but we stayed onboard with about 8 other people. We were then dropped at our hotel.  Fossho