ICELAND

Tuesday, June 9th

Nick and I wanted to take one last big trip while we were living in Europe. We were only a 4 hour plane ride away from Iceland. That's probably the closest we'll ever be; so why not take a trip there while it's so close! Nick's 30th birthday was also coming up. He enjoys outdoor activities, and Iceland has a lot to offer in that area. So it was decided--we'd head to Iceland for a week for his bday!

Our flight on Wowair was delayed 2 hours from the 10:30pm takeoff time. We landed in Iceland at 4am our time. (2am Iceland time) We were a bit delusional, but we were grateful that it was still light outside. In the summer, the northern Scandinavian countries have "white nights," where it never completely gets dark. I loved it! I'm trying to figure out a way I could always live in an area where it's never night. I'll live in Scandinavia in the summer and maybe Antarctica the other time of year. :)

We had to call our rental car company, Sadcars, when we arrived because they didn't have a booth in the airport. We learned very quickly as to why they are called Sadcars. All of the cars on the lot were "junkers." We named our car, "Happy." Happy, the Sadcar. 

With limited cellphone service, we had to use printed google maps to find our B&B, Guesthouse Svitan, near the airport in Keflavik. The front door was open and our key was waiting in the foyer. Iceland has the least amount of crime in the world; people are so open and trusting there. It's so refreshing. I have to say it was hard to get used to. At one point, Happy's door-locking mechanism stopped working. We would have to leave our luggage in an unlocked car! (Gasp!) Icelander's (is that what you call them?) thought it was hilarious that we were concerned about our unlocked car and possessions inside. 

Nick and I crashed when we finally found our bed; we were exhausted. 

The next morning, we had a self-serve breakfast just outside our room. We tried the Icelandic yogurt, Skyr. It's slightly thicker than Greek yogurt, and delicious! You could almost spread it on a bagel!

Wednesday, June 10th

At 10 am, we drove 30 minutes to the Blue Lagoon. If you google Iceland you will likely see pictures of the Blue Lagoon. The water is heated below the Earth's surface and used to create electricity. The remaining water is pumped into the Blue Lagoon at a delightful 98-102 degrees. 

There are buckets of goo nearby that guests are invited to use on their faces. I found that it slightly burned my dry skin. Nick didn't seem to mind it so much. He looks pretty good with a facial. :)

The weather forecast looked like it would rain the entire time we were in Iceland, but the sun decided to come out the first day.

Everyone warned me not to get my hair wet because the water dries it out. The water's great for the skin, but terrible for hair!

I was also warned that there would be a lot of nudity in the locker room. (gasp!) Haha! I guess I've been in Europe long enough that this doesn't shock me. The Blue Lagoon requires guests to rinse off without their swimsuits before entering the Lagoon water. Seems pretty logical.

After several hours, we were total prunes from sitting in the warm water. It felt amazing!

We rinsed off, and drove Happy to Reykjavik, the main city in Iceland. 

We were staying in a small apartment not far from the main drag, Laugavegur. 

Nick was starving by this point, and almost beyond "hangry." We quickly walked to Beztu, the best hotdogs in Iceland. 

I would have to agree; they are delicious hotdogs! They have raw onion, crispy onion pieces, roumalade, ketchup and mustard. My mouth is watering just thinking about them. We bought 2 each. (We went back several times since it was just about the cheapest meal we could get in Iceland.) Hotdogs were about $3 each - worth every penny!

We strolled the downtown area along Lauraverag. These strange troll creatures were outside one of the tourist traps. 

There were bikes like these at the beginning to each pedestrian street. Others were painted yellow and pink. 

The main attraction in Reykjavik is the church, Hallgrimskirkja. 

Hallgrimskirkja

Hallgrimskirkja

Nick looks slightly confused and annoyed. We met his quota for visiting churches in Iceland on day one. ;)

We took the elevator up to the top of the bell tower to get the sweeping views of the city. It was by far the best view in town.

We stopped at a local cafe afterward, to get some homemade waffles and a cappuccino. Tiu Dropar, meaning "ten drops," is one of the older cafes in Reykjavik. 

Their food was to live for! Almost everything was homemade. 

The lamp was casting a cool shadow on Nick's face. I had to capture it. 

We continued our walk down Laugavegur. 

Almost every store front had some sort of attraction to get tourists attention.

We were both ready for a nap by this point. We stopped by a grocery store right across the street from our apartment to buy some groceries for the week before heading back to the apartment. 

We were amused by the Icelandic foods and also by the American brands that were slightly off. 

No "cool American's" were harmed in the making of these chips.

That night I had made the one and only reservation at a restaurant we had for the entire week we were in Iceland. Laekjarbrekka served mainly traditional Icelandic food. 

Nick and I tried whale, dried fish, and fermented shark. The fermented shark was by far the worst. I don't think any locals actually eat the stuff; they just offer it to tourists to get a good laugh. It reeked of ammonia when opening the jar. It tasted just about as bad as the smell. The fish was hard, dry and chewy. The whale was actually delicious! I feel so guilty even writing that. 

On our walk back to our apartment Nick found his dream car - the Land Rover, Defender. He even wanted to get his picture with it! 

Thursday, June 11th

I was so excited for this day! We'd be visiting Thingvellir National Park on the Golden Circle. From what we'd read, Thingvellir seemed similar to Yellowstone National Park in the States. They had geysers, waterfalls, and wild animals running free. 

Our first stop was a walk between the Eurasian and the North American tectonic plates. We were sort of in a no-man's land. There are about 7km between the 2 tectonic plates and we got to stand on it!

It was a cold morning. We were glad we brought warm layers with us even though it was 90 degrees Fahrenheit when we left Italy. 

We found the crowds! We fought our way up to the top of the cliffs for a view. There were about 30 tourist buses and hundreds of tourists. 

I'm not trying to scratch Nick's face off in this photo. I was just trying to push my hair out of my face. I wish I could remember what we were laughing at. 

At noon we had a reservation to snorkel in the freezing water of Silfra. It is also between the tectonic plates and is fed by natural spring water. 

We were fortunate to wear dry suits. We had our clothes underneath. The neck was extremely tight so that water wouldn't seep in. It wasn't exactly comfortable. 

The suits kept us buoyant and mostly dry. We basically just floated through the narrow passage. The water was so clear it felt like we were flying.

Our group consisted mostly of asian tourists. A few of them didn't know how to swim. They had to be dragged the entire length of the trip. Haha! Nick and I had a good time splashing around.

By the end of the tour, my index finger and thumb were completely numb. It was so painful getting feeling back in them once we were out of the water. 

We walked about 10 minutes back to the vans to get undressed. I got stuck in my dry suit. It had to be yanked off my head. Haha! Problems of a person with a skinny neck and large head.

We had some delicious hot chocolate to warm up, and we were off to our next destination on the Golden Circle.

I've found that the colder a place is the fewer pictures I will take, and their not always the best representation of my "work" because I'm trying to stay warm. After going through these, I realized I hadn't really captured as much of Iceland's beauty as I had hoped. It really is much prettier in person.

We drove up to see Geysir and Strokkur. Geysir is no longer spouting water, but Strokkur is. I got some funny looks as I turned my camera away from the geyser toward the crowd. Everyone had their cameras cocked and ready to snap a photo of spout of water exploding from the earth. 

Nick was able to capture the geyser start to erupt.

Depending on which direction the wind was blowing you could get doused in boiling hot water. 

We went in a nearby shop to warm up a bit. I had not thought to bring a knit hat on the trip. I wish I could say that Nick got this one. We got a good laugh, but didn't end up buying it. Everything is SO expensive in Iceland. 

I bought a hat not realizing it was $80!! I will be holding onto that hat for the rest of my life!

Our next stop was Gulfoss waterfall. It's one of the most powerful waterfalls in Europe. 

It was almost deafening standing near it. The river in the foreground almost impressed me more than the mist creeping upward over the cliff. I've never seen water move so quickly through a narrow canal. 

We had the option to visit a few other sites in Thingvellir, but we were excited to go back to our apartment to rest and warm up. It was 5pm by this point! It didn't look or feel like it. We'd already had such a full day. It was a good 2 hour drive back to Reykjavik.

That night Nick found a local Thai restaurant. We searched for about 30 minutes before we found it. The wind was whipping through the city and it was cold! 

We ordered way too much food, but it was so delicious and warm. 

We took a small detour back to our apartment to walk off the huge meal we'd just eaten. We stopped by the Harpa Music Hall. It's beautiful lit up in the sun. 

We continued along the waterfront. We found out later that this was a Russian ship. Earlier that day two tug boats had run it into two of Iceland's Coast Guard boats. There were millions of dollars in damage done to the Coast Guard boats. Even though it was the fault of the captain of the tug boats, Iceland was asking for some compensation for the damage from the Russians! Ha! 

This statue is one of the main sites in Reykjavik. Just shows how few tourist attractions they have here. The natural beauty of the country is more the attraction. :)

Friday, June 12th

On Friday, we headed out early for the Ring Road, Hwy 1, to circumnavigate Iceland. We'd start with the east coast, go north, then come back on the west coast. 

We were to meet at 2pm for a hike on the Solheimajokull Glacier. We first stopped at a few waterfalls we wanted to see along the drive. 

The first one, Seljalandsfoss, was unique because you could actually walk behind it! It was a bit cold and drizzly that morning, but that wouldn't stop us!

We were getting pelted by water at this point on the walk.

It was loud and beautiful! I think it's the first waterfall I'd ever walked behind without a swimsuit on.

30 minutes down the road we found Skogafoss waterfall. "Foss," in Iceland actually means waterfall. 

It was one of the few times in my life I felt small.

At 1pm we found the cafe where we would meet for our glacier walk. We realized we were a bit early, so we drove into Vik where we'd be staying that night. We checked in, grabbed hot dogs at the gas station, and then drove back to the glacier. Vik had been warm and sunny. Just 30 minutes drive back to the glacier and it was cold and rainy.

When we arrived, there were two guides waiting for us in a van. Marta and Henrik, informed us that we were the only two on the tour that day. We had our very own private guides! They gave us the option of coming back the next day since it was raining. We couldn't take them up of the offer because we had another event planned for the next day. They were still happy to do the tour with us, thankfully. 

At different moments throughout the tour, they mentioned that it was like a vacation for them because there were only 2 of us and they could venture to places they didn't normally go with a larger group.

Here's "Henry" and Marta giving us a demonstration and explanation as to why the large black mounds formed. They were so cute! I can't remember what the explanation was because I was so distracted by how adorable they were. 

We ran into another group headed back from their tour. We were even more grateful to have our own personal guides after seeing so many people!

This little contraption was an idea that came from Reykjavik University. It measures how fast the glacier is melting. The wire between Marta's hand measures how far the glacier has melted in one month. It's the fastest melting glacier in Iceland. 

Our guide told us all about the ash. (He couldn't pronounce ash, so it sounded more like, "ass.") He must have mentioned the ash about 100 times. We couldn't contain our laughter every time he said it. 

They took us to see some moulins. The guides name a new cave or moulin after the first words uttered when discovering them. This one was named the "Mother f-ing Moulin."

Part way through our 3-hour hike, Nick's crampons broke. Luckily, Marta had a kit to help fix it.

And last, our guides took us to find an ice cave! 

The cave was named, "Holy Cow Cave."

The color of blue was unreal!

One of the guides hiked up the side of the glacier with just the tips of his shoes. Nick had to try too.

We had so much fun on our hike even though it sprinkled on us most of the hike. I would do a glacier hike again (almost) any day.

Next we took a bumpy dirt road to an old DC3 plane that crashed on the beach on November 24, 1973. All of the men aboard made it. It was abandoned instead of recovered, and now makes a great photo op.

A man at our hotel informed us that there were a few sites near Vik we needed to see. One was the basalt columns that are very similar to the columns at Giant's causeway in Ireland. 

We also went to an area up high to see some puffins, but it was pouring. An old German woman asked us for a ride. We had to rearrange the backseat to be able to drive her back to her hostel. Our trunk wouldn't open from day 2 of our trip, so we had to put our luggage on the backseats. 

We pushed our luggage to the trunk, and then lifted the seat backs up. As we were putting the car together in the pouring rain, another traveler asked for a ride. He was also heading in the same direction.

We had NEVER in our lives picked up a hitchhiker, let alone 2! But once again, Iceland is very safe. The German woman was very nice. She had always wanted to travel around Iceland so she bought a ticket on a whim. She was with a group that was bussing around the country. If she wanted to get off the beaten path, she had to hitchhike. She said it was the first time in her life she'd tried it. She was really grateful for us since it was pouring rain.

The younger gentleman was from Lithuania. He didn't have any plans in Iceland other than hitchhiking around the Ring Road. He was willing to go as far as we were. We dropped him off in Vik at the gas station and headed off to dinner for some lamb burgers at Halldorskaffi. They were delicious!

Saturday, June 13th

These purple flowers were all over Iceland. They're Alaskan Lupine. They were brought to Iceland in 1945 to help add nitrogen to the soil to help other plant-life grow.  

We left Vik earlier than we had hoped so we could make our noon reservation at the Zodiac Boat Tours. I would have loved to wander around more on the black sand beaches.

The scenery from Vik north changed fairly dramatically every 10-20 minutes. 

At first, Nick and I thought the white stuff in the distance was a cloud, but it was a glacier!

We felt like we were walking on the moon! NASA actually used parts of northern Iceland to train astronauts. 

Nick thought it would be funny to pretend like he was peeing on the moon.

"One small step for man..."

I took about a thousand photos of the changing scenery...I'll try not to post them all. :)

We crossed over one of many bridges that are only one car width wide for 2-way traffic. It's always a guessing game when two cars going in opposite directions get to a bridge at the same time. When we reached the other side, we saw ice floating in the ocean!

Nick had to try and stand on one of the pieces, of course. 

He barely made it out before a wave crashed into the piece he'd been standing on.

We drove across the street to join our boat tour. They handed us funny looking onesies to stay warm. Even on a sunny day, we were grateful for them. We rode a bus, and then had to hike to our boat.

We split into 2 groups of 8. The others on our tour all spoke French.

The first 10 minutes we sped out to see the glacier. On the way back, they went much slower so we could take some photos.

Nick REALLY wanted to stand on one of the floating pieces of ice. 

While we were sitting, listening to our guide, some of the glacier fell into the water. It was SO loud.

We were a safe distance away from the glacier. The drivers can't get very close for safety reasons. 

The lowest part of Iceland is under the lagoon we were riding over. The lagoon was 260 m deep. The glacier wasn't quite as deep, but pretty close to it.  It takes 30 m of snow to make a cm of ice on a glacier. That's a lot of snow to have made such a big glacier! 

If at any point part of the glacier broke off from the bottom, it could have popped up and created a wave. I was kind of hoping we would have seen something exciting like that...but we didn't. 

Volcanic eruptions create a massive amount of ash in Iceland since they're all covered by glaciers. The ash blankets most of Iceland, including the glaciers. The thick black lines are ash layers in the glacier. You can see how many eruptions there have been in Iceland by counting the black, ash layers, like rings on a tree.  

Us in our monkey suits. 

We had a 4 hour drive ahead of us, so we grabbed some lunch and started our long drive north to Reydarfjordur. 

 We nicknamed our GPS, "caveman Jan." 

Caveman Jan, took us up a gravel road for about 16 km. It was bumpy and VERY steep. This is 5 minutes into our journey looking back down the mountain. It was much scarier than it looked.

We eventually made it back to the main road, only to be directed to ANOTHER dirt road. This time there was a warning sign that no vehicles other than SUVs should drive on the dirt road. Nick was curious, so we continued on. I would have turned around right away. 30 minutes later we found out why the road was only for SUVs. There was a 6-foot wall of snow blocking the road. We had to turn around, and drive back to the main road to get to Reydarfjordur. I have never been more thankful to be on a normal road in my life. Hair raising doesn't begin to describe it. 

By 7:30pm, we'd made it. We checked in to Taergesen B & B, dropped our bags, and went back to the check-in to grab some dinner. It looked like it was the only place open in the entire town! Nick had a pizza, and I had another lamb burger. They were so good!

We were stuffed (once again), so we went for a walk around town. The sun was still out at 9:30, but it was definitely getting cold.

Iceland was having a late spring in mid-June.

The hike we'd taken was supposed to lead to waterfalls. We must have taken a wrong turn or hadn't walked far enough because we never found them. We still got some breath-taking views.

Sunday, June 14th

It was Nick's 30th birthday today! For his birthday, we actually slept in on vacation! Haha! I usually like to get up and get moving so we don't miss anything! We checked out of our room by noon and started our drive to Lake Myvatn.

First, we stopped at a gas station and grocery store. I'm always entertained by foreign grocery stores. 

There were chocolate licorice candies in every store that sold food. We weren't brave enough to try it, but we bought some for Nick's twin sister, Emilie, at her request. 

This is the glorious Skyr yogurt. It's so delicious! I'm hoping they'll export it to the States at some point.

While Nick was filling up with gas, I grabbed a sandwich from Subway. Go ahead and try and pronounce the sandwich names. I dare you. :) 

Gas is a WHOLE other issue in Iceland. Many gas stations require you to use a credit card, then want a pin number. We supposedly got a discount for shopping at the Orkan gas stations because we had a Sadcar. Every time we'd fill up we'd have an extra charge of about $200. Scary! They were all taken off from our bank statements later. We're still not sure why that would happen.

We saw some boiling mud on our drive to Lake Myvatn, so we pulled off.

This area was called Hvervir. The steam vent behind me in the picture was deafening. I didn't stand there too long because of the scary sound and the overwhelming smell of sulfur. 

I found a smell that Nick can't stand. I can somewhat tolerate the smell of sulphur. It literally makes Nick gag. Haha! You'd think boys and their smells would be able to tolerate sulphur better than women.

Our car, Happy, got some graffiti. The back window reads, "Lord of the Ring Road." Haha! Nick wanted to draw a scary face. 

The graffiti only lasted about 24 hours, since it rains so often in Iceland.

We finally arrived to Lake Myvatn. We were staying one night at Vogafjos Guesthouse. They had a dairy farm right next to the check-in and restaurant. We had to pet every cow they had. :)

They also had a herd of sheep outside. No matter what we did, we couldn't get any of the sheep to come to us.

We had a bike ride scheduled with Bike and Ride at 6pm. We met up with our guide and once again we were the only two on the tour. We rode through the back streets of Reykjalid. The town has the population of 500 people. 

We rode to some steam vents, and got off our bikes. Our guide opened a door in the ground. It was the inside of a washing machine stuck into the ground. People used these as naturally heated ovens to cook bread in. The bread is called, gesyser bread, and it's delicious!!

She took us over to some old caves created from old lava flows. 

Last we ended with a dip at the baths nearby at Myvatn Nature Baths.

I couldn't help but mimic The Little Mermaid when I was surrounded my beautiful water and had a rock to perch on. 

Nick did his impression of a beached whale. :)

After our visit at the nature baths, we got a taste of geyser bread with smoked trout. It was delicious! It was better than candy!

We rode back down the mountain to the Lake. 

This area is on a fault line. About 40 years ago a drilling site was built. It's said that the drilling actually caused the nearby volcano to erupt. Luckily, it erupted away from the nearby towns.  

We were starving by 9:30pm. (yes, it was definitely still light outside.) 

The employees at the restaurant surprised Nick by all wishing him a Happy Birthday. The meal was amazing. The first dish they brought out was almost completely grown on the farm or made locally. I don't even want to think how much that meal was. Oy! Iceland was so expensive! But it was a fun celebration for Nick.

Monday, June 15th

The next morning we hit the road early after a somewhat frustrating breakfast. Our hotel was known for their delicious breakfast buffet. I only wanted geysir bread and a cappuccino. They ran out of geyser bread, and they didn't want to turn on their cappuccino machine because it would take too long. The only two things I wanted and they didn't have them! Boo. We still loved our stay there. 

We drove 5 minutes down the road to Dimmuborgir. There are some pretty sweet rock formations that formed because of lava flow going over a lake. 

This was our favorite rock formation.

As we left the lake, we couldn't help but notice the thousands if not millions of flies. They looked like mosquitos, which would have been terrifying if they actually had been. 

I was too afraid to open the car window because there were so many flies! This was their breeding season we learned. And the Lake is actually named after these flies. Ew.

An hour into our drive, we stopped for a cappucino at a rest stop and to see the Godafoss waterfall. 

Apparently, there were some Norse gods thrown into the waterfall after Christianity became the official religion in Iceland. That's how it got its name - Godafoss.

Just another beautiful view in Iceland.

We stopped for 5 minutes in Akureyri for a few photo ops. 

I love their "leaving town" signs.

We tried SO hard to get some of the horses to come to us.

They have singing horses in Iceland. :)

After a 6 hour drive, we made it back to Reykjavik. It was foggy and cold. Boo. We'd wanted to do some whale watching there, but we decided against it since we felt cold and broke. Haha.

We did go out for some of the cheaper food we could find in Iceland. We tried puffin that night. It was delicious. Again, we felt pretty bad eating it. For our second course, we had shrimp and salmon tartar in a hotdog bun. They were delicious! 

We went back by the harbor to check out the boats that had been damaged earlier in the week. You can see part of the boat near us looks like it's broken at the front of the boat. 

We stepped back inside the Harpa Music Hall to get warm. We were treated to a concert from 12 year olds that sounded like they were professional musicians. 

And our last walk outside, we were treated to some free advertisement in Iceland. Not a bad idea! Haha!

Tuesday, June 16th

That morning we took advantage of some free wifi in our hotel. It felt so good to just veg out for a bit, before our flight back to Milan.

We'd had an amazing last big trip in Europe! There are so many things I still want to do and see in Iceland. I wonder when I'll ever be back. Hopefully, it won't be as expensive next time. ;)