Vacation and elopement escape to Iceland
Our flight to Iceland was through Dallas – which directionally didn’t make much sense, but that’s where the airline flew. Since we had a layover, and weren’t sure if we were going to get dinner on the plane, we opted for some Tex-Mex food as our last American meal. We luckily got meals on the plane – dinner and breakfast, but the flight was overnight, the seats were small and we had a large man in our row. We landed tired in Reykjavik around 9am and needed to move quickly to make our reservations at the Blue Lagoon. We got our luggage and breezed through Customs – there really wasn’t anything… We found a taxi and relaxed on the drive – and had a nice surprise from the driver when he told us the taxi had wifi!
At the Blue Lagoon, we had opted for the package where we get a robe, flip flops AND a towel, and headed up to the changing rooms. I had read online that they are very strict about showering nude before entering the lagoon – so that was an interesting experience. Everyone in the lagoon was either in a plain white robe or a bathing suit – so finding each other was an experience. Once we were showered and ready, we got into the 100 degree water and checked things out. . We met some folks that asked us to take their picture – so they took ours as well – on their phone. They thought they’d find us again, but in a sea of white robed people – it didn’t happen. In the pool, there was a walk up bar and a walk up mask booth. Everyone was able to get as many silica masks as they wanted. It was this white gloopy substance that harded and got chunky as it dried on your face – therefore it looked like the pool was full of white walkers. We got both a silica mask and a algae mask. We made sure to try out the saunas, the waterfall and take some fun photos on the rocks.
Once we were lagoon-ed out, we took a bus into Reykjavik – which also had wifi! It dropped us off a few blocks from our hotel. After we’d checked in, we quickly set back out to check out the city of Reykjavik. We had a hot dog at Baejarins Beztu Pylsur – served the Icelandic way, went into Harpa Concert hall, built a cairn beside Harpa, found a Viking beer happy hour special and rode the elevator to the top of the tallest church – Hallgrímskirkja. After all the adventuring, it took a bit of time to find a reasonable dinner – but luckily we found a $20 fish & chips place.
On the second day, we had booked a bus tour of the Snæfellsnes peninsula – a name we had no idea how to pronounce. So when we were boarding the bus, we had to ask the tour guide to repeat it – because it was not what I was expecting. This bus also had wifi! We headed north out of Reykjavik towards the peninsula and found ourselves in a tunnel under a fjord. The Hvalfjörður tunnel was completed in 1998 and reaches a depth of 541 ft under sea level, when we timed it – it was around 6.5 minutes end to end! The first stop of the tour was at Ytri-Tunga, a small dirt parking lot where a seal colony likes to hang out because of the rocks. The tide was way out when we got there, so the seals were super far away and it was more fun to just play on the rocks. The next stop was a walk at Aranstapi – an old trading post that has alot of columnar basalt and artic terns. We walked along the coast from Arnarstapi to Hellnar. We stopped at a small cafe in Hellnar for lunch. We got meatballs and a sandwich. I’m not really sure what type of meat was in the meatballs, but we were glad we got near the front of the line – especially when another tour bus showed up a few minutes after ours. We ate quickly and walked around the area outside the cafe. The next stop on the bus was a quick view of some rock spires off the coast. Then, we stopped at a lava tube cave. The cave was somewhat different than the other caves we’ve been in, they’re formed differently than most caves because lava created this – not water. There weren’t your typical cave stalagmite and stalactites, but there were formations that somewhat looked like them. This lava tube had a claim to fame – in 1864 Jule Verne wrote the classic science fiction novel about the journey to the center of the Earth that started from the Icelandic volcano Snæfellsjökull – which was the volcano that we were near. We descended down 35m under the surface and we turned off all lights – to experience complete darkness. After the cave, we headed to a black pebble beach where we spent some time watching the pebbles jump as the waves came in. Now on the way back, we stopped at a roadside pull off near
Kirkjufell to take photos of the mountain – which is supposedly the most photographed in the country.
During the bus ride back, we found a coupon for a tapas restaurant and decided that it looked like a great place for dinner. We were each able to get a different tasting menu – so all in all, we had 12 different types of animal. Puffin, whale, tuna, quail, beef, scallop, lamb, arctic char, ling, lobster, 11, 12. some sort of ham ? pancetta thing?, shrimp?
Tuesday, we weren’t sure anything was going to happen until a makeup artist showed up at our hotel – so Mike took that as his cue to leave and visit the Phallological Museum. All other details of this day are on the other blog post.
Wednesday morning, we used Iceland public transportation to pick up our van, our ride & home for the rest of the trip. We had to walk through murda-alley, a tunnel under the road, on our walk from the bus to the van shop. Once in the van, we found a store that had groceries, stocked up and hit the road to the Golden Circle. We stopped first at Pingvellir, a national park and also site of the first parliament in Iceland. We hiked back to Oxofoss waterfall which leads into a river that flows between the rift between the continental plates. The lake there has species of fish that aren’t normally found in lakes – but were landlocked many many years ago. Bruarfoss was the next waterfall. It isn’t on many maps and doesn’t have real signs, but we found some posts on the internet to follow and found it – and a bug hatch. It was a very pretty blue, but the amount of bugs were impressive too. From Bruarfoss, we drove past some great vistas of mountains and glaciers to Gullfoss, which means golden waterfall. At one point, people wanted to harness the power of the waterfall for electricity but someone threatened to jump off the waterfall if that happened, some court cases occurred, the power station was never built and now the government protects the waterfall. After Gullfoss, we went to Geysir which has “stinky puddles” and geysers. Strokkur spouts 100ft in the air every few minutes. There was another geyser there which people tried to make erupt using soap and now it doesn’t erupt nearly as much. We had our first lunch in the van at Geyser. Leaving the Golden Circle area, we stopped at Kerid Crater. Bjork had a concert at the bottom of the crater once on a raft but its not great acoustics. We ate dinner in Sellfoss at a pizza place then drove onto Seljalandsfoss. At this point it was 9pm but not dark, so we just decided to leave the van where we parked and stay for the night. Seljalandsfoss is a waterfall where you can walk behind and around it.
On our second day with the van, we headed to a water fall near on the same cliff line as Seljalandsfoss called Gljúfrabúi (canyon dweller). This was back in a canyon and there were some fallen boulders which legend was were put there by trolls. After Gljúfrabúi, we headed to yet another waterfall, Skógafoss. It was quite busy – even early in the morning so we hiked up to the top and followed the stream back further up the canyon. There were sheep (of course) and more waterfalls further back. The next stop was – another waterfall. This one was more off the beaten path – you parked at the Skógar museum, and climbed over a fence to follow a grassy trail back to Kvernufoss. There were only 3 other people at this waterfall. We watched some harlequin ducks fly up the creek and float back down, fly up the creek and float back down. Now that it was lunchtime, we stopped at a food truck for their speciality – fish and chips. They were delicious and worth the wait. All waterfall-ed out, we decided to walk back to the Sólheimajökull glacier. It had receded quite alot but was still neat to see. We kept on driving down the ring road – passing horses and sheep and more horses and more sheep.
Our next stop was Dyrhólaey – a peninsula with a lighthouse and cliffs – and what we learned, a very steep road up to the top. We took some photos here – then headed into town. But first, we picked up some Russian hitchhikers who had been trying for a ride since we went up to the lighthouse. They were just trying to make it to the next town, Vik, which wasn’t far away, so we threw them in the back of the van and they gave us some chocolate! Next stop was Fjaðrárgljúfur, a canyon which looked like it wasn’t real. We hiked back it to see more sheep. At this point, we felt that we should put some gas in the van – so we found one of a the few gas stations in Klauster. Gas wasn’t cheap – so it was $100+. Continuing on the ring road, we found a random roadside waterfall then an abandoned turf farm that had been farmed since tehe 500-600s up until 2008 or so. Once we left the turf far, we entered into the sandar – a huge glacial outwash plain that is also described as “soul-crushingly flat”. It was the last part of the ring road to be completed and its easy to see why. In the sandar, there were some awesome views of the glaciers that caused all this mess. And then we got out – to the glacial lagoon of Jokulsarlon. The glacier used to end at the Atlantic ocean, but now its a lake. In order to let the ring road cross in this area, a coffer dam was built to divert icebergs from the bridge and make sure they’re small enough to pass through. We saw seals and birds and all sorts of iceberg movement. It was also the perfect place for a photo shoot in all of our finery. We had one more stop for the day – and buckled down and drove a bit further to Hofn – the furthest we would make it on the ring road.
Our last full day in Iceland, we started by visiting an old Viking village – that was really just an old movie set, but set on the land of an old Icelandic farm. Our entry fee to the viking village also allowed us to head out to the coast and get really awesome views of the mountains. A final quick stop at the diamond beach before arriving back to skafafell nationals park. Here we when to Svertifoss waterfall hike, walked along the alpine edge, and then to glacier. For refueling ourselves we stopped at Vik for dinner, walked on the black sand beach almost got caught in some sneaky waves
Random recliner on beach. Last stop for the night was at Grindavic for camping. Here we saw sunset for over 1hr.
