Iceland

Last weekend we met up with my sister and brother-in-law in Iceland. We rented a car and explored a small part of the southwest part of this beautiful country. We went to Seljalandsfoss waterfall which drops 200 ft over the cliffs of the former coastline. Warren and Zach walked the path behind the waterfall but it was so windy they got drenched. 

Reykjavik was much smaller than I was expecting. There were loads of shops but everything was really expensive. Needless to say, I only bought a pair of socks as my souvenir this trip. 

We had hot dogs "ein með öllu" (with everything) for dinner. I'm not sure exactly what was on it but there were raw and crunchy onions at the bottom of the bun and the sauces were mustard and something that tasted kind of like apple butter. 

We were always entertained by how the Garmin pronounced the street names as we were driving. 

The Skogafoss waterfall is one of the biggest waterfalls in Iceland. It consistently produces a single or double rainbow on sunny days due to the amount of spray from the waterfall. We hiked to the top to see the view and the double rainbow. 

According to legend, the first Viking settler in the area buried a treasure in the cave behind the waterfall. The legend continues that locals found the chest years later, but were only able to get the ring of the chest before it disappeared. The ring was given to a local church and the old church door ring is now in a museum. 

The host of our bed and breakfast in Hella told us that Icelanders have such good English skills because they don't overdub movies there. So if a child can't read yet they have to learn English in order to understand the plot. 

The landscape of Iceland was fascinating and so different everywhere we went. No wonder so many post apocalyptic movies like Oblivion, Prometheus, and Interstellar are filmed here.

Approximately 11% of Iceland is covered by glaciers. We saw one of the smaller glaciers, Eyjafjalla Glacier, which is actually an ice cap over a volcano. It is the large white mass just under the sky in the photo below. The volcano most recently erupted in 2010 and caused loads of problems for the small village nearby.

We also went to Reynisfjara beach, which is a beautiful black sand beach under Reynisfjall mountain. We walked to the caves by the beach and also along the upper cliff edge. The views from the cliff were amazing and the black sand was looked so unique compared to beaches I've seen before. 

We spent a night on the island, Heimaey, and were excited to see some puffins. Heimaey is home to around eight million puffins every summer but we had a really difficult time finding them. We finally found some along this one cliff and it was so worth all the effort. 

We still didn't see as many puffins as we were expecting. The island typically has eight million puffins during the summer but we saw less than thirty total at two different locations. 

Strokkur is one of Iceland's most famous geysers. It erupts almost every five minutes and goes 50 feet high. We watched it at least three times and never got tired of it. The last time we watched it the wind blew the water toward us and a couple people near us got soaked. 

We went to the outdoor part of the Skogar Folk Museum, with different Icelandic homes and furniture from the past 70 years. The buildings are from all over the country but were moved to the museum to show different types of Icelandic housing.

They also had a school and church available to tour. All of the buildings were much smaller than I expected with very low ceilings.  

The Berenstein Bears books were some of my favourite books as a child so it was really fun to see them written in Icelandic. We were even able to recognise some of the titles since the covers were the same. 

The Blue Lagoon is a geothermal spa and is one of the most visited attractions in Iceland. Four of us didn't bring swimsuits so we didn't actually bathe in the Blue Lagoon (plus, I hate water) but we did still get to see it. 

It formed in 1976 from the waste water of the geothermal power plant that had just been built there. People started bathing in it in 1981 after reports of healing powers came out. It opened in 1992 to the public but it is quite expensive to bathe there now. 

The Gullfoss waterfall is one of the largest in Europe. A man called Tómas Tómasson owned the waterfall and considered selling it to foreign investors to build a hydroelectric powerplant, which would have changed and destroyed the waterfall. 

His daughter, Sigríður, lived at a nearby farm and loved Gullfoss. She threatened to kill herself by jumping into the river. To make her threat more believable she walked barefoot from Gullfoss to Reykjavik as a protest march. People believed her and the powerplant was never built.

The hardest thing to get used to in Iceland was the constant sunlight. The photo below was taken close to midnight. We woke up almost every day at 5am because the sun was so bright in our room, even with curtains. 

Iceland was beautiful and a big change from our typical city trips. All of the sites were incredible and like nothing I'd ever seen before.