Throwback Thursday To Iceland
It has been five years now since my first trip to a foreign country that actually required me to leave my continent, and fly over the ocean. I have wanted to visit Great Britain most of my life. I always had this weird connection to England, like I was supposed to be born there or something like that. My desire to go there was getting to a point I could no longer put off nor restrain it. I know by now you are wondering why I am talking about England when I titled this blog post “Throwback Thursday to Iceland.” Well, I began planning our trip to England. Since we were flying all that way, I couldn’t just make a stop in England and go home. Since my grandfather had passed away months prior, he was Scottish and it was only a few hours to go up into Edinburgh, I had to add Scotland to our itinerary. I also have French in my genes and taking the Chunnel into Paris also seemed like a must. A friend had recommended Icelandair for their low fares after she was traveling between Colorado and Paris as much as she could. It always has a stop in Iceland. Iceland was not a place many people I knew were exactly chomping at the bit to get to. For this reason, I knew we needed to make a stop there. I watched video after video about Iceland and things to do. I even loaded a live camera in Reykjavik on my computer and checked in on it constantly to see what the weather looked like. I was getting very excited for Iceland too.
Boarding the flight came with some anxiety for the complete unknown. I remember going through rounds of pure excitement, to being anxious. Our flight left around 5pm from Denver and was flying straight through to Keflavik, Iceland. What is around a 6 and a half hour flight arrived into Iceland around 6am local time. While we were flying over Greenland, the sun had just started to breach the horizon. It was a beautiful sight. My excitement had kept me from sleeping during the overall smooth and quiet flight.
Once we landed in Iceland, we made our way through the clean and pleasant airport to the car rental desk. We rented the GPS with the car because data through cell phones was very expensive and it was cheaper to do that than to buy one and update the maps for Iceland. “You’re getting a brand new car” the agent told us as he handed us the keys. We found the car and it had the new car smell. I took pictures of it just to document every bit of the trip I could. We made our way to the hotel in Reykjavik just to see if we could get an early check-in.
Unfortunately, we were not able to check in early. We were hungry, and we were getting tired, and wanted to take a shower. We had tickets for the Blue Lagoon and decided to start making our way there. We stopped at a bakery not far from the hotel for something to snack on before we would go find a full meal. When we were leaving the bakery, we pulled out onto the empty street, headed towards the Blue Lagoon. A black car quickly approached the back of us as we were going the speed limit on the side streets. We didn’t have anywhere to pull over to allow her to pass. We entered a roundabout and remained in the right lane as the black car took the left lane through the roundabout. Our lane kept going around so we were not aware that we had to turn right out of the roundabout in that lane. The black car was still going pretty fast but went to exit from the left lane and smashed into the side of us. We pulled over and the woman driving the black car pulled over. She talked to us as though this was no big deal. The damage was enough. “So much for the brand new car” I thought to myself. We waited for the Icelandic Police to show up. The police were extremely nice. The woman was nice and pleasant to deal with. After the police dismissed us, all I could think was “we are only an hour into our European vacation and already starting out like this,” not to mention being worried about how much this would cost us to fix. We knew it was definitely going to cost us $500 for a deductible through the insurance we had on the rental car. We were in the wrong after all, so we would be liable for our own damages to our vehicle.
We left Reykjavik bound and determined to try to have a good vacation and not think about how much money this accident would cost us. Halfway to the Blue Lagoon, we both became extremely tired as the no-sleep, and travel, and morning’s events caught up to us. We could not enjoy our trip like this. We found a pull over and took it. We fell asleep in the car for about an hour. It was just enough. We woke up feeling much better and much more ready to go out and explore.
The GPS was very cool because it would come on as you passed certain spots and tell you facts about the spot you would be driving by because it recognizes when you’re on the Golden Circle (I did have locations mapped, so it wasn’t just at random that the GPS would come on and tell us these facts). A lot of my pictures from Iceland were from the car, unfortunately. Iceland was not like any place I had seen to that point in my life. There are not many trees to be seen. The land is quite a lot of volcanic aftermath. There is black sand on most of the beaches, the ground is chunky in places, it’s just…different. Despite the volcanic aftermath in so much of the country, it is still very clean feeling. We rarely saw another car on the road as we drove. It was end of April while we were there. There would not be any Aurora Borealis for us to see at that time because the daylight lasts well into the night there starting in April and from May 21st to July 30th, it does not get dark. Around the Summer Solstice, the sun can be visible for a full 24 hours in North Iceland.
It was chilly in April but very comparable to Colorado weather at that time. The wind was really the thing that made it cooler at that time. I did wear my winter coat for part of the trip. The Blue Lagoon is outside but the water is warm enough that you don’t really get cold. It has swim-up mud mask stations. Upon entering, watch your step because parts of the ground under the water that you cannot see, are rough, and I stubbed my toe and it hurt for a little bit.
Much of Iceland can have a sulfuric smell. Even our shower smelled like sulfur. I have been told that the higher-end hotels actually filter the water so that you don’t have that smell in your shower or as you brush your teeth. It is certainly off-putting at first and can be hard to convince yourself to brush your teeth with rotten egg-smelling water, or even to feel clean after a shower that smells like rotten eggs.
I did not bring my shampoo, conditioner, or body wash into the Blue Lagoon since I was not sure where I would be able to store it. After we were done “swimming,” I wished I had though. I rinsed off afterwards but felt kind of gross still and we were doing the bulk of our driving that day. We grabbed a quick lunch there and headed out towards Gullfoss (Golden Falls).
As we drove the Golden Circle to Gullfoss, our GPS chimed in with a lot of facts about Iceland. We saw lots of cool land in Iceland. I had seen a waterfall that I wanted to check out and from what I could tell, the entrance was before you got to Gullfoss. We found a place to park and hiked for a while towards what I thought was where the waterfall was. We never did find it. We hiked back down to the car and drove back towards Gullfoss.
Gullfoss is really nothing short of amazing. It is such a massive waterfall and the land around it is beautiful. We tried to take in as much as we could. It is definitely hard to get just the right photograph of Gullfoss but I got some I was satisfied with. It had not yet turned green around it but it was still beautiful.
We departed Gullfoss, headed next towards Geysir. A smaller area that has multiple geysers. One that regularly erupts- Strokkur. We walked around a bit and caught a couple eruptions. Strokkur erupts every 6-10 minutes.
While we didn’t get to do nearly enough in Iceland, and a lot of my bucket list still contains plenty of items in Iceland, we got a good taste of it that day. Everywhere we went, the people were very friendly. I would love to visit in the summer time and see it all green, but I would also love to visit once the Aurora Borealis comes out to play.
We headed back to our hotel to get checked in and settled in for our flight out in the morning. We had taken our time everywhere and thought it was getting late. It really wasn’t getting that late but we wanted to find a restaurant close to the hotel to enjoy some dinner.
The next morning before we checked out of our hotel, we walked around the city of Reykjavik. We strolled through the city and took in all of the sights. We found an amazing restaurant called Café Paris that served a full breakfast with some of the best fruit I have ever tasted, and “American Pancakes.” This place is still there so I highly recommend checking it out. It is truly some of the best food I have ever had.
After walking around the city and checking out of our hotel, the time had come to turn the car in and actually speak to the rental company about the accident after calling and not getting through. We were both terrified about the claims process. The man at the desk had it appraised right then and there and they told us how much it was going to be to fix it. It ended up being $150 American dollars and we decided we wouldn’t go through insurance and to just pay that out of our pockets. What a relief! We got on the shuttle and headed to the airport to fly out to London. A trip that started with me being most excited about London was already going and I had fallen in love with Iceland, kind of unexpectedly.
Do: rent a car with the GPS so that you can hear the facts as you drive, study road laws ahead of time, expect it to be more expensive than you’d think, bring Icelandic Krona just in case you need it (possibly when refueling where there are attendants), bring a range of clothing including a jacket (type of jacket depends on time of year), a tour through an off-road company since your rental vehicle is not permitted everywhere in Iceland, expect Aurora Borealis from October into March - but don’t sleep through it, expect sulfur smell in a lot of places, be polite and friendly to locals, map fueling stations ahead of time on your route because they can sometimes go a while before your next one, tip when applicable but most bills already include gratuity, bring an underwater camera for the blue lagoon or snorkeling, make reservations in advance especially at nice restaurants
Don’t: Litter, smuggle any animals in to the country for any reason - Iceland is very strict about this and will euthanize animals smuggled in, block roads to look at the scenery, hike glaciers and other dangerous terrain without a guide, say “yuck” or any variation of the word out loud or be rude about their cuisine. You can politely decline without being insulting, drive off-road with your rental vehicle, trespass on private property - it will be clearly marked
Packing List: Jacket (type depending on time of year), waterproof camera there are disposable ones you can buy or if you have a good camera that’s water proof too, Icelandic Krona, passport not within 6 months of expiring, a camera you like for regular shots, download google translate just in case you find yourself in a place with Icelandic signs and not any English, appropriate hiking gear if you are hiking, Types C and F power adapters
Driving in Iceland
Lonely Church in Iceland
Geysir, Iceland
Strokkur Geysir in Iceland
Geysir, Iceland
By the Blue Lagoon in Iceland
Gullfoss (Golden Falls) in Iceland
Harpa Concert Hall in Reykjavik, Iceland
At the Blue Lagoon - The Sun Was Really Bright
