Day 1

(Current Time & Place: 12/29/16, 10am, relaxing after a delicious breakfast at our second B&B)

Day 1 - 12/27/16

Mike:

Taking Icelandair was a great idea.  The plane was seven row across with two aisles for a two/three/two seat configuration, which means we got an aisle seat for Jon and a window for me (perfect).   The seats were comfortable and each seat had its own TV and USB power source.   I should have slept since our plane departed at 8:30pm and we were arriving at 6:30am but I got lost in a book and read the entire trip.  Jon dozed for a while and then proceeded to watch the new ghostbusters movie.  I'll have to watch it on the way back because Jon was dying of laughter.  Anyway the trip was uneventful.  Towards the end we received the Siminn SIM card I had ordered from the airline before the trip ($24).  We installed it in Jon's iPhone, and we now had a local Icelandic number, with 100 minutes, texts and 1GB of data....  A way better deal then what AT&T or Verizon had been offering!

Anyway, the landing was smooth and Jon exclaimed, "We're in Iceland!"   We disembarked and were through immigration in no time.  Of course the path to baggage claim took us right through the massive duty free shop which was reminiscent of the ferry we took a few years back between Stockholm and Helsinki.   We meet up with Lauren and Bryan, who flew in from JFK, and went to pick up our car rental, a Suzuki Grand Vitara with snow studs from Lotus car rental.  It was a bit of a struggle to get all of our suitcases to fit in the truck, plus the wind was ridiculous.  The max wind speed for the day was 30 meters/second (67mph), so we were warned to be careful when opening the car doors to avoid damaging the vehicle.

It was a good 40 minute drive from the airport to downtown Reykjavik, through wind and darkness, but we finally arrived and I was more then ready for some breakfast!!  We parked in downtime but we were having a difficult time trying to use the parking meter.  Luckily a traffic officer was in proximity, writing up a ticket for a car parked illegally in a handicap spot, so we got a run down on using the meter, plus a breakfast recommendation to the Gray Cat!   (Yelp doesn't work in Iceland 😑).

Our stomachs full with eggs, potatoes, and pancakes (I know, a very traditional Icelandic start, right?), we were off to our first destination, the giant church Hallgrimskirkja.  I know I mentioned before that it was very windy, but at this point it was also raining.  So rain and strong winds make it very interesting to take pictures but our two photographers stayed strong (Jon and Lauren).....  We ran into the church to see the inside and hope for a break in the weather.

Jon: 

To emphasize how bad the wind was, we had bouts where we could take photos, and then when the wind gusted it literally moved us so much we could not take a photo without having it be horribly out of focus. Add that to the blowing water... An interesting experience. The inside of the church was really interesting as well. It was constructed in the style of the massive cathedrals on the mainland, but as this was made of solid concrete it came a bit later in time than those that it was built to resemble. 

While there was a pulpit in the Catholic style, the altar was much more Protestant in style (probably Lutheran, all of Scandinavia seems to be Lutheran), and of course there was a massive organ above the main entrance.

We took a bunch of pictures inside and then braved the outdoors again to capture some more pictures between gusts of wind and bouts of rain, but eventually we were cold enough that we sought refuge in the neighboring Loki cafe. We didn't order anything, just stayed indoors long enough to warm up and then went outside to take photos of the opposite side of the church before loading up into the car to begin the drive towards our first hotel- guesthouse Dalbaer 3. The wind was pretty amazing, it jerked the car around a bit as we traveled through the countryside. The road was nice, one lane each side, and was almost always raised over the surrounding land, making us a bit more susceptible to the wind. 

To take advantage of the remaining daylight, we drove to Gulfoss, or the "Niagara of Iceland."  Unfortunately, at this point Iceland decided to show us how much fun 20+ meters per second is with sleet- so fun times were had loading/unloading cameras. Regardless, Gulfoss is gorgeous. There are two levels of waterfalls, and not a whole lot can be said beyond that; the landscape is simply stunning. 

There were lots of paths about the area, and we tried to take advantage of most of them. One that went up to the falls was wisely closed, as it looked like an ice trap, but we were still able to get some close pictures.  Then we took a set of wooden stairs to the upper vantage point.  Lauren and Bryan decided to go one cliff closer to the falls while Mike and I scoped out the hotel/gift shop/restaurant/bathrooms, because about that time the wind and sleet decided to rejoin us. To give perspective, it seemed like it was impossible to fall into the wind; that is the wind kept us up, and even helped us along if we were walking with it. 

We hit a bit of a snafu here. While we agreed to meet at the gift shop, Lauren and Bryan decided to be helpful and move the car from the lower vantage point up to the gift shop. We missed that memo and walked around looking for them. Eventually we ran into each other and loaded up to head to the hotel. All's well that ends well. 

Our hotel was in Fludir, 20 minutes south of Gulfoss!  One of the many nice things about Iceland is that they have a central website that gives updates on current road and traffic conditions throughout the country: www.road.is  Armed with this, we knew our route was "slippery" with areas with "spots of ice", which was an amusing heads up. A couple of hair pin turns, bridges, and roads built on top of man-made hills and we arrived at Fludir. The first thing we noticed was the light pollution from buildings (in this case greenhouses).  At this point the sun was setting, around 4pm, and the buildings were really noticeable against the backdrop of twilight.

Mike:

We checked into Guesthouse Dalbear III and headed over to one of the two places that offered dinner in Fludir, Guesthouse Grund.  Mostly the menu was pizzas, burgers and sandwiches, so it was almost like being in the US, however the etiquette is different.  When you walk into a restaurant, you seat yourselves rather then waiting to be seated.  Also, when you're done you go up to the counter to pay the bill.  Anyway, I ordered lamb chops which came with veggies and a salad while everyone else did burgers and pizza.  I made the right choice; the lamb was excellent.

Back at the B&B I connected to the wifi and received an email before going to bed from Arctic Adventures.  "Due to severe weather forecast for tomorrow we have made the decision to cancel all our snorkeling departures."  Bummer!!!  I was really looking forward to snorkeling.  A brief emergency planning meeting was held, and we made a new game plan for tomorrow.  We were heading north.

Day 2

(Current Time & Place: 12/30/16, 6:30pm, waiting to head to dinner at B&B number 4)

Day 2 - 12/28/16

Mike:

Breakfast was buffet style and very reminiscent of other Scandinavian countries; the spread was breads and cold cuts, plus hard boiled eggs and fruit.  After breakfast we took our time getting up and out.  It looked pretty miserable outside; high winds, sleet and snow.  The storm eventually broke though, and we all jumped in the car.

The road was deserted (not that there were many cars once we left Reykjavik yesterday) which was great since we periodically stopped to capture some very pretty views.

Mostly we seemed to be staying in front of the storm, and we made it to Geysir without difficulty.  Now Geysir is most definitely a tourist attraction; with a parking lot full of cars and tour buses it reminded me of a highway rest stop.

Surprisingly there wasn't any fee to go out and watch the geysers erupt.  We watched one that erupts every 8-10 minutes for a while to capture some pictures....


It's so fast that if you blinked you'll miss it, so it took a few tries to get good pictures.  

To reward us for our patience, it began to hale and sleet with gale-force winds.  So we ran as best we could in the conditions to the nearby restaurant at the stop.  Lunch was a little disappointing as the rest stop was mostly American style fast food (burgers, sandwiches, etc.).  They did have an Icelandic soup which I got.  It sort of reminded me of Campbell's chicken with rice soup, except instead of chicken the meat was lamb.  Everyone else thought the broth had a mutton flavor but to me it could have been chicken broth.

After lunch I found a couple of post cards in the souvenir shop and then it was time to drive to Hella, with of course many more required picture stops.  I'm not sure if it has been mentioned yet but island is a beautiful country, at least when there is a break in the weather.

Our hostess at Guesthouse Nonni was amazing!  We stopped in to drop off our luggage and she recommended we go swimming in an outdoor heated pool!  I was a bit skeptical at first...  it was snowing out after all, but we bundled up and took a walk through the town over to what we later found out is the elementary school connected to the gym and pool.  The gentleman at the front desk warned us that the pool was a little cooler then normal.  Typically it is between 28-30°C, but the pool was only 23°C today.  Luckily there was also four hot tubs, varying from 35 to 41°C.  We of course tested all of them out, walking quickly between them to stay out of the very cold wind.  Finally we got in the pool for a bit which felt great after our long hot soak.  Then it was time for the sauna, a shower and dinner.

Similar to Fludir, there were two restaurants to choose from (or at least two that our hostess mentioned), Stracta hotel hella and restaurant kanslarinn.  We went to the restaurant and Jon and I ordered horse steaks.  I'm sorry to say this but they were delicious...  not gamey like I'd expected.   The flavor was much closer to beef then deer.

We headed back to our guesthouse and talked about playing some games but ended up taking a "quick nap" and consequently didn't get up til the next morning.  Oh well.... We were all pretty worn out.

Day 3

(Current Time & Place: 1/3/17, 5:15pm GMT, waiting for our plane to take off)

Day 3 - 12/29/16

Mike:

I've already said this but our hostess, Björg, at Guesthouse Nonni is amazing.  She baked me a loaf of gluten free bread for breakfast.  Everyone else was equally spoiled too.  She made seven different loafs of bread, including a traditional Icelandic bread that would normally be cooked for 24 hours by a hot spring, along with sweet waffles.  There was smoked lamb, pickled herring, fish paste, and two jams.  I'm not a fan of the herring, but the fish paste was actually good.

Jon:
We engorged ourselves along with four Germans, Björg's spread was absolutely delicious. All of us got at least two plates, and at one point one of the German women we were eating with accidentally reverted to English and said something along the lines of "I'm so full, I can't move."   She seemed rather embarrassed that she spoke in English, but we shared that sentiment. After breakfast, Björg sat with us and talked about different places to stop on our way to Vik, the next closest major town, where incidentally she was from.  She gave us a map of the area and we planned out the stops we would take that day on our way to the largest glacier in Iceland, Vatnajökull.

Unfortunately, as we left Björg and Guesthouse Nonni, it began to rain again.  So we didn't stop while we were driving until we arrived at our first destination for the day- Seljalandsfoss.  We loaded up water resistant gear and went out to look at this pretty waterfall ("foss" means "falls", and actually I believe that the whole thing means jutting waterfall, but I digress).

The waterfall was very pretty, although the extra wind made it very wet. Lauren and Bryan did not have full water resistant gear (only jeans while we also had ski pants), so they waited by the falls while Mike and I walked behind the falls.

It was fun and gorgeous, but it was also very wet.

We then spent some time walking along the cliffs to see a second waterfall in the area at Björg's recommendation.


This one required some climbing along wet and muddy rocks to be able to see the falls, so only Bryan climbed the topmost rock formation, but otherwise it was pretty neat to see everything.

After we got our fill of the waterfalls we walked back to the car soaked. So we used the dashboard to hold our wet clothes and dry them, and since it continued to alternate between gentle rain and a soaking rain we decided to skip the next waterfall (sad face). We also decided to skip out on the next destination, which involved 2-4km of hiking to get to a plane crash site that was supposed to be really interesting to look at... The weather simply wasn't cooperating, and we still had 3+ hours of driving to do in a full car. Doing this while wet did not sound like fun.

Finally we had a nice break from the rain when we made it to Reynisdrangar, or the black beach of Iceland.


In truth, Björg told us that almost all of the beaches in Iceland were black, but this particular stop was a nice tourist spot because the ocean was accessible and there are some interesting rock formations and caves nearby. No one was in the water and that was for two reasons. One, I'm sure the water was freezing and two, while the waves aren't tall, they are "sneaky", every 7th wave or so is a bit higher than the rest, and it can sweep unsuspecting people to sea. The waves are also rough and have a significant undertow, so it doesn't seem like people spend a lot of time on the beach here in Iceland like they do in other countries.

It was really interesting to see black sand; it was extremely fine and I believe it is remnants of the volcanic activity on Iceland.  The cave I mentioned before wasn't deep at all, but it showed an interesting geological rock formation that can be seen all over Iceland.

The rocks split or form hexagonal structures in the rock face. It looks rather artificial, but it really is naturally made and incredible to see. I wonder how that forms...

Anyway, we were gearing up to leave the black beach because we saw a storm coming in and as we were about to head into the car we saw the sun!

Granted it was still behind a lot of clouds, but it was the first time we could see the sun on our trip.  We stopped for lunch at a gas station while filling up; some more Icelandic soup for Mike and some lamb goulash for everyone else to share, along with snacks. Unfortunately the rest of the drive was obscured by rain, darkness, and lots of blowing snow.

East of Vik, all the bridges on the coastal road were single lane bridges. Closer to Reykjavik there had been two lane bridges around, but for whatever reason in the central southern lowlands and eastward they stopped making them two lanes.  Most were only 5m long, so very short, but there were one or two that were quite long, and actually had several wider spots for cars to be able to pass each other if they both went on the bridge at the same time. We were glad to be encounter these during the evening because we could all communicate with headlights/brights, but we wondered how people did this during the day, especially with some of the longer ones.

We finally made it to our hostel around 7pm; Vagnsstadir Hostel is actually part of a farmstead, so rather than having a check-in counter, we had to call someone in to officially check in.  It took us a bit of time to get settled in, especially since they didn't give us the right sized sheets for our beds or the towels we needed to shower the next day, and they weren't immediately available to come back and correct the mistake. Sadly they did not have a restaurant nearby either (they had a kitchen, but we didn't bring any groceries...), so we had to do some searching to find someplace to eat and by now we were hungry. The closest major town nearby was Höfn, which was 40 minutes away and wasn't a viable option since most restaurants would be closing. Luckily, we found a couple hotels nearby so we started calling to see which had an open restaurant. Success!  We ate at Hotel Smyrlabjörg, where we all had lamb burgers (Mike ordered his without a bun, but unfortunately it took two tries to actually receive a burger without a bun).  While not really "Icelandic," the burgers were good, and after struggling with some weak wifi signals for a bit we decided to call it a night.

Day 4

(Current Time & Place: 1/3/17, 6:30pm, en route from Reykjavik back to Boston)

Day 4 - 12/30/16

Jon:
Today was a bit of a strange day.  We were originally supposed to go on our glacier tour today, but that ended up being scheduled for tomorrow so we had an extra day to catchup on some things in the area.  We started the day by driving north to Höfn to get some food. We arrived at the grocery store as it was opening at 10am and stocked up on snacks and food for breakfast and lunch.  As we learned the evening before, there wouldn't be anywhere else to get food until dinner...  This was the only grocery store for at least an hour, maybe two.

Mike:
Then we started making our way back down route 1 to see all the sights we missed the evening before due to the lack of light.  Now instead of darkness we could see the ocean to our left and mountains to our right; it's beautiful.

We slowly made our way along the road, photographing everything.

We have enough pictures to do a national geographic magazine on Iceland.

There are waterfalls everywhere, flowing down the sides of mountains.

 As we go, we keeping seeing the glacial ice of Vatnajökull peaking out through mountain ridge lines.

On our way south we stop briefly at the guesthouse we will be staying at this evening, Gerdi, making the car a little more comfortable when it's not overflowing with luggage.  We also confirmed that the guesthouse would be serving dinner at 7pm.  Great!  We won't have to hunt for food tonight.

Recharged after a cup of hot chocolate, we continue down the road and about 15 minutes south of the guesthouse is Jokulsarlon Glacial Lagoon.  The lagoon has chunks of glacial ice floating in it.

As we observe we can see the ice changing, pieces breaking off and flowing out of the lagoon to the ocean.  The sight is really hard to put into words, so luckily we have copious amounts of pictures.

A half hour more along the road, and we arrived at Skaftafell Glacier Park.  The information sign here was really bad.  We were planning to hike up to Svartifoss, the black waterfall, presumably the only waterfall on the trail.  We saw a small waterfall at the beginning of the path, and then continued until we reached a good sized waterfall. It was pretty with patches of frost and snow forming from the spray. A winter wonderland.  Yay!

But not really.  Apparently we didn't go far enough along the trail, and this was actually waterfall number 2.  We turned back too soon and missed Svartifoss (Bryan found out while looking up more information during dinner).  Boo this really bad sign that wasn't at all useful!

On our way back to warmth and food, we saw a road going off towards the glacier and decided to drive down it.  We found a small parking lot, right at the edge of the glacier, and enjoyed some spectacular views.  Now we were super excited for our glacier hike the next morning!!

We took a couple hour nap after dinner, with our alarms set for midnight.  The Kp ratings for solar activity were going to be highest tonight and tomorrow night.  It was time to see the aurora!  We drove a little down the road just to get away from the light pollution of the guesthouse, and found a nice place to pull over and set up.  The night sky was absolutely stunning.  This was our first clear night, and you could see the Milky Way glowing brilliantly.  We also got some hints of the aurora but mostly it was just star gazing.  While the predicted Kp had been high, the actual reading were pretty terrible.  We need to be up early for tomorrow's glacier hike so after an hour or so, it's time to call it a night and get some sleep.

Day 5 - New Years Eve

(Current Time & Place: 1/3/17, 9:00pm, two more hours until we land in Boston)

Day 5 - 12/31/16

Jon:
We woke up a bit tired but otherwise ready to go glacier touring. We had the traditional smorgasbord of jams, breads, and meats and set off for Jokulsarlon again, which was the meeting point for our glacier tour.  The early morning twilight (okay, it was actually 9am) made it difficult to take pictures, but that was okay because we had already photographed the entire glacier from the road yesterday. It took us a bit to find our tour guide, but eventually we found him, loaded up into a jeep with extremely over-sized off road tires and set off!

Our guide, an Icelandic native, was a real character. He is a tour guide, movie set director and producer, and part time jokester and philosopher. It took us a bit to get to the glacier, and he told us about Iceland, his opinions on glacier formation, global warming, glacial history, Icelandic music, and the golden rule for living life as a good person (you know, all the usuals).

Finally we arrived to the edge of the glacier.  There were a lot of groups already by the ice cave, so he took us to another cave that was completely covered by ash to have a look at ice formations.

The ice was streaked with dark layers of ash from previous volcanic eruptions. Snow just continues to pile up on top of the ash and over time is compressed into ice; it takes 10-14 meters of snow to form a meter of ice so it takes quite a bit to make a glacier.  We walked into this ash and ice cavern and while we it was pretty dark (being relatively opaque), it was still beautiful.

The ice looked tessellated, even without the sun; we had headlamps on and they did a good job of providing illumination.

Once we had our fill of the mini cavern our tour guide notified us that it was time to move on to another site. Now here is where some good news came. At the beginning of the day the main ice cavern was closed because it was filled with water.  As we could attest to, it had been raining nonstop the day before yesterday, and it takes time for the caverns to drain the water.  Caverns in glaciers are formed by water; when it rains these caverns allow the water to escape from within the glacier.  So we were lucky that enough water had drained out of the cavern for us to be able to go inside.

This was our second clear day (yesterday being the first), and the sunlight was beginning to light the whole area up as we arrived at the cave; the sight was absolutely stunning.

We saw a blue ice cavern with different shades of blue, and black ribbons throughout the blue ice as memories of distant volcanic eruptions. Needless to say, we spent quite a bit of time here capturing every facet of this wonderful place. It was also pretty fun watching them slowly open up more and more of the cavern as more water drained out.

I should mention here that our guide informed us the only way to truly experience the glacier was to taste it.

We left the cavern and took some more pictures of the area for good measure (how many times can one say they've been on a glacier?) and loaded back into the jeep to go back to our starting point.

While we were in the jeep we learned that Vatnajökull was the fourth largest glacier in the "known universe" and the largest glacier on Iceland. To put it in perspective, though, the third largest glacier is in Greenland and is over 4 km thick. Vatnajökull averages out at a mere 400 m thick, with its deepest parts being 1.1 km thick.  It's difficult to think on that scale, it's simply impressive.

We arrived back at Jokulsarlon around midday and took some more pictures of the new scene at the lake.  Since yesterday some of the icebergs changed;  some joined the party, and some were carried out to sea. We even went to the coast to get some pictures of the ice along the beach and in the ocean.

Glaciers are pretty, and looking at the sunlight through the ice is beautiful sight.

At this point we began our long drive back to the Reykjavik area- our original goal was to make it to our new place early-ish in the evening and then head into the city for New Years celebrations. So we drove out of the Vatnajökull area only stopping once or twice for pictures and trying to decide what sites that we missed on our way into the area we were going to stop at on the way back.  Our first stop was the canyon Fjadrargljufur, try to say that ten times fast (or once, for that matter).

A canyon in the winter is a very pretty, and the river wasn't frozen! In fact, our glacier tour guide said that this year so far was the warmest winter on record for Iceland while last year was the coldest, however the wind had returned. There were some areas that had been roped off to prevent people from being stupid but of course, there were footprints there. Had they gone out on those ledges with the wind we had, they'd have fallen off. Anyway, it was a pretty site and the combination of the water, stone, and snow/ice was beautiful.

We left Fjadrargljufur around 4pm feeling great and continued on our way back to Reykjavik.  We saw a new waterfall on the way back that seemed to be right in someone's backyard, so we took some photos of that.

Sadly some jerks then followed us and proceeded to park directly in our line of sight, so our ability to photograph the falls was cut short. As an aside, it seems that if you live near a glacier, you are basically guaranteed to own a personal waterfall. Just a heads up if any of you are looking into real estate in Iceland. Unfortunately, by the time we made it back to the other sites we were considering it was already getting dark, so we opted to see what we could from the car/road and carry on.

Around 5pm we were passing through Vik and we were starting to get hungry, but all the shops along our route were closed;  we thought this was a bit strange because things don't usually close that early. We tried to call ahead to gas stations, stores and restaurants but got no answers. It seems like the people here take their New Years Eve celebrations very seriously, and the whole country shuts down. We found one hotel in Hella (remember Hella? We stayed there with Björg on day 2) around 6:15pm that had an open 6:30 reservation for their New Years buffet, but it was extremely expensive so we hoped that we would be able to find something else as we got closer to Reykjavik.

When we arrived at the next largest town, Selfoss, we had worse luck. The place that we thought that we could go to there were booked all night and not accepting any new reservations. The restaurants or hotels that we could get a hold of in the area, or on our way into Reykjavik were closed or not seating anyone else, and we had no real leads on where to go for food. We were all getting a bit agitated at this point, and mostly had given up on the idea of dinner.  It was plan b time...  get to our new place, eat what snacks we had left and enjoy the hot tub there to calm down...  Then head over to Reykjavik. So we started north of Selfoss towards Lake Thingvellir. By some stroke of luck we found a hotel that was still serving another buffet and could fit us into their schedule. We arrived there around 7:15, shortly after making a call and after a bit of waiting were able to eat food at last. There was a nice spread of different foods, smoked herring, mackerel and cod, meats such as lamb, beef, turkey, and pork, other seafood, and of course the traditional breads and spreads that we all have come to know and love.

At around 8:45 they came around to tell us that fireworks would be starting in 5 minutes. However, about 2 minutes later we heard them start to go off so we went outside to have a look. There were a lot!  And to top it off, we walked outside to see the Aurora in all its natural wonder. Rather than just be a faint glow it was a full formed green ribbon- absolutely out of this world beautiful!  Then after several long minutes of everyone coming out of the hotel staring at the aurora, we turned back to the fireworks. Finally, we noticed that they seemed to be a bit close, as if they were right on the other side of the hotel... A quick walk to the corner of the hotel revealed that this was an astute observation, they were launching the fireworks from the parking lot, literally next to cars including our own!  Lauren was able to snap a photo of those lighting the fireworks as well, and it was none other than the fire department. This was a really nice change from the US, where we are almost always banned from lighting fireworks, and certainly the fire department wouldn't be lightning them for us.

After the fireworks we finished eating, nabbed some tasty looking desserts, and then headed out to find our accommodations for the night.  Unfortunately, the owner of this place wasn't really good at communicating with us about the location of the house, and it ended up that the house was in a gated community.  While the owner was in Spain, presumably enjoying the new year festivities, he was able to text with us and arranged for someone else to buzz us into the development. We got in and found the house, but the code that we were given didn't open the lockbox containing the house key.  Again, the owner was able to provide an alternative, but it was a bit annoying, and just a tad nerve wracking that we might not actually be able to sleep on beds. When we finally got inside, it was a very nice and cute home, despite not having any linens for the mattresses (they did have towels though).  Bryan went to sleep because he was feeling a bit sick and Lauren, Mike, and I enjoyed a nice soak in the hot tub to welcome the new year.  We weren't in the city but sitting in the hot tub and enjoying the fire works that way was a pretty good alternative.