Reykjavik!
Some of this will be in point form, some not. Apologies. also, there are a lot of really cool accents and non-English letters in Icelandic. I don't think I can do those .... awkward.
Day 1: exhausted, nap, meet Alex from Quebec city, start wandering. Wandering entails locating a free map, and heading in the wrong direction for 5 minutes .... oops. But then, we come across an arena, a cool concrete church [read: concrete. for reals. with a friggin HUGE and beautiful pipe organ], plenty of hostels and tourist shops. This is such a pretty town, and the sun literally does not set in the summer. I walked home at 1am, and it felt like 8pm. So wild. Also, Icelandics like to party. Night life starts at 1am and ends at 6am. Intense!!
Crappy sleep. Jet lag + snorers +latecomers. Oh my. :@
Day 2: head to Penlan for panoramic view of the city, then to the park beside the pond in the middle of the city for a nap and to meet up with Gudny Helga and her family to play Kubb, a super fun wooden game that involves using wooden batons to knock over wooden blocks ... if you knock down all of the other team's blocks, you knock down the king. If you knock down the king, your team wins. I burned my face :( oh, and was complimented for my nice eyes. Ooh! Played soccer in a lil wee pen with a 4 and 6 year old. So awesome playing games with kids who don't speak your language. Who needs words?!
Went to the hostel for a nap and met Dylan and Becky from England. We decided to head out for dinner around 10pm cause, ya know, that's reasonable .... Wandered to Vegamot, enjoyed lobster soup and a panini. Holy delicious, batman! Though Dylan dropped some lobster on the floor. Not cool. Walking home at 1am, the moon was right above the trees, and as pink and huge as I've ever seen it. We had to triple check to make sure it wasn't the sun. Slightly ridiculous, right? Right. Oh also, we saw a guy being put into the back of a cop car for drunk driving. This is serious business here in Iceland!
Day 3: Dylan and Becky rented a car, and invited me to join in their road trip for the day. Score!
Drive #1: lunar landscape. Straight up. Then to Seltun Hot Springs [insert super cool photos here... but i can't, so pretend], which naturally smelled of rotten eggs. But whoa So many lil pools of bubbling sulphur mud! I wish I could properly explain these, but you'll have to wait for pictures.
We carried on to the Blue Lagoon, almost getting lost a number of times along the way due to lack of maps. However, we made it, and once again seemed to be on lunar landing. Now this place is heaven. You could spend allllllll day, in the super hot silica-infused water, the sauna, steam bath, spa, restaurant, hotel. I should mention that there is a bar in the super hot water, for beer, ice cream, slushies, smoothies, etc and you pay with a wristband, so as not to wet your moneys. There is a silica mud that you are meant to put all over your body to smoothe your skin; Pretty great.
I was dropped off at the airport, said goodbye to Dylan and Becky (who were absolutely lovely, sarcastic, hilarious people) and hopped on a bus back to Reykjavik, about an hour bus from the airport in Keflavik. Bought groceries, cooked some lovely pasta and had the first real and decent sleep of my trip.
Day 4: wake up, have breakfast, and try to figure out what to do today. Turns out all the hostels in Reykjavik are booked. Well, all 4 that I looked at. So I picked a spot on the map, booked a hostel, and figured out the best way to get there. Turns out, it's hitch hiking. So here we go!
Trip #1: city bus out of town to wait on highway
Trip #2: waited 45 minutes, had 8 cars stop but none were going where I was... then finally a guy told me he'd take me to the edge of the next town where I'd have more luck. Super nice guy.
Trip #3: waited 10 minutes for an 18 wheeler to stop. Cool guy; took me through a tunnel under the sea!!! Never been in an 18 wheeler. It was really cool! We drove for about an hour, an he dropped me off on the side of the road in the rain.
Trip #4: Waited 30 min (by now it's 3pm) in the rain, luckily it was only raining hard for the last 10 minutes or so. Picked up by a lovely pilot driving a rental car. He was the loveliest of the drivers, and gave me a tour so to speak. He gave me a beer for my travels [side note: Icelandic beer is great, and light. Try Gull, Thule, and Viking ... if you can find them], let me try fish jerky, and took me to a really cool river canyon. There, we met up with Trip #5
Trip #5: a tour bus of French-speaking Europeans in their 60s. Since I just arrived on their bus at a stop, and 50% of Icelandics believe in elves, I was referred to as an elf. It was really quite adorable. We played trivia games on the way, once they learned my name and my actual story. Stopped at a really quaint lil church on a hillside, beside a group of 60 horses being coraled across the countryside. Never seen that many together before - and apparently they're wild for the first 5 or so years of their lives. Crazy! Lovely people who did not want to see me go when I was let off at a gas station in Bluondos.
Trip#6: sun was finally out, and of course, in the 15 minutes I was waiting got burned. The 2nd car to pull up was a cute lil 18 year old girl on her way to visit a friend in Akureyri. So we stopped mid-way to have dinner with a different friend at a restaurant they both used to work at, and continued through the beautiful mountains til I was dropped off at my hostel.
I should mention that all of these trips took 9.5 hours!
Also, Iceland has a shit ton of sheep. They. Are. Everywhere. But the farmland is sooooooo huge, that it takes forever to round them up in the winter!
I LOVE THIS PLACE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Day 1: exhausted, nap, meet Alex from Quebec city, start wandering. Wandering entails locating a free map, and heading in the wrong direction for 5 minutes .... oops. But then, we come across an arena, a cool concrete church [read: concrete. for reals. with a friggin HUGE and beautiful pipe organ], plenty of hostels and tourist shops. This is such a pretty town, and the sun literally does not set in the summer. I walked home at 1am, and it felt like 8pm. So wild. Also, Icelandics like to party. Night life starts at 1am and ends at 6am. Intense!!
Crappy sleep. Jet lag + snorers +latecomers. Oh my. :@
Day 2: head to Penlan for panoramic view of the city, then to the park beside the pond in the middle of the city for a nap and to meet up with Gudny Helga and her family to play Kubb, a super fun wooden game that involves using wooden batons to knock over wooden blocks ... if you knock down all of the other team's blocks, you knock down the king. If you knock down the king, your team wins. I burned my face :( oh, and was complimented for my nice eyes. Ooh! Played soccer in a lil wee pen with a 4 and 6 year old. So awesome playing games with kids who don't speak your language. Who needs words?!
Went to the hostel for a nap and met Dylan and Becky from England. We decided to head out for dinner around 10pm cause, ya know, that's reasonable .... Wandered to Vegamot, enjoyed lobster soup and a panini. Holy delicious, batman! Though Dylan dropped some lobster on the floor. Not cool. Walking home at 1am, the moon was right above the trees, and as pink and huge as I've ever seen it. We had to triple check to make sure it wasn't the sun. Slightly ridiculous, right? Right. Oh also, we saw a guy being put into the back of a cop car for drunk driving. This is serious business here in Iceland!
Day 3: Dylan and Becky rented a car, and invited me to join in their road trip for the day. Score!
Drive #1: lunar landscape. Straight up. Then to Seltun Hot Springs [insert super cool photos here... but i can't, so pretend], which naturally smelled of rotten eggs. But whoa So many lil pools of bubbling sulphur mud! I wish I could properly explain these, but you'll have to wait for pictures.
We carried on to the Blue Lagoon, almost getting lost a number of times along the way due to lack of maps. However, we made it, and once again seemed to be on lunar landing. Now this place is heaven. You could spend allllllll day, in the super hot silica-infused water, the sauna, steam bath, spa, restaurant, hotel. I should mention that there is a bar in the super hot water, for beer, ice cream, slushies, smoothies, etc and you pay with a wristband, so as not to wet your moneys. There is a silica mud that you are meant to put all over your body to smoothe your skin; Pretty great.
I was dropped off at the airport, said goodbye to Dylan and Becky (who were absolutely lovely, sarcastic, hilarious people) and hopped on a bus back to Reykjavik, about an hour bus from the airport in Keflavik. Bought groceries, cooked some lovely pasta and had the first real and decent sleep of my trip.
Day 4: wake up, have breakfast, and try to figure out what to do today. Turns out all the hostels in Reykjavik are booked. Well, all 4 that I looked at. So I picked a spot on the map, booked a hostel, and figured out the best way to get there. Turns out, it's hitch hiking. So here we go!
Trip #1: city bus out of town to wait on highway
Trip #2: waited 45 minutes, had 8 cars stop but none were going where I was... then finally a guy told me he'd take me to the edge of the next town where I'd have more luck. Super nice guy.
Trip #3: waited 10 minutes for an 18 wheeler to stop. Cool guy; took me through a tunnel under the sea!!! Never been in an 18 wheeler. It was really cool! We drove for about an hour, an he dropped me off on the side of the road in the rain.
Trip #4: Waited 30 min (by now it's 3pm) in the rain, luckily it was only raining hard for the last 10 minutes or so. Picked up by a lovely pilot driving a rental car. He was the loveliest of the drivers, and gave me a tour so to speak. He gave me a beer for my travels [side note: Icelandic beer is great, and light. Try Gull, Thule, and Viking ... if you can find them], let me try fish jerky, and took me to a really cool river canyon. There, we met up with Trip #5
Trip #5: a tour bus of French-speaking Europeans in their 60s. Since I just arrived on their bus at a stop, and 50% of Icelandics believe in elves, I was referred to as an elf. It was really quite adorable. We played trivia games on the way, once they learned my name and my actual story. Stopped at a really quaint lil church on a hillside, beside a group of 60 horses being coraled across the countryside. Never seen that many together before - and apparently they're wild for the first 5 or so years of their lives. Crazy! Lovely people who did not want to see me go when I was let off at a gas station in Bluondos.
Trip#6: sun was finally out, and of course, in the 15 minutes I was waiting got burned. The 2nd car to pull up was a cute lil 18 year old girl on her way to visit a friend in Akureyri. So we stopped mid-way to have dinner with a different friend at a restaurant they both used to work at, and continued through the beautiful mountains til I was dropped off at my hostel.
I should mention that all of these trips took 9.5 hours!
Also, Iceland has a shit ton of sheep. They. Are. Everywhere. But the farmland is sooooooo huge, that it takes forever to round them up in the winter!
I LOVE THIS PLACE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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