Advertisement
Published: August 27th 2015
Edit Blog Post
After a fantastic wedding day we are off on our honeymoon!
We flew to Reykjavik with Icelandair from London Gatwick arriving at 15:10. It was quite mild which was pleasantly surprising. Oli strolled across the tarmac in his shorts scoffing at the idea that we hadn’t brought enough warm clothes. The airport is not the most efficient we’ve been through and we ended up leaving the airport at 16:00. Before arriving I had booked tickets with Reykjavik Excursions to the Blue Lagoon, a large geothermal outdoor spa around 20km south of the airport. There weren’t many signs around and we didn’t know where to catch the bus from, so being British we love a queue so we joined the longest queue we could find and hoped for the best. It started to rain, and the temperature dropped several degrees. Oli was soon pulling his jeans on over his shorts and trying to locate his rain coat.
It turned out when we got to the front of the queue it was for buses to Reykjavik, upon further questioning as to the location of our bus the lady waved vaguely across the car park. Unfortunately our British
politeness kicked in and we didn’t ask any further questions, preferring instead to just head in the general direction of her waving, trundling our suitcases behind us. We found ourselves a smaller queue and settled in. After much running around and panicking, our bus finally pulled up. We hopped on and 20 minutes later we were at the Blue Lagoon. The landscape of Iceland is like nothing we have ever seen before. Later in our trip when we went north we saw grass and a few animals but on the way to the Blue Lagoon the ground is just large craggy rocks covered in green moss for miles and miles.
The lack of signs continued, we located the suitcase drop off place and then followed the crowds up a winding path. We got our wrist bands and then went off to our separate areas to get changed. The locker system took a minute or so to get used to, I must have looked knowledgeable as I was quickly approached by a lady requesting my assistance. It took a few moments to determine she was French. I knew instantly I wasn’t the helper for her, seeing as the
only French I know is from the Moulin Rouge song. Oli, who had been waiting for me downstairs, couldn’t believe anyone could take so long to get changed and thought I must have slipped past him so he wandered off. We eventually reunited and headed out to the lagoon, which was beautiful, the water is a lovely light blue and really hot. We stayed for an hour or so exploring the lagoon and relaxing, they had a section over to the side with stuff to put on your face and a sauna. They also had a swim up bar.
We showered and headed out to get the return bus to Reykjavik at 19:15. The bus was almost full as it headed to Reykjavik. It went a bit wrong at this point. Rather than dropping people at three or four central locations, the driver went on the most haphazard zigzag tour of Reykjavik dropping people off at their hotel. We stuck with it as long as we could, but when an argument broke out because someone didn’t know the name of the hotel (with the argument, ‘How am I supposed to know what hotel I’m staying at, I
arrived at 3am!’) and someone’s luggage went missing, we bailed on the bus and started walking. It was almost 9pm by this time and we’d not eaten since breakfast so we were starving. I’d researched some restaurants before arriving and wanted to go to Krua Thai which was on the way to our rental. We were very relieved to stumble upon it, Oli downed a jug of water before we’d even sat down. We had a red Thai curry and a green Thai curry, both of which were lovely. We took some away in a doggy bag as we couldn’t finish it all.
We eventually got to our rental after 10pm. We are only staying in AirBnB places for our honeymoon. The place we stayed in was right on the harbour. It was great, we had our own apartment with bathroom, living room and bedroom, complete with a real animal fur pinned to the wall which took some getting used to as I am not a fan of real fur.
On Saturday we were booked to go on a Golden Circle tour with white water river rafting with Arctic Adventures. We set out early
at 8:00 and reached the rafting place by 10:30. It was pretty miserable and cold out, and I think most of us were apprehensive. We had to put on full wetsuits, fleeces, jackets, waterproof boots and helmets, all of which were wet and cold. We picked up our paddles and boarded the American style school bus which was to take us down to the river. I was sent back twice for wearing the wrong thing! When we got to the river we were given safety instructions and then split into groups. Oli and I were near the back on the same side. Then off we went! It was one of the scariest things we’ve ever done. We hit the first set of rapids within minutes, when you hit really big rapids you have to essentially dive into the raft and hold on, on the first set I got confused and went backwards into the bit where Oli was and the instructor had to haul me out. After that I was OK. Through some of the rapids you had to paddle through them, it was rather scary to keep paddling when the boat is being thrown around and water is coming
in, all you wanted to do was dive in the middle bit and hide.
On some of the more still water the instructor made us all hold each others arms and stand on the side of the boat in a circle. He then got a couple to stand one on each end and we spun the boat round in a circle until they fell in. It was a really fun experience and we would love to do it again.
Back on dry land we went in the sauna, had a very quick, extremely hot shower then got dressed in new clothes ready for the Golden Circle tour. We went to see the Gulfoss Waterfall and the Geysers, the waterfall was particularly impressive, it was huge! In all the excitement Oli dropped our camera and broke it.
We got home at 6pm, I had a hot bath and then we went out for dinner to a place called Hamborgarafabrikkan, a well known burger place. After such a cold day I fancied a hot chocolate. It came with loads of cream and chocolatey bits on it. Oli helpfully passed me a silver shaker
from his side of the table, saying it was extra chocolate sprinkles. Turns out, it was paprika. So I had a lovely paprikary hot chocolate. Oli tried to get most of it off, taking the cream and chocolate bits with it. We had a starter of four mini burgers and then for main Oli had a duck salad and I had a pulled duck burger, all of which was very tasty.
There was a big culture festival on in Reykjavik with loads of bands playing. We waited until 23:00 when there was a huge fireworks display, it was brilliant, there were fireworks going off on loads of different buildings and some shot out from the side of the road making a firework archway.
Sunday was our last day. Due to all the activities over the last couple of days we had a lie in. We ate lunch at Reykjavik Fish and Chips and it was the best fish and chips I’ve ever had, the fish melted in my mouth! We were picked up from outside our place at 13:30 and taken to the airport for our flight to Vancouver at 17:15.
Observations from Iceland
Icelandic people love real fur.
Iceland makes Oli more clumsy than usual, not only did he break the camera, he also dropped a memory card down the sink.
Iceland is very barren and rocky, it’s how I imagine Mars just with more moss.
We saw a few horses but other than that there are not many animals and we didn’t see any crops being grown, presumably due to the harsh climate.
You don’t need cash in Iceland, even the public toilets take credit card.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.049s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 8; qc: 24; dbt: 0.0281s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb