Blogs from East, Iceland, Europe - page 5

Thursday Today we had only one stop, in Akureyri. Neither Shelly nor I had an excursion. Instead, we walked into town and found a coffee shop with internet and caught up on life. I got 2 more blogs posted. After our computer time, we walked around town some and I actually found a top I bought that wasn’t ridiculously expensive. Everything seems to be very high priced. We saw the local church and Shelly had to do her cardio on the stairs. As we departed, we had lunch and went to the gym. But before that I went up on deck to take a few pictures. One picture I took was off a waterfall into the fjord. I then headed to the gym and while there, they explained over the intercom about the waterfall. Seems they ... read more

Geo: 64.0674, -16.1691Set the alarm for 7am as we have a long drive ahead of us. First in for breakfast and on the road to Jokulsarlon by 8am. Jokulsarlon is a lake where ice fractures off the Breioamerkurjokull glacier, and floats through a causeway to the sea. It was only 315 kilometres (4 hours 30mins in the car each way)! What an amazing sight... Well worth the drive. Apart from fantastic scenery on the way; snow-capped mountains, waterfalls, miles of flat volcanic and rocky plains etc, the lake was amazing - huge blocks of blue/white ice bobbing around. We wandered down to the beach on the other side of the causeway) it was surreal... littered with huge chunks of ice that had washed ashore onto the black volcanic sandy beach. It didn't look natural, no matter ... read more

Day 7 - Iceland It was a beautiful morning, almost a completely clear blue sky. We got away by 8.45am with our usual 'to-go' coffee in our individual coffee containers that Kerrie & Gemma gave us (c/o Tea). We drove north along Tjörnes peninsula with its beautiful coastline. We saw the Puffin (Lundey) Island where we were yesterday. We stopped at a number of viewing points along the way. We then drove through Húsavík fishing village and admired the picturesque harbour again. We loved the little town. Then we continued to the horse-shoe-shaped gorge Ásbyrgi. After visiting the Visitors Centre, we took a short walk through a small but lovely forest to Botnstjorn pond. The striking feature here was the massive canyon walls. We were about to drive through Jökulsárgljúfur gorge, which is a national park. ... read more

En entrant à l'hôtel hier soir, on remarque tout de suite qu'il est placardé d'avertissement des services d'urgences islandais. Une forte tempête est attendue, ils déconseillent aux roulottes et campeurs de prendre la route le lendemain et de vérifier avec le personnel de l'hôtel avant de s'aventurer dans les routes de montagnes. Merde, on doit passer les deux prochains jours dans le désert sur des routes de montagnes. Je consulte la météo. Les prévisions pour mercredi sont de plus de 50mm de pluie et des vents à 70 km/h. Jeudi et vendredi c'est 20 à 30mm de pluie chaque journée avec des vents à 45 km/hr. On parle avec la réceptionniste et elle nous confirme que les passages à gué risquent d'être dangereux d'autant plus que la fonte des neige est loin d'être terminée. On lui ... read more

In the southern part of Iceland we have had rain twice the whole summer. First for 25 days and then for 50 days. At least after 100 years the people in this country will have enough clean, fresh drinking water! This is what you have to say to survive a summer without sunshine, a summer so cold and windy that you have never experienced anything like it before. I think I have aged this summer more than any other – day after day hoping the sun will show itself, but all you see is rain. Ah! But again – I have never seen so many rainbows in one summer as I have this summer. Showers of rain mean there was sun somewhere in the sky. Let me show you some of the rainbows – or bifrost ... read more