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Published: July 29th 2010
Reykjavik Church
The different architecture of Reykjavik's largest churchIceland part 1
Ratings explained:
'Bad times' - self explanatory
'Don't bother' - self explanatory
1* - worth a look
2* - Good Times
3* - Unmissable
+ - emphasis on the rating
I've spent a lot of time catching up travel diary writing after falling five days behind at one stage in Iceland; this possibly because we drove on average 400km a day over 9 days and saw sights until after midnight on more than one occasion.
There's so many good times in Iceland I've broken it up into installments so if any of you are desirous to go there (which you should!) you can find the things you like.
This installment covers our first night Reykjavik, the area north of Reyk, the Snaefells Peninsula and the north west coast.
We arrived 14/7/10 and our first impressions of Reykjavik were: colourful, pleasant, affordable, and tiny. Let's first tackle the tiny; this is a bloody small city; it has only 200k inhabitants in the entire greater city area (which is incidentally over 60% of the whole Icelandic population) it's hard to comprehend how minimal the population in Iceland is (317,900 total).
Affordability refers not to the
Alicia in the art
Alicia spends a moment contemplating amongst the sculpture, Reykjavik. accommodation (which is high throughout all Iceland) but the food and drinks which we'd feared would be as high as they've historically been reported to be, but thankfully for the traveller the recent Icelandic economic destruction appears to have been a boon to tourists and made what was once an insanely expensive place now fairly affordable in many ways. Even alcohol which is heavily taxed here can be had for reasonable prices, Nick drank the tasteless Icelandic lagers for under a fiver (GBP) a throw in restaurants and bars.
Our first night highlight aside from the charm of the little city was the delicious apple and banana icecreams we had whilst wandering town. During our first night we marvelled at the never ending daylight; at 11pm we went to bed (with coverings over our heads so it was dark enough to sleep) it was so bright in our hostel dorm Alicia was reading in her bunk with no lights on. The light continued to cause us trouble and we almost accidentally got up around 4am because it was so bright before realising the time.
We got our hire car from an excellent small business www.travelcarsiceland.com who gave us
Snaefells Lake views
A stop by the side of the road for this pretty lake view. a screaming cheap rate on an excellent Toyota Auris (best hire care we've ever had by a long way)
early on day two, then had some delightful pancakes and bacon in a cafe in town and set out for the west and north west coasts of Iceland picking up ludicrously delicious olive & herb bread and excellent sandwich ingredients in a big supermarket on the way out of town.
One thing to be said for Iceland food is that their fresh bread and 'sandwich ingredient' delis they have in supermarkets are second to none and served us incredibly well throughout our whole trip. Sadly you have to get the bread at 2 minutes after dawn to get the nice stuff; many has been the time we've seen all bread sold out by midday.
Within seconds of leaving the city we were in pretty landscapes which we got very familiar with on our Iceland trip; flat grassy land with very steep green grassy hills rising sharply from the flats; anywhere near the coast usually fjords and there's always a stream or lake about too. Happily the quality of scenery near Reykjavik is only a small taste of the kind of
Sweeping views
We jumped on the brakes immediately to stop at the top of this gentle hill and take in the sweeping view down the road, across the narrow bridge ridiculously magnificent natural landscape beauty Iceland has to offer. Also happily we finally had beautiful weather, blue skies, sunshine and a smattering of white clouds to add some flavour to my photos.
The thing that eventually strikes you about travelling Iceland is... there's no trees, anywhere, for pretty much the whole country! It's amazing how much more visibility of a landscape you have when there's no trees, or shrubs, or brush over 90% of the time to hide the land. This IS NOT one of many gross exaggerations; you can read up on it yourself they just don't have much timber and boy does it making for some sweeping views with the flat land around the road and no obstructed viewing.
Our first day plan was to get via the Snaefells Peninsula well up into the North West of Iceland (skipping West Fjords which is too bloody far away) this drive took us past a diverse array of gorgeous scenery including lovely lakes, fjords, coastline, and sweeping peninsulas. We saw the unique Icelandic horses (they're everywhere). We enjoyed the steep and fascinatingly shaped hills all around and spent all day calling for a geologist to show themselves and explain to
Typical first day views
Flat roads, steep side hills, pretty low clouds and pretty white & red buildings just a typical everyday view driving the central west of Iceland us all the wonders we were seeing (none showed up strangely).
We saw low clouds hanging dramatically over mountain ranges, a mountain shaped just like a sharp witches hat, even a hill that was perfectly shaped as a small volcano.
With no deadline on our sight-seeing since it was all natural scenery and the sun never sets we drove on and on, stopping the car every kilometre it seemed to get another photo and stare in awe at another beautiful view.
We saw snow up on the high peaks (despite it being a balmy 15c day), drove the gravel roads which were generally in good condition and didn't slow us down much below 70-80km/hr, and saw millions of birds on some of the remarkable rocky coastline and jutting rock formations just off the coast at the far SW of the Snaefells Peninsula at Hellnar and Arnastarpi (1*).
We clocked up 640km driving on our first day, took photos of sunset at 01:30 in the morning and got to bed for 02:00 it was a massive first day and we were shattered, but totally in love with the beauty of Iceland.
We kept up the driving most of the night
Sharp cone shaped hill
This hill on a peninsula by a small coastal town was remarkable by it's almost 'witches hat' shape and remarkably sharp peak. through energy drink for Nick, eating all the sweets we'd got at the supermarket (Iceland has quality pick & mix sweets), and listening to 'Stuff you Should know' podcast on our car radio FM tuner.
We even earned Karma points by stopping at 01:33 in the morning when we saw a car with the hood up on a side road and asked if they needed assistance. They were Icelandic locals who said they were just fixing a bad headlight and looked at us like we were nuts for offering to help them, as though they were doing the most normal thing in the world! We were glad they were ok 'cause we were knackered.
I can't recommend the Snaefells Peninsula (2*) enough, it had endless jaw dropping scenery and topped a fantastic first driving day that filled us with enthusiasm and joy about Iceland.
Further North West travels saw us drive the Vatsnes Peninsula where we saw the interesting Hvitserkur rock formation (1*) and at Illugastadhir (I think) some Eider ducks (apparently to make a doona/duvet out of their down is stupidly expensive; they're dull ugly looking ducks too), millions more sea birds and a few seals swimming in
Little Coastal Village
A nice little village along the further NW of the Snaefells Peninsula. Thankfully those clouds were isolated on this day and didn't cause us any trouble. the sea.
Alicia was delirious with joy to see Seals swimming in 'real life nature' not in a zoo and immediately gave it 3*, I give it 1*. We only saw a couple of the buggers up close and only for a couple of seconds at a time before they ducked back under water and we had to brave icy windchill to do it.
We stopped by the Glaumbaer turf farm houses (2*) ; little buildings built in traditional Icelandic style using minimal wood (remember they have no trees?) and lots of dirt & grass (turf) to insulate the walls and roof.
The turf houses were surprisingly well insulated; warm, and quiet indoors, we were impressed by how effective turf was and enjoyed our visit and exploring the little houses inside.
Lastly for the North West was our drive into Akureyi (3*) (yes it's central North, just bear with me and quit whinging) which began with a remarkable oval shaped cloud over the road in front of us that kind of makes you think of a big UFO (think ID4 movie fans), we had great clouds to spice up the great scenery on this leg of the drive.
This
Wave shaped hill
This remarkable steeply sweeping hill reminded me of a large wave forming. No wonder we spent all day wondering how in the heck all of these remarkable hills formed! was the route along the main road #1 and it goes through a long and spectacular mountain range. There's nowhere to stop along this extraordinary stretch of road but the views are absolutely stunning and we believe with a bit of effort and research it is possible to hike and camp in the area which would be wonderful as it's so gorgeous (ohh could be a pun there).
One mountain ridge in particular called Mt. Hraundrangar is shaped like a crown and is amazing to see; we were blessed with reasonably good weather and clouds that added to rather than took away from the views; you also see down perpendicular narrow mountaineous valleys as you go and Nick was apoplectic that we couldn't find somewhere to stop and take a hundred photos. We got to Akureyi safely and had a nice little place to stay in the hostel and ate the first of many home made lamb chop meals which was fine.
To finish the first main Iceland entry let me surprise you to say there are trees around Akureyi (second biggest city in Iceland) we've no idea why but we were shocked by their appearance and dismayed by
Tiny Volcanic harbour
We found this small group of boats hidden away in amongst the remarkable rock formations off the coast of Hellnar and Arnastarpi the limitation to our views from the car. Thankfully they “made like a tree” * and we were back to treeless landscapes again for most of the Iceland journey.
More detail on our excellent Iceland travels in the coming posts; onto more general stuff:
We've found the people in Iceland accommodating but reserved, so reserved in fact they make the Queen of England look like a knockabout pal you can drop in on and have a BBQ in the park with by comparison. Dunno what their problem is.
On healthy eating news for the trip Nick's taken to drinking Coke Zero and Pepsi Max on the occasions we have a soft drink instead of water, (even though they taste like watery Coke (gone are the good old days of drinking Pepsi with Evan or Casey 'til my head falls off, or the famous Pepsi wall in my apartment)) and Nick & Alicia are both on a self enforced no junk food, ice cream, or alcohol regime whilst in Scandinavia as it's a small defined period of our trip we can commit to being quite healthy.
Falling terribly behind on blog and travel writing as always; pretty
Sun finally going down? 1:15am
Past 1am and the sun still hasn't set on our first days sight seeing; it probably didn't get darker than this all night. happy with Iceland photos; got some winners, due to quit Scandinavia and head for Russia tomorrow.
* If you didn't get my 'made like a tree' reference you need to rewatch 'Back to the Future'.
Next Iceland entry hopefully soon; also I've gone back and captioned the photos in my last entry the 'Iceland Teaser' for those who care to know more
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Benn
non-member comment
Trees
Iceland actually used to be covered in trees, however the don't grow very well due to the weather and soil, so after man came and cut them all down, they have never quite recovered. I actually found a whole forest of big trees somewhere in the eastern side where they are trying to bring the leafy towers back to life. A primary school teacher of mine was icelandic and always spoke of her utter amazement when she first travelled overseas and saw trees in such abundance. But I totally agree, one of the biggest draw cards of the place are the unobstructed views of the landscape. Especially for those of us wanting to take great photos!!!