The backside of water! And other things.

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Ohhhhh man this morning was tough. We were still on a high from seeing the lights the night before & checking that off our bucket list, but getting less than 3 1/2 hours of sleep was not our favorite part of our trip. We had a quick breakfast at the hotel (the included breakfast buffet was actually amazing!)... but my morning sickness came back rearing its ugly head and I threw up in the restaurant bathroom! WHOOPS!!! That was the first time I threw up in public my whole pregnancy. Oh well... funny memory??

Baldwin, our tour guide from yesterday picked us up again for our South Coast Tour! Yay! We liked him. We started off Skogafoss waterfall. Okay, another REALLY impressive waterfall!! We opted not to hike to the top (it's slippery and we figured it might not be the best idea for my preggo self) but we walked all the way up to the water. The best part about this spot was the rainbow that was present in the mist of the waterfall. It was SO vibrant and make for an almost surreal scene! Today we hit the HALFWAY mark in our pregnancy... 20 weeks!! So we took a few "maternity" photos in front of the waterfall. How many people get to do that?! We feel so lucky.

After that waterfall, Baldwin took us to a black sand beach that wasn't even on the itinerary. He had seen a pod of whales there a few days prior and was hoping they'd still be around. They weren't, but the beach itself was cool anyway!! We walked around a bit, saw the cliffs where puffins would be if we were a few months later, and a neat orange-red lighthouse.

On the way to Vik, we passed by the famous Iceland volcano, Eyjafjallajokul. Don't ask me how to pronounce it!! We could barely see it because of the clouds, but it was still a great stop because I can remember reading about the eruption that happened a few years back!

Once we got to Vik we stopped for lunch in a little cafe... it was a cute little town but we didn't spend much time there. After lunch, we stopped at Reynisfjara beach, another black sand beach! This place is famous for the basalt pillars that line the coastline... it was one of the coolest spots we've ever been! The ocean is REALLY rough here and unpredictable, so the tide was too high to explore too much of the coastline, but we got some fun photos on the basalt pillars & it was a cool experience to watch the powerful waves crashing against them!

We left Reynisfjara and headed to Solheimajokull Glacier. We walked around a bit, right up to the edge of the glacier. We originally had planned a glacier walk for this spot, but had to cancel due to the pregnancy. That didn't bother me too much though as it was a little rainy and cold when we got there & I still feel like we got to see how cool the glacier was! There was also a river running through, with pretty blue glacier water again. Everything here is so cold and gorgeous!

Our last stop was Seljalandsfoss waterfall! You'd think after seeing like, a million waterfalls they'd all start to look the same, but no! This one was REALLY cool because we actually got to hike up and behind the waterfall itself! It was VERY wet and VERY slippery but I knew I had to do it no matter what, so we trudged up the steep hillside. We were lucky in that there weren't very many tourists around so we got to play around a bit once we got behind the falls, taking photos of each other and whatnot. I was hoping for a sunny day with blue skies for my photos, but we didn't get that. It was still an awesome experience to be around such a powerful waterfall and walk behind it!

One funny thing I HAVE to mention is we are being haunted by an older, asian couple in wearing matching orange jackets. They were on our tour yesterday, setting up a tripod every 2 minutes for a selfie of themselves. Then they were at the spot our bus stopped for the northern lights. THEN we saw them here at this waterfall today too!! The beeping of their self timer is going to haunt my nightmares. It's always funny when things like that happen and you see the same people over and over again!!

We got back to the hotel late after a nice conversation on the ride home with Baldwin (I'll pretend he dropped us off last because he liked us the best) and found out our northern lights tour was cancelled again due to cloud cover. We were hoping for one last chance to see the lights, but we were actually okay with not being out again until 3 AM like the previous night. We took advantage of our night off and walked to the Perlan, which is a really weird place... it's two gigantic water tanks with a building in between that houses a revolving restaurant (with great views of Reykjavik because you're on top of a hill), library, viewing deck, and more. Still haven't quite figured that place out! We had to walk through a pretty creepy and dark forest to get there, but the restaurant was really nice! It was pretty expensive and fancy, but I love that we had a revolving 360 degree view of Reykjavik at night as we ate! It brought us back to our very first trip together, when we went to Seattle and ate at the revolving restaurant on top of the Space Needle!

After dinner, we briefly walked around the observation deck and then headed back down the mountain to our hotel. We actually caught a quick glimpse of some northern lights on the walk down so that was pretty cool!! We were starting to get a little spooked though because we were walking solo through a forest at like 11 PM. Iceland feels SUPER safe (in fact, their prison only holds 90 people and is never full!) but it was a bit creepy. All of a sudden, a black kitty cat was walking next to us on the trail! He was SUPER cute and super friendly, so we pet him for a bit and kept walking. He followed us the WHOLE way down the trail. I was nervous when we got to the street that he was going to keep following us but he trailed off back up the mountain as soon as we reached it. We don't believe in a lot of hippy dippy stuff, but it DID kind of feel like we had a kitty cat protector on our way down the mountain. Kinda wondering what that was all about... but it was cool!

Anyway, this is our last night in Iceland and we are so sad to be heading home tomorrow. Luckily we have a few things planned before we fly out, and then we get to hang out in Boston for a half a day or so! So we aren't quite done yet!!

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