Blogs from South, Iceland, Europe - page 11

Pour la première fois en près de 10 jours, je me réveille dans des draps. Pas que je n'aime pas mon sac de couchage mais un lit douillet, ça fait du bien. Si vous venez faire un tour en Islande, n'oubliez surtout pas votre sac de couchage, les hôtels ne fournissent généralement pas de draps. Le vent est tombé. Enfin, tombé pour les hautes terres d'Islande puisque le manche à air de la piste d'atterrissage voisine est encore presqu'à l'horizontal ce matin. Par contre, le soleil est au rendez-vous. Il partage le ciel avec de jolies cumulus bien ouateux et il fait un magnifique 8 degré Celsius. On entre dans le désert par la F208: la route aux mille gués. Un petit écart par une piste secondaire semblant seulement faire une banane par le flanc d'une ... read more

Iceland is like an amusement park, by which I mean, it's just one exhilaration after another. Unlike many places where the tourist destinations end up disappointing you, or are so mobbed with people that it takes all the magic away, Iceland's sights can't disappoint, and their majesty cannot be lessened even by crowds of tour buses. On our final full day, we drove all the way to Vik, stopping at several cool places along the way. Our first stop was a friendly bakery in Hverdagerdi (forgive me, but I don't want to stop to insert the Ð all the time or the Þ). Then we drove all the way to the Saga Centre, where I was in heaven, remembering the story of Njal's Saga. On the way, I read the first section of Njal's Saga out ... read more

To the South and it's Pouring! Today's adventure started at 9am, sightseeing and touring around the south shore of Iceland. An hour and a half from Reykjavík, our first stop was the Skógafoss waterfall. Huge and stunning with a massive spray, neither of us have ever seen a waterfall so big. It is 82 feet wide and has a 200 foot drop. The skies are grey, lots of rain and wind, low clouds with seabirds flying high and roosting in the cliffs. A great first stop! We realized after our first stop that we were going to be totally wet all day. Torrential arctic sheets of freezing rain that soaks you to the bone in 30 seconds mixed with 30 mph winds made for a complicated sightseeing tour. Our next stop was a black sand beach ... read more

We woke up today to a drizzly rain and almost no visibility! But, why would that stop us from going on our adventure?! Our first stop for the day was planned to be a little place called Dulhaoney (sp?) that has a really neat rock formation on the beach. Our visit there was abruptly halted, however, when we realized we were going to have to cross an ocean inlet to get there! No thank you! We couldn't really see the formation anyway, so we moved on. Our next stop was down a gravely bumpy road to a "point of interest" on the map - which was a short walking oath to view a glacier. It was pretty rainy, so we didn't spend much time before getting back in the car and continuing on. We stopped next ... read more

We made it! We arrived this morning right On time at 6:30 am local time. We breezed through customs, grabbed a quick breakfast, got our rental car and hit the road... almost! Our rental only had a quarter tank so we stopped to fill up (They don't have the bring it back full rules here). But when we got to the gas station, we couldn't figure out how to open the gas thing! Long story short, we ended up back at the car rental place so they could show us how to do it (its an unmarked tiny lever on the drivers side floor). Finally we were on the road by about 8am. Our first stop was the Raufarholshellir ice caves (about a 45 min drive from the airport). Ernie discovered the caves during some research ... read more