Blogs from Iceland, Europe - page 148

I have long been hoping to visit this island country, for it has seemed to me a very special place. It is just the distance and the high expense that prevented me to go there at a earlier time. Fortunately, I have a chance to be in Europe this summer and I happened to find out the airfare to Iceland is not that expensive. So I decided to take a detour from Europe to this mid-Alantic island. Before I came to Iceland, I have heard about the spectacular natural wonders in the country. One thing that troubled me was transport, as I don't drive and I was not sure whether there would be good public transport. As a result, I planned to stay in Iceland for just 5 days, and aimed to visit the most famous ... read more

We headed back to Reykjavik via the geothermal area on the Reykjanes peninsular. It is one of the most volatile areas in iceland. The temperature of the water is 200 degrees at 2m below the surface. There are loads of bubbling pools and mud holes. There is also a lake in a volcanic fissure with black laval beaches surrounding it. We were supposed to be going to the Arctic in the evening - the island of Grimsey which is just to the north of Iceland is in the arctic circle. We had booked with the tour desk in the hotel in Reykjavik the week before, but when we turned up at the airport to catch the flight up there, they had no record of us. The poor airport information man made lots of phone calls for ... read more

Today was another amazing sight - the iceberg lagoon made by chunks of ice melting off of the Breidamerkurjokull glacier. It is called Jokulsarlon, though we went to a smaller, less tourist populated one called Breidalon first. The lagoon is famous for staring in James Bond, Die Another Day - where they bloked off the river that runs out into the sea, and froze over the lagoon. However they did lose 6 Aston Martin DB9s into the lagoon when trying to make the scenes! The lagoon itself is awesome. Loads of huge icebergs floating around, different shapes, sizes, colours. Only 10% of the iceberg can be seen above the water. There are lines on some of them, where the bottom has melted and the iceberg has lifted further out of the water - the line is ... read more

We headed further along the south coast today to stay in a place called Klaustur. Along the way we stopped at a good number of sites. After driving through some little towns and a floodplain we reached Seljalandsfoss waterfall. You can walk behind it (though you get quite wet!), and there are a couple of other waterfalls if you go for a short walk along towards the campsite near it. We scrambled up a mud hill to get to see one of them (My walking boots were in storage, so I was in my trainers with Al holding my hand so I didn't get too scared of falling down the hill...), worth it to get up to see it though. We then carried on in the car to another waterfall - Skogafoss, which is 60m tall. ... read more

Spent a couple of days in Reykjavik - Iceland's capital. Stayed at the Icelandair hotel, next to the domestic airport. They upgraded us! We went exploring round the city on our first day - saw nice colourful buildings, town hall which is a funny combination of metal/wood/water feature/concrete (!) Tjorn - the big bond, churches (including the lovely architectural main church and many other things. Hired bikes from the hotel for our second day. cycled up to the perlan - restaurant behind the hotel, then down onto the outdoor, geothermally heated spa, where we sat for a while before heading for our whale watching tour. Saw no whales :-( but lots of puffins. Got very cold! Had dinner at Perlan restaurant - it rotates. Good view of the city. Didn't think the menu was as good ... read more