Saturday 3rd June

Day 8

A very early start began at 3am, fortunately the breakfast room was available from that very time, which was very handy indeed!

Farewell Iceland

After a quick breakfast, we headed to the airport and dropped the car off with no problems, and took the shuttle to the airport itself.  I had a problem accessing my boarding card on my phone in the airport which was annoying, but I got there in the end, still feeling rushed because we has not thought that it would be as busy as it was.  Obviously we're inexperiences rookies at this flying lark!  Hopefully next time we will give ourselves more time to check in luggage and go through security.

As a consequence we had little time to peruse the souvenirs before boarding the plane and taking off.  We were rewarded with the only clear view of Iceland from the air which we would have, but it was a good one.  It would have been better on the other side of the plane though...!  Another bonus was a free ice cream to celebrate 70 years of Iceland Air.  Fancy that!

Hello England!

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Friday 2nd June

Day 7

Whales of Iceland

Our final day in Iceland, and we decided to go to "Whales of Iceland" and the "Saga Centre".  The weather was pretty much doing its own thing again, but we wandered through Reykjavik and took some photos, on our way to "Whales of Iceland".  We knew that it was located near the marina, but we had not realised that it was so far away from where we had parked.  Actually, we could have parker there ourselves, but on a plus point, this allowed us to have a look in some souvenir shops on the way.  Incidentally, I found a shop selling locally handmade jewellery and I bought myself a necklace with a "Volcano Pearl", basically a bead of polished lava.

After a good 45 minutes walking in the rain (of course!) we reached "Whales of Iceland", and the entrance fee I personally felt was extortionate for what it was.  The equivalent of £24 each, although you do get a free audio guide, but the size and the content of the exhibition I thought was more worth in the region of £10 I would say, as a reasonable price.

Here we found lots of information on a number of whales frequenting Iceland's shores (not all, of course - how could you fit them all in one exhibition?!), and many life-sized models hung from the ceiling in varying positions.  I would say that this is definitely a good place to go to get an idea of how large these mammals are, especially if you have never seen them before.  I have seen Orcas before, but I'm pretty sure they were much smaller than the ones I saw here - they were enormous!  And I had no idea a narwhal was as large as it actually is.

There were other items on display such as a narwhal skull and tusk, and a few interactive items such as real whale teeth which you could hold and feel the weight of, and there was a virtual reality headset to explore the ocean, along with some interactive footage of where some whales currently are along the coastline of Iceland, and various conservation videos.

Hmmm, a little on the large side? :)

There was a tiny cafe at the end of the exhibition, but we decided to eat elsewhere, after looking in the small shop and heading out across the road to the Saga Centre.

The Saga Centre was very small, but informative, a little like Yorvik Viking Centre, about the lives of the Vikings who lived in Iceland and the history of their time there.  It was a simple centre to walk through, there were no time-travelling chairs like in Yorvik, again quite expensive for what it was, but definitely worth going to.  The most impressive thing was just after the experience there was a video which you could watch, about people used for casting the models in the exhibition, and there was a man sitting in the front row with his bag on the floor, which we realised later on, was actually a cast itself!!  Very clever.


After an opportunity to try on armour, helments and have a go with some swords, we had a look in the really nice little shop, we continued along the marina and found some lunch in a cafe.  We had a tomato and red pepper soup with pesto and delicious salted sourdough bread.  I can still taste it now...

Delicious tomato and vegetable soup with pesto and sodabread

We continued back on our way to the car, taking a few more photos of Reykjavik before arriving at a sculpture garden to walk through.  Back at the car, we made our way to Keflavik Airport Hotel where we would stay the night and wak eup VERY early in the morning for our flight home.

Hallgrimskirkje, Reykjavik

After washing my hair and having a shower, we went into Keflavik to find food.  There isn't a great deal in Keflavik, however Mathew found a place on his iPhone an unassuming restaurant which looked - like many buildings in Iceland - very plain and not very special on the outside, but full of character on the inside.  I had fish and chips which came in a thin, herby batter, and I had 4 chunks of fish, so I shared some with Mathew.  The food may be expensive in Iceland, but they certainly don;t skimp on the portions!  It was a very enjoyable dinner, after which we returned to our hotel for an early bedtime.

Thursday 1st June

Day 6

Deep inside the lava tube

 After breakfast, we went to the lava tube tour.  It was south east of Reykyavik, and the landscape was very alien – it was easy to imagine sci fi being filmed here.  We initially missed the turn off for the lava tube tours because there was no sign for it – fair enough though, an A-Frame notice board would not have lasted long at all in the strong winds we were experiencing! We tuned around and came back to a small area which looked like a construction site, probably because they were still working on the electrics and facilities, but we saw a mini bus which had “Lava Tours” written all over it.

Once in, we donned hard hats with head torches and in a group of 10 we walked across to the entrance and into the lava tube.  Once in, we could see that it was very rocky a unstable underfoot, and there were three piles of snow just underneath a hole each which exposed this part of the tube to the sky.  Further inside it became darker and we walked along looking at the marks which the lava had left behind.

Seltun

After the lava tubes, we decided to take the long way to Reykjavik, travelling around in a loop through some very nice scenery – the kind of scenery which I had been expecting to see when we first landed! We stopped off at a lake, before stumbling upon ‘Seltun’which was a highly geothermal area with a small route to take visitors through. It was, of course, very smelly with plenty of sulphur dioxide and hot bubbling pools and steaming fumeroles.

After this, we continued to Reykjavik and successfully found a free car park at what looked like a park and ride.  We walked into town and into the National Museum where we both had quiche and salad for lunch before exploring.  The museum was full of archaeology and the history of Iceland which was heavily based around its rule and religion. There was a very interesting exhibition on race and migration.

The mightly Thor!

Time to leave, we found our hotel for the night and settled in before heading out to find dinner. We came to a restaurant called 73 which was small and cosy, and the waiter convinced me to have Appelsín (Icelandic sparkling orange) instead of Fanta, and I had arctic char again which I have to say was even nicer than the one I had eaten previously!  Mathew had the cod with a beer.

We walked back to the hotel via the waterfront where we came across a sculpture of a boat. We also popped in to the local supermarket and bought some goodies for back home, as we knew we would have an early start on Saturday which meant that we may not have been able to buy anything last minute at the airport.  Finally, the sun had come out….

"Sun Voyager" - 1986

Wednesday 31st May

Day 5

Opening the curtains this morning and……the sun was shining! Hooray!

After breakfast, we went to Geysir to get a shot of the geysir with the background of a bright blue sky.  Then we went onward to Thingvellir where we spent the whole day exploring the rifts across the park - I think the photos will speak for themselves.

Afterward, we made our way to Mossfellsbaer – back to civilisation which we didn’t't want to do!
 

Thingvellir - The rift

Thingvellir Rift

Thingvellir National Park

Thingvellir National Park - the rift is behind us

Tuesday 30th May

Day 4

Gullfoss

After breakfast in the diner style restaurant, we headed off towards Gullfoss. It was raining but nowhere near as bad as yesterday – but it was colder! I realised this even more when we arrived st Gullfoss, where I decided to put my thermals on. We stopped to take a photo of the mountains which we had seen on our approach, it was actually so clear at this point, we could see the glacier behind the mountains, known as Langjökul.

Gullfoss is an enormous waterfall which was fun to walk around, although to be honest, there is not a great deal to walk around. Still, plenty of photo opportunities here. We explored the gift shop which was almost as enormous, selling everything from locally made sweaters (£240) and real fur (£300-£400 for a hat) to chocolate bars and Arctic herbs, the latter of which Mathew and I bought. We also had lunch here – Mathew went with meat soup (lamb) while I had a salmon bagel.  Onward, we set off for Geysir which was just a few minutes drive away from Gullfoss.

Geysir - taken on the following day in nicer weather!

Geysir has numerous fumeroles and ponds of burbling hot water, we could see the steam puffing away from all of them. The path took us past a few small ones before reaching the main attraction which blows every 8 minutes or so. The first time we gathered to watch it, we took photos, and second, a video.  The main one which the area is name after, does not blow any more, but looking at the size of it, the tower of water blowing from it must have been immense! Of course, the whole area smelled of sulphur. 

The gift shop was quite big, although by now we had become accustomed to converting the prices of certain items, and this obviously had an impact on souvenirs. There is a mixture of “that’s far too expensive” a “not a bad price”.  I noticed that items I would usually spend £2-£3 were the price equivalent of £8, so decisions would have to be made on this holiday! Perhaps this might impact on future holiday purchases?

Geysir

Leaving Geysir, we arrived at Brekkurgerdi Guesthouse which was tucked away behind a complex of geothermally powered greenhouses, and there were quite a few trees here. No restaurant here, so we went to a place called Restaurant Mika which had the appearance of an American diner on the outside, but it was like a normal restaurant inside. Turns out this place specialised in langustines and chocolate. And yes, some langustines were served with a chocolate chilli sauce!  Mathew had seafood risotto and I had a small pizza. Stomachs full, we returned to our Guesthouse for the evening and made a few decisions on what to do on Thursday and Friday.

On Thursday we had planned on doing a waterfall walk, however we knew that the weather would probably not be in our favour. So, Mathew found details in an Icelandic magazine which I had picked up from the airport, about a guided tour into a lavatube. So, we booked it as it was reopening on June 1st.

Monday 29th May

Day 3

Skóga Museum

The morning greeted us with heavy rain, but we pressed on nonetheless! Breakfast was a generous buffet, and the worst thing was that the hot water was only available from the coffee machine which took 3 minutes to make a coffee. So this formed a long queue, mostly comprised of the tour groups!

Onward we went, firstly visiting Skóga Museum (of transport and communications) and a small living history sort of museum with traditional houses and an extra eclectic museum which had artefacts, paintings and even a couple of boats inside.  It was still raining heavily, so we had lunch which was minestrone soup followed by the softest cheesecake ever!

Skógafoss

Fully waterproofed, we headed on over to Skógafoss which was enormous and impressive! Fun to stand at the bottom of, definitely, but I would advise against walking up the steps to see it from the top – there’s not much to see there. Back down and in the car, my waterproofs had become saturated, leaving me with wet feet a wet patches on my trousers.  I dried off in the car and put new socks and shoes on, but the waterproof trousers were soaked.

We made our way to Seljalandsfoss, another waterfall, stopping off at the visitors centre about Eijafjallajókull, which was a small shop and a film about a family and farm in the hills next to the volcano and their story of survival during and after the eruption in 2010.

Seljalandsfoss

Onward to Seljalandsfoss, I only took photos because my wet waterproofs plus the cold wind made it feel super freezing, and I didn't want to saturate myself all over again, unlike Mathew – so I went back to the car whilst he walked behind the waterfall! I would have joined him if I wasn't so freezing cold!

The rain began to ease off  just a little as we arrived at our hotel. At first we weren’t sure where the hotel was because we only saw the restaurant with the same name. It turned out the hotel was right behind the restaurant, but there was no sign for it – I think that it had only been recently constructed, however, the room was nice, clean and warm, so we were able to dry off easily. We had dinner in the restaurant which was a bit like an American diner, and the food was basic but very nice and filling.

Sunday 28th May

Day 2

After a small but enjoyable breakfast, we set out quite early to continue travelling east to Jokulsárlón, which is a glacial lagoon where parts of the Vatnajökull glacier break off and flow into the sea. A huge tourist spot, our journey there was plagued by rain, fog, sea mist and although we knew there were mountains next to us, we could not see their peaks.  We stopped off to photograph them and ended up helping someone change her tyre! On our approach to Jokulsárlón, we saw three large glaciers which were pretty impressive!

Jokulsárlón

After having a simple sandwich lunch in the car which was really enjoyabe, we headed west towards Skaftafell Visitors Centre from where we first went on a walk to Skaftafoss waterfall, and then we went in the opposite direction to seethe foot of a glacier.  We didn’t have time to get too close, but it was still pretty impressive.

Skaftafoss

We made our way back to the car and travelled westward to Kirkjubaerjarklaustur,a I took lots of photos on the move of the mountains which we had not been able to see on the way there in the morning.  We found our hotel which seemed like it was in the middle of nowhere, and also fairly new in parts. We checked in really quickly and we were advised to book a table for dinner, which I did straight away. We settled in our room for a bit!I did some yoga to stretch out my legs after walking about 6 miles, and went for dinner. Mathew had the burger and I tried arctic char which turned out to have a really delicate flavour and it was also very light.