Chasing Winter - Days 10 & 11 (The South Coast and Blue Lagoon)

Day 10

Today we toured the South Coast of Iceland. It was amazing! I think Iceland has to be the most interesting country I’ve ever been to in terms of the landscape. We saw volcanoes, lava rocks, glaciers, waterfalls, sea stacks, and black sand beaches all in a day. Not only that but the weather is crazy! The first couple of days here have been so nice. Cold, but sunny and clear so not too bad at all. Silly me left my waterproof pants at the hotel because I really didn’t need them yesterday and it was kind of annoying to wear so many layers, so I decided to just stick with my jeans. Well, today, I needed them! It went from sunny and clear to unbelievably windy and sleeting sideways. We were walking to a glacier and I got soaked in about 5 minutes. Literally 10 minutes later the sun was out and it was great again. Crazy!

Here is a picture of the glacier! Isn’t it amazing? Some people went on a hike on the glacier but we went to the beach instead. Notice the beautiful blue skies. This was about 15 minutes after the wind/sleet storm!

I am so glad we went to the beach… it was not your normal beach. First of all it was black sand and pebbles. All of the beaches in Iceland are black sand beaches because of the volcanoes. I brought a bag of black beach pebbles back for vase filler or something. Forget little trinkets, this will be my Iceland souvenir! And then there were the sea stacks. We saw those in La Push and again here. I LOVE sea stacks, they are so cool. They make San Diego beaches seem so boring.

Oh, and look at this crazy cliff! It reminds me of the Rock Biter from The Never-ending Story. It was so amazing looking. You can’t tell from these pics but the wind here was crazy. It even pushed my mom over when we were walking!

We drove to tons of waterfalls. Iceland has hundreds of them! The road on the way was curvy even though it could have been straight because Icelanders believe in elves (really).  So much so that they will build a road around what they believe to be an elf home so that they don’t disturb, consequently Iceland’s roads don’t always make much sense. I couldn’t grab a picture of this because we were driving but in the middle of nowhere there were tiny little doors on big rocks. These were the elf homes.

Here are a few more pics of one of the waterfalls we went to. LOVE the rainbow! It was so beautiful!

After our tour we went out for a fancy lobster dinner. It is a good thing that the only food we had to buy in Iceland was our dinners because food in Iceland was EXPENSIVE! So we just decided to go for it and eat like queens. It was delicious!

We tried to see the Northern lights again tonight but they still didn’t show. I am very sad as I was dying to see them but oh well, you can’t control Mother Nature. I will just have to come back I guess!

Day 11

Today was our last day in Iceland. We went to the Blue Lagoon. It was so perfect!!! For the last two weeks we have been waking up early and going to bed late and walking on average 10 miles a day so soaking in hot geothermal baths before boarding our flight was the perfect ending to our trip. We floated around for hours letting the silica waters soothe our skin. We got algae masks and silica mud masks. Our skin feels amazing. I would love to go back just to soak in the Blue Lagoon some more.

 

We are now back in Seattle and tomorrow morning mom will fly back to Idaho and I to San Diego. It has been a great trip! It was really great spending time with my mom. Now that I know she is so adventurous I will have to suggest more trips! Alaska maybe? The Northern Lights are still pretty high on the bucket list so I see more trips to the great white north in my future.

In spite of the fact that we missed the lights, I would say we had a great trip! We packed a ton into the last couple of weeks and I feel satisfied with my vacation. I feel ready to go home. Fortunately I had the foresight to take a couple of extra days to recover before going back to work. I don’t have to jump back into the daily grind until Friday! The best part of vacation? Going back home, curling up in my own cozy bed and sleeping in, then lounging around in my P.J.’s all day and binge watching Downton Abbey for two days. After all of these adventures, I am exhausted! Good night world and thanks for tuning in…

Chasing Winter - Days 7,8 & 9 (Reykjavik and the Golden Circle)

Day 7

Today we got up and went back down to Pike Place Market. We didn’t get our fill yesterday and had to spend a couple more hours exploring. We actually ended up getting some great local smoked salmon and homemade garlic jelly along with some dried fruit and nuts to bring with us to Iceland. We will be going on a couple of day trips so this will make a perfect picnic. I also found some perfect hand knitted woolen mittens to put over my gloves. Now that I am actually using my gloves I realize that I need more warmth! (It is hard to tell when winter clothes shopping in San Diego!)

We got to the airport in the early afternoon and parted ways with Cheryl. If you see her, give her a big hug because she got stuck in San Francisco for a looooong time! By long time I mean, mom and I flew all the way to Iceland and explored Reykjavik for a few hours before she made it back to San Diego. How horrible!!!

Well, we missed the Tardis in Portland but at least she got a picture with Dr. Who before we left!

Our flight, on the other hand, was painless! We met a few people who purchased the same package we did so we compared notes on our plans and were just basically giddy together – going to Iceland! I tried to force myself to sleep on the plane even though it was only 3:30. I didn’t sleep much but I rested my eyes pretty well in preparation for the next day!

Day 8

We arrived to Iceland at 7:00am. Ready to hit the ground running! We checked into our hotel and took a shower and then we were out the door. The secret to getting over jet lag is not to stop moving! Before we left the hotel, we grabbed some breakfast in the communal room. We met a woman who went out on a Northern Lights tour the night before and got a spectacular show. She was raving about the breathtaking beauty of it all! I couldn’t help but start to get excited even though I have been telling myself that seeing the Northern Lights is just icing on the cake and it probably won’t happen and not to get my hopes up. I couldn’t help it though. The woman said that the night started at a 3 and ended up at a 7! (The lights are graded on a scale of 1-10 and 3 is a good show only getting better from there. I have been watching the forecast since Christmas and have only seen it hit 4-5 a handful of times) Last night was a 7?!? Tonight was forecasted to be a 3 and the skies were clear of clouds so I was sure we were going to hit the jackpot!

Completely pumped, we headed out for our day in Reykjavik. We started with the Hallgrímskirkja, which is a huge Lutheran church, and if you climb to the top you can see all of Reykjavik. It was the perfect day. Clear skies and warm-ish (for Iceland) weather. I could not stop taking pictures!

We then walked along the water front and saw the Harpa Concert Hall and the famous Reykjavik sculpture, the Solfar Sun Voyager.

We got some lunch at Bæjarins Beztu Pylsur, which is a hotdog stand in the middle of the city that Iceland is famous for. The hotdog has different ground meats in it, lamb, I think, and is served with fried onions and mustard and a special sauce. It looks pretty gross but I liked it. My mom not so much! (like the little hot dog holder?)

Our hotel is on the main shopping street so we walked through all the shops. They sell tons of great woolen items – hats, sweaters, mittens, etc. It’s too bad I live in San Diego where I could never where them! Oh well, fewer things to buy.  Reykjavik is a really tiny city (the population of Iceland is about 320,000 and two-thirds live in Reykjavik) so we walked the city pretty thoroughly in a few hours. We went back to our hotel to grab a quick nap and try to recover a bit from our flight. 

When we got up we headed out to dinner. My friend, Jen,  was here three weeks ago and she sent me some restaurant recommendations so that has been great! We went to a restaurant called 3 Frakkar and decided to enjoy some of the local cuisine. Mom had whale steak and I had horse steak. The horse was really good – like really flavorful beef. The whale… not so much. Could have just been the texture. It was served very rare and I found the flavor pretty strong. We were going to try puffin as well but it is not in season right now.  I normally don’t post pictures of my food but I normally don’t eat like this either so here you go:

Horse:

Whale:

After dinner we boarded the boat to go on a three hour tour to see the Northern Lights. I was already worried because the earlier forecast of 3 dropped down to 1.  Nonetheless, we had to try. We got all bundled up in everything we brought and then put on jumpsuits over it all. Like the look? Ha ha…

All of these clothes were great. We were on top of the boat for hours and stayed toasty warm. As the boat sailed out into the dark waters, the guide shared all about the science behind the lights and then recited Icelandic poetry and sang Icelandic songs about the lights, trying to seduce them into coming out. It was the equivalent of a rain dance and given the fact that we were all just staring into the sky waiting, it was quite entertaining… for the first hour… after that, I started to get over it. The guide kept telling us to look over there because there is a faint green shadow and if we can squint really hard we might be able to see something. He kept telling us not to lose hope, they could still show up. I’m sorry buddy, there are not dancing for us tonight. By that point, I was just ready to go to sleep. The red eye flight had caught up with me and I was tired and grumpy that we missed the best Northern Lights show by one day and was just over it. Oh well… no lights tonight. 

Day 9

Today we took the Golden Circle Tour. It covers a few main attractions in Iceland - The Thingvellir National Park, Gullfoss waterfall, Geysir hot spring & Haukadalur thermal area, Hveragerdir earthquake town, and the waterfall Faxi.Our guide, Javier, picked us up. He is from Spain and moved to Iceland to study geology 16 years ago, fell in love with the country and stayed. It was great to have a geologist as a guide; we learned tons of interesting information about this crazy country.  Iceland is filled with volcanos and glaciers, and sits on the tectonic plates of North America and Eurasia. We went to two different waterfalls – Faxi and Gullfross.
It really isn’t that cold out right now but there is still tons of ice.

Then we went to see Geysir, which is the oldest known geyser and is where the name came from. It explodes every 5 minutes or so which is pretty awesome!

Then we went to Thingvellir National Park which is were the tectonic plates meet. It is also the home of the oldest Viking parliament. It was cool walking around there imagining Viking settlements.

Tonight we went to a restaurant called Sjavargrillid, another recommendation from Jen. Once we got seated we discovered that they had a guest chef in for the weekend and there was only one menu option tonight: a four-course meal. It looked pretty amazing so we decided to splurge! Again, more pictures of food, but seriously it was great!

Course 1 – some kind of sushi

Course 2 – fried fish and lobster tails

Course 3 – lamb and lamb heart (don’t know which was which but both were amazing!)

Course 4 – hazelnut cake, skyre, and blood oranges

Everything was delicious!

Oh, walking back to the hotel, and around the city for that matter is crazy! I have never felt like such a tourist. I am looking at a map and trying to pronounce the street names and sounding so ridiculous. If I need directions I end up just point at the map and grunting. I feel like a stupid American. But seriously, Icelandic is crazy! Can you pronounce any of these streets?

Aðalstræti

Ægisgata

Æsuborgir

Bjarnarstígur

Bókhlöðustígur

Drafnarstígur

lyðrugrandi

Skólavörðustígur

And my internet is defaulting to Icelandic now that I am here and I have to keep translating pages back to English to read them! So crazy!

I do have to say though, that the Icelandic people are incredibly nice! Every person I have spoken to have bent over backwards to be helpful. It is such a friendly culture. I am really enjoying the people.

Anyway, we decided to go back to the hotel and turn in early because we were still fairly tired today from our flight. Of course, mom is sleeping and I am blogging so I don’t know how effective that plan will be.  Another big day tomorrow so I will call it a night!