Category: Iceland

Our final 3 days in Iceland have been spectacular!  On Thursday we drove our little rental car (which we’ve named ‘Silver Fox’) up island to an area called ‘The Snaefellsnes Peninsula’, which is filled with colourful harbour towns, lava fields, black sand beaches, and very impressive mountains.  I think we could be categorized as ‘mountain snobs’ given that we frequent the Alberta Rockies, but these Iceland peaks are a must see if you’re coming to Iceland.  There are no trees so they are raw beauty, and the contrast between the sea and the peaks is stunning.  We enjoyed a mostly sunny day driving the loop before tucking into the fishing village of Stykkishólmur.

The next day we saw the views a second time on our way back to Reyjkavik.  For the afternoon we went to a place with a 360 degree view of the city then took an enjoyable walk down to the beach below.  I guess hot dogs are a ‘thing’ here, so I had to try one!  Our evening consisted of trying some Iceladic beer, Thai food, and seeing some of the sights lit up.

We spent our last day relaxing in the Blue Lagoon. A perfect end to a really great vacation!

One last thing…

What a change from the Alberta gas prices we’ve been used to!  Conversion is kroner:dollar 100:1, which means we paid about $55 for 29 litres of fuel!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  KA-CHUNG KA-CHUNG KA-CHUNG!! 

  That was the sound that kept repeating in our hotel room this morning after we had a solid two hours of sleep.  It sounded like someone was banging on our wall with a pipe and there was no stopping it.  After calling the front desk it managed to fade away, only to return again an hour later.  This continued for the rest of the night until our alarm went off.  We felt like the walking dead as we made our way to the front desk to ask for a new room.  Luckily they could switch us so we went about our regularly scheduled day like a couple of champs.  

  First we rented a car and proceeded to take a few wrong turns…  This wasn’t going to stop us though.  We recalculated our route and began our golden circle tour.

  We started with the Geyser which shot its payload 30 meters into the air around every 5 minutes.  It was pretty impressive and it always got cheers from the steady crowd of tourists who were watching, cameras in hand.

The next stop on the tour was the Gullfoss Waterfall.  This is where our day started to turn around.  The sun finally made an appearance so we ended up taking a lot of beautiful pictures:

  We even managed to make it back to the Geyser and get a video of the event against a blue sky.  It was at this point that we realized that we could have called off the trip, stayed in bed, yelled at the hotel staff, or any combination of the above.  Instead we sucked it up, acted like calm human beings and were rewarded with a beautiful day.  By mid-day we were awake, happy, and had all but forgotten the sound of KA-CHUNG, KA-CHUNG, KA-CHUNG.

  Here are a few more random shots from our self guided tour:

That’s all for now, time to get a good night’s rest in a room on the other side of the hotel…

On our Edmonton to Iceland flight we used the ‘life hack’ of selecting the window and isle seats, hoping that no one would pick the single in the middle. High five for us!

We arrived in Reyjkavik at about 8am, which was about 1am our time. In true Olson fashion we tried hard to counteract the jet lag by spending time outside exploring the city and (in desperation) drinking a couple of coffees. Unfortunately it was really cold and we didn’t see the sun, but we were well prepared with our long johns and toques. We made it until about 3:00, when we crashed for a short nap before forcing ourselves to stay up until 9:00.

Today we woke up fresh and did some more exploring. When the sun peeked out for about 10 minutes we rushed up to the steeple of the church and caught some great views. Our next views were at the, um, educational phallological museum.

Tonight we went on our ‘warm baths, cool lights’ tour, which was a visit to a hot springs, a dinner of traditional Icelandic foods, and views of the Northern Lights. Before we left the forecast showed a 100% chance of cloud cover, meaning we wouldn’t be able to see the Aurora Borealis, but amazingly we got to stop twice on the way home to see them dance across the sky. Almost as amazing was the amount of tourists who were trying to take iPhone photos with the flash on. Our pictures aren’t awesome, but you can get the idea!