Iceland: The South Side

Jökulsárlón

When I went to Iceland last year, my whole family was jealous (as they should be) and complained that I didn’t take them. The excuse that they had school/work and didn’t have passports started to sound like just that: an excuse. So, we decided to go back!

This was a really important trip for me. It took seven loooong years to raise a pair of amazing kids to a point where they were FINALLY old enough to understand and enjoy a trip abroad. Iceland is really accessible from DC and is one of those countries that is just different enough to be truly novel, but not so different that it’s difficult to travel in or to explain those differences to a 4 and 6-year-old. We spent 8 days exploring Iceland and the Ring Road (the road that runs all the way around the island), then 3.5 days in London -- just because I’d never ventured outside of Heathrow and the Icelandic stopover program (Iceland Air, WOW) is THE BEST THING EVER.

Day 1: The Golden Circle

Our flight out of BWI left at 7pm EST and arrived at 5am IST (Icelandic Standard Time? I just made that up.) No one slept on the plane as I stupidly chose not to drug the kids, but when it was time to exit the flight, pick-up our rental car, and start, everyone was wide awake and excited for the adventure.

Our Yaris: it’s a miracle that our bags (and kids!) fit in this thing

Day 1 was simply reliving a tour I’d taken last September: The Golden Circle, which includes:

1. Thingvellir National Park: An amazing place where you can see the Eurasian and American tectonic plates pulling themselves apart. If that’s not enough, it’s also home to the world’s first parliamentary government.
2. Geysir: A geothermal area with one shining star, the geyser Strokkur, which goes off every 5-10 minutes.
3. Gullfoss: A multi-level, enormous and beautiful waterfall that will take your breath away.

For us, it also included a trip to the Laugarvatn Fontana Spa, a place I’m not sure I can do justice with words or pictures. In a week of amazing experience after amazing experience, this place was both Nathan and my favorite -- the entire trip. It’s a geothermally-heated series of pools, steam baths, and saunas, each with its own temperature. You can jump from one to the other for hours, and then, if you’re crazy (like we were), you can go jump in the beautiful glacial lake right next to it, which also provides amazing views throughout your visit. I don’t think I’ve ever been so relaxed in my life.

Thingvellir National Park 

Strokkur

Gullfoss

We were exhausted early, however, and ended up at a rather dumpy apartment hotel in Selfoss. The problem with Iceland is that it’s small and it’s not entirely ready to support the number of tourists it deserves. You have to book your hotels, especially when traveling with more than two people, early. We ended up staying at Airbnbs most of the trip.

For dinner, we had our first Icelandic Hot Dog Stand experience where we successfully ordered off of this menu:

Íslendingar elska pylsur

Day 2: Westman Islands

There was an important reason that we went to Iceland this time of year: seeing the midnight sun is on my life list and Iceland gets two weeks of midnight sun from June 16th to June 29th-ish each year. However, there was absolutely no way I was staying up until midnight given the jetlag. I set an alarm and...drumroll please…it was cloudy - wah wah. However, it was light as day and I was so thrilled I took a little walk down the street to the river, taking pictures. It was such a weird feeling. My brain was so screwed up that I probably could have gone for my typical morning run at midnight and thought nothing of it. I didn’t, I crawled back into bed and slept like a baby instead.

Midnight Sun (sort of)

I actually planned Day 2 around one of Nathan’s life goals: to see a puffin. We had tickets to go to Vestmanneayjar (Westman Islands), a pointy, mysteriously beautiful archipelago off Iceland’s Southern coast. The single city on the islands is Heimaey, a fishing village that lives in the shadow of several volcanoes. One of them is Eldfell, a volcano that erupted in 1973, sending lava into the city and causing the islands’ evacuation for months. The islands are also home to the largest puffin colony in the world: about 10 million birds.

We took a Puffin & Volcano tour around the island, learned about how the islanders still go out and collect eggs on the island cliffs, heard stories about the famous volcano eruption, went to the “windiest place in Europe” (which was quite nice that day), saw the world’s newest island (Surtsey) which is preserved as a scientific study outpost and, of course, saw puffins.

 The Westman Islands from the mainland

 Europe's Windiest Point

Heimaey from Eldfell (Photo Credit: Nathan King)

Puffins (Photo Credit: Nathan King)

We ended the tour at the island’s aquarium where we got to interact with an injured puffin and kittiwake chick.

 Alison & Her Puffin

Maddie and the Kittiwake Chick

The Westman Islands is really, really high on my list of favorite places in Iceland. Not because of the volcano or puffins, although those were both cool, but because it was amazingly scenic. We ate lunch at the Slippurinn and then climbed a hill near town to get a view from above. That was my favorite moment right there (it wasn’t even the tallest point on the island...I’ve got unfinished business here)!

We took a boat back to the mainland at 4pm and the rest of the day was no less exciting. We saw waterfalls, including one you could walk behind.

 Seljalandsfoss

Skógafoss

We saw the volcano, Eyjafjallajökull, that erupted in Iceland in 2010, shutting down air traffic from Europe.

We stopped at the black sand beach, Reynisfjara, and saw beautiful basalt columns, caves and soaring spires.

We drove past vast fields of lupine and through terrifying ancient lava splash zones.

We ended the day having an experience that I was really curious about. Many Icelanders build what they call a “summer cottage” and spend summer weekends in the countryside outside of Reykjavik. We spent the night in a summer cottage on a hill overlooking a moss-covered lava field. The view couldn’t he beat. The cabin couldn’t be cuter. I might be in love with Iceland.

Summer Cottage

Day 3: Hiking & Icebergs

Let’s take a minute to talk about the weather in Iceland, because these photos make it seem ideal and it is not. During our trip, the temperatures were always in the 50s (and I mean always because the sun never fully sets). That was a welcome change from the blistering summers of DC, but in Iceland, temperature is just one factor. It’s windy, it’s rainy, and the weather truly changes every 5 minutes (shut-up Kansas with your “If you don’t like the weather, wait 5 minutes T-shirts” you’ve got nothing on Iceland).

Having said that, what Iceland lacks in weather and comfort, it far exceeds expectations in pure landscape beauty and variability. THIS IS THE MOST BEAUTIFUL PLACE I HAVE EVER BEEN!! (Sorry, Utah and Glacier National Park, I still love you). I downloaded several books to my Kindle for the drive and didn’t touch them. I didn’t take naps because I thought I might miss something.

Here is the view of the midnight sun on Day 2 from our summer cottage.

Midnight Sun: Part II

Day 3 began with a short hike along the rim of Fjaðrárgljúfur Canyon. It is funky and amazing.

 This is a gem.

We then drove through an enormous rainstorm, over a bunch of one-lane bridges (which is mostly what you get on the ring road) to Skaftafell National Park. Iceland has Europe’s largest glacier, Vatnajökull (“Water Glacier” in English), and it sends glacial fingerlings through the mountains and makes them accessible for hikers and other revelers for fun and enjoyment. Skaftafell sits in the middle of two of these outlets and is one of the few places in the country with any trees. It was raining when we arrived, so we sat under an umbrella and ate fish and chips from the campground snack stand, hoping it would clear up. It didn’t, so we set off in the rain for Svartifoss (Black Falls). Dear god the kids complained the whole way up. This was the only time the whole trip when I wished I hadn’t brought them. They were excellent the rest of the trip, but I was super-annoyed that they were complaining about hiking 2.5 kilometers in the rain to this glorious sight.

 Svartifoss

Glaciers and in the foreground, part of a bridge that was washed away when a volcano under the glacier erupted and caused an epic flood.

Down the road a little ways is Jökulsárlón, a glacial lagoon where icebergs regularly break off and float happily toward the Atlantic Ocean. This place is magical and we spent a couple of hours enjoying what was now a beautiful, sunny day.

Icebergs!

Our pitstop for the night was Höfn, a small harbor town that’s famous for its langoustine. We stayed in a cute airbnb on the edge of town that had a horse farm in its backyard and walked the 20 minutes into town to have dinner at Pakkhús, a restaurant specializing in, of course, lobster.

This was, by far, the best meal we had in Iceland (this country is rightfully not famous for its cuisine as there’s only so much fish, lamb soup, burgers and hot dogs one can eat).

We walked past an outdoor, heated pool with slides (Icelanders love their Sundlaugin) and found a playground where I met a very nice Icelandic mother who told me all about living in Iceland. She was a pretty good salesperson. :)

A little hilltop in Höfn

At this point in the vacation, I’m always reminded of one of my favorite 30 Rock quotes: “For God’s sakes, Lemon. We’d all like to flee to the Cleve and club-hop down at the Flats and have lunch with Little Richard, but we fight those urges because we have responsibilities.”

Well, at this point in the trip, I don’t have responsibilities (except maybe for keeping everyone on the trip alive) and I’m only slightly tempted to move to Iceland. Maybe I’ll just get myself a little summer cottage there instead.

Icelandic Horses