We woke up this morning with some brutal jetlag. We needed to get an early start since we had a lot of things to do, but peeling ourselves out of bed was incredibly hard. Even Lucy, who is usually all good in the morning, was struggling. Due to our late start, we just grabbed some tasty bagels at a cafe that we could eat in the car, and we were off. Reykjavik was a cute little town (it’s wild that it is by far the biggest city here, and yet only has 140k people), and it would have been nice to explore it more, but we’re leaving it for our last day here.
Our first stop was Þingvellir National Park (Yes, all the words here are very confusing and impossible to pronounce or remember). We get out of the car and realize… oh shit, it’s super cold. 0 degrees celcius. Everyone there is dressed like they are on an arctic expedition, with massive puffy coats, gloves, boots, hats, etc etc. I’m just wearing jeans and a hoodie with a wind breaker over it. Whoops.
The park is stunning. We wander around for 2 hours just taking it all in. There are small waterfalls, canyons, cool cliffs… and snow is everywhere. So cool.
Next stop was Geysir, an area with a bunch of geothermal activity. When we got there, it started snowing. It was honestly pretty surreal walking through this weird area with all these bubbling scalding hot steaming pools while freezing snow was falling from the sky. One of the geysers was active and we got to see it erupt which was exciting.
Afterwards, we drove to the Secret Lagoon. Due to all the geothermal stuff, Iceland has *tons* of hot springs, some of them super popular like the Blue Lagoon, and some of them a bit more low key like this one. Like i mentioned, it’s still *snowing*, so we go change into our swim stuff, and then walk outside in the freezing cold, frantically rushing to get in the water. Wow… it was *so nice*. It was really magical to be swimming in this hot geothermal pool while snow was falling all around us. I feel like i am going to use the word “magical” way too much during this trip, but Iceland really does have so many magical experiences.
After a tasty dinner of fish and chips, we drove to near another town to check into our “hotel”. That night, we were staying in an inflated bubble in the forrest. It’s literally just a platform in the forrest with a thin clear plastic bubble around it that is kept inflated by warm blowing air. So, you are basically sleeping in the wilderness, since you have no walls, and can see in all directions. Super unique experience. Unfortunately it was pretty foggy when we went to bed, so we couldn’t see much in the sky, but when i woke at some point in the middle of the night, i could see all the stars above. Truly special.
