Author: Vlad

This was it. Our final (half) day in Iceland. I woke up, tired as hell, rushed out to grab some final pastries and we frantically packed so we could be ready by the time the shuttle came. When we were finally packed, i looked over the details of the shuttle and it turned out that “hotel pickup” was actually a pickup at a bus station several blocks from the hotel. Oh crap. So we grab our stuff and rush over there. After waiting a bit, it doesn’t feel like the shuttle is coming, so I call the bus company and it turns out we missed the shuttle, but they said they would hold the main bus for 5 minutes if we grabbed a taxi to the bus terminal. We do. The taxi was $30 for a 6 minute ride (Sheesh, Iceland is expensive). We get over there and they tell us that they did hold the bus for *exactly* 5 minutes and now we’ve missed it. Uh, thanks. So now we have to take a taxi to the blue lagoon. This costs $160. Blargh. (Later, the fare onward from the Blue lagoon cost $115, so all in all $300 in taxi costs for the day. Fucking hell).

Anyways, the blue lagoon is one of Icelands most famous attractions. It’s a beautiful lagoon amidst black crumbly lava rock (in fact, there was a volcanic eruption here just earlier in the week and they had to evacuate the entire area). The water is a powder blue color with clouds of steam floating all around. Since it’s so close to the airport, people usually either do it first or last on their trip to Iceland. I’m super glad we did it last as it was the perfect way to cap off our trip. We spent three hours just bobbing around in the hot waters and relaxing. They have a swim up bar where you can get beers or slushies, and also a place where you can get all these fancy mud mask things. I decided to go for it and hopefully my face is now glowing as promised! Dammit, it better glow!

So that’s a wrap. Our little nine day trip to Iceland was done. It all just kind of flew by, but it also feels like we did *so much* with our time here. Waterfalls, glaciers, black sand beaches, etc… Iceland has it all. A truly surreal and unique place, it’s so weird to think that nobody really came here before just like 15 years ago, and now it’s such a popular destination. 

Though we saw pretty much everything we wanted to see, the one thing we didn’t get to see was the northern lights. Visibility was never that great during our time here, and it just never worked out somehow. Oh well, maybe some other time.

Compared to the rest of Iceland, Reykjavik is bustling. By far Iceland’s biggest city, it still only has 139k people. It’s kind of hilarious that multiple people in Iceland told me that they moved out of Reykjavik because it was too hectic and busy for them, but back home Reykjavik would be like a small town at best. But, it’s a cool little town. The two or three main streets are full of restaurants, shops, bars, etc. It’s a fun spot to spend a day, and does get pretty lively at night.

And the food is really good in this town! We had some great meals there, really good cocktails, and really good pastries. Definitely a contrast to the rest of the places where we ate in Iceland. Tbh, I hadn’t really been blown away by the food on the trip so far. Like, there wasn’t anything really that stood out as definitively Icelandic that was unique and I’d actually want to search out to have again. Sure, there is lots of smoked salmon and herring here, but i’ve had that millions of times back home. They serve a lot of lamb and arctic char etc, but again there wasn’t much about the lamb/fish that made it seem any different than simply prepared lamb or fish back home. They are crazy about the Skyr here, but it kinda just seems like yogurt. The traditional lamb soup just tasted like what chicken soup would taste like if you used lamb instead of chicken. Lots of fish and chips.. but that’s not unique either, lol. And to add insult to injury, the food was always crazy expensive. When you are dropping $65 for an entree, you expect it to be pretty damn good… but mostly it all was just “ok”. But, the food in Reykjavik was different. We had some really interesting dishes w/ interesting nordic flavors. And there was actual variety in food, too. This was the only place in the country where we saw ramen shops, indian restaurants, and mediterranean food. Pastries here are bomb… I even had a creme brûlée donut where they dip it in sugar and torch the top. Yum.

We didn’t do too much while we were here other than just eat and shop. We did go see the famous church and we wandered around a really cool but creepy sculpture garden.

The worst part of our stay here was the hotel we stayed in. Omg… the bathroom smelled something insane. I don’t think i have ever experienced anything like it in my life. It was like, instead of bleach, they just used piss to clean the bathroom instead. I’ve been in many a disgusting gas station bathroom in my day, some that have smelled like multiple generations of truck drivers since the early 1900s have somehow pissed on every single surface just for fun or possibly out of spite. But somehow, this bathroom in our hotel smelled even worse. Even w/ the door closed, the horrific smell would waft into the rest of the room. Blargh.

This morning we drove out to Stuðlagil Canyon. It was a nice drive and we were actually able to drive w/ the window down for the first time this whole trip since it was warmer today than it has been (49 degrees today!). It was a 1.5 mile hike from the parking lot, and after walking a bit, we came upon a frozen waterfall tumbling down over a cliff face made of rectangular basalt columns. This looked like something out of one of those movies where the world freezes over. I dunno, maybe this is more common than I think, but I’ve never seen a giant frozen waterfall before and it kind of blew my mind.

We kept walking and eventually came to the canyon itself. It was a beautiful canyon with turquoise water and basalt columns on both sides. Super unique looking. I really wanted to climb down into the canyon, but a lot of the ground was covered in snow, and much of that had frozen over, making it very slippery and icy. After searching a bit, we found a spot where we could kind of scamper down part way, and then a very icy downhill part that we were able to essentially slide down.

It was really picturesque down inside the canyon by the water, and we hung out for a bit, but then we were in a bit of a predicament. How do we get out of this canyon now? The icy part that we had slid down was way too slippery to climb back up. The rest of the canyon walls were mayyyybe climbable, but looked pretty sketchy. There had been two people inside the canyon when we had come down, and they had made it out by climbing, but we really didn’t want to attempt it. Luckily, someone was just climbing down into the canyon, and had an idea. He grabbed a massive rock and repeatedly smashed into the ice slide every 4 feet or so. We were then able to use those divots in the ice as footsteps since they were less slippery than the rest of the ground. Nice!

On the drive back, we spotted some horses really close to the road and went over to take some photos of them. They were super friendly and Lucy got to pet them for a while. They clearly were hoping that we’d have some food for them, but sadly, we had nothing.

Afterwards, we drove out towards this town called Seyðisfjörður which is on the eastern coast of Iceland. To get there, we had to drive over the mountains and up there it was snow as far as the eye can see. Eventually we started descending, and we could see this small village stretching along the water below. Seyðisfjörður is a super cute town. Pretty tiny, just a handful of streets and some houses scattered around. There’s maybe like two restaurants in the entire town. We drove up to one and they said they weren’t open yet. When we asked when they were gonna be open, she said not until May, lol. In a lot of these small towns here, restaurants and shops shut down when it’s not the high season, so there was literally like nothing going on in this town. The only “attraction” in town is this rainbow brick road that leads to the town church. It’s definitely more of a hang out and take in the scenery place than a place where you actually do stuff.

After driving back to Egilsstadir, we took our flight back to Reykjavik for the last bit of our trip.

Before we left for Iceland, I had made a ton of plans for the trip. Most of the days, there were two or three different sights to see or activities to do… it’s been a super active trip. But today, we had no plans. We needed to get from the glacier area to Egilsstaðir, a town on the far east side of Iceland. It was gonna be a long drive. Initially, i was going to look up things to do/see on the way, but I more or less ran out of time. And anyways, it turned out that the drive was much longer than i expected it to be, about 230 miles.

So, we just spent the day driving. And wow, it was a hell of a drive. The east side of Iceland is basically a ton of fjords, a crazy zig zag of winding coastline. This is definitely one of those “it’s all about the journey and not the destination” kind of things, where just the drive itself is phenomenal. The scenery is totally breathtaking, with beautiful coastlines, giant snow capped mountain peaks, quaint tiny villages with that classic Icelandic architecture, and horses/sheep grazing. I was having to pull the car over time and time again to pop out and take photos of this and that. Also, along the way, we stopped at some random village and had a nice lunch of the local specialty, langostines, which are kind of like mini lobsters.

Though we didn’t really “do anything” today except drive, it ended up being a super nice day.

One thing that we really wanted to squeeze into our time here was to go see this plane wreck. Back in 1973, a Navy plane ran out of fuel and crash landed on the beach here in Iceland, and it just got left there to decay for decades. Back in the day, you could just drive out to go see it, but somehow it became popular recently, and now you have to take a shuttle to go see it (or walk 5 miles each way). We were able to go check it out and it was super cool. I really love ghost towns and other things like this where man made things slowly get taken over by the elements… very eerie and kind of post-apocalyptic vibe.

After the wreck, we left the Vik area, and started driving eastward. We made a stop at Fjaðrárgljúfur, a really popular and beautiful canyon (partially made extra famous because it was in a Justin Bieber music video). It was just a short stroll up the side of the canyon, but the views were really incredible.

After we kept driving a bit, i decided to stop for gas. This turned out to be super confusing. First i couldn’t figure out how to pay. When i finally figured that out, i took the gas pump and tried to put it into the gas tank. Strangely enough, it wasn’t really fitting into the opening. I tried to jam it in there as much as i could, but it really didn’t seem to fit right. But, i guess this must be right, and maybe just feels like it doesn’t fit? So, i start pumping the gas, and of course, seconds later the gas starts spraying back out, and there is a big puddle of gasoline, and there is gas all over my hands and the car. Dammit. So i take the pump out, and try re-adjusting it. It still really doesn’t want to fit in there, but i give it another go and the gas sprays all over the place again. Wtf do i do now? I don’t really want to go ask some rando for help, and look like a total idiot who doesn’t even understand something simple like pumping gas… though I guess now that i’ve failed pumping gas twice and am standing in a puddle of gas, it’s probably too late not to look like an idiot?. I was just about to admit defeat when i noticed there was a second pump with a much thinner nozzle, next to the one i was using. Omg. I really am oblivious. So, this second nozzle fit in my tank perfectly and i was able to get gas finally.

After driving a bit more, we finally get to our destination of the day: Vatnajökull ice cap. This is the second largest glacier in the world outside of the poles, and is absolutely massive at 3,000 square miles. The thing is so big that it has 30 different outlet glaciers coming out of it. As we drove along, we saw glacier after glacier, just monumental amounts of ice in various shades of white and blue.

We had a tour booked to hike on the Falljökull glacier, so they geared us up w/ helmets, crampons, and ice axes and drove us up to near the glacier itself. Before our hike started, we got a fairly depressing talk about the glacier (depressing because the glacier is receding at an alarming rate, and they think that maybe 15 years from now, there wont be anymore glacier hikes here), which made us feel extra grateful that we could be here and get to experience this. Walking on the glacier was awesome and really felt like an out of this world experience. None of the photos i took can do it any justice at all (tbh, it feels like a lot of the things i have been photographing here, just dont get captured well in photos). The interesting formations of ice were fascinating, with random crevasses dropping down dozens of feet, and blue shimmery streams in places. At one point we got to drink from a river of glacier water which was incredibly refreshing and fun.

After the tour, we checked in at our hotel. We’re staying in a fancier hotel for a couple of days and this place is so nice. It’s right on this beautiful lagoon with views of the snowy mountains in the distance. There’s a bar that makes some super good cocktails (best in Iceland I’ve had) and tasty mocktails for Lucy. And they have hot tubs outside where you can soak while soaking in the beautiful views. It really is an amazing spot to stay!

Also, today, on our 4th day in Iceland, it was finally the first day that we didnt have to buy any new clothes!

This was a very special day of the trip because it was Lucy’s birthday! After a quick breakfast, Lucy opened her bday gifts, which were wrapped in a pillowcase because I’m trying to start a new trend where pillowcases replace gift wrap since it is better for the environment and not at all because I ran out of time to gift wrap anything before leaving to come to Iceland. Having all the gifts in basically a big sack is also vaguely Santa-like, which makes it even more fun. I think?

We then had to go and buy rain pants and rain boots given how insanethat rain was t he day before. So far we have had to buy extra clothes 3 out of 3 days that we have been in Iceland.

We then went to go check out Reynisdrangar, these large blocky basalt sea stacks that are under a mountain on a black sand beach. It’s so weird how these rocks are all rectangular shaped. And, the black sand beach was ranked as one of the most beautiful non-tropical beaches in the world. The waves were super intense on this beach, and would often race super quickly out to shore, often times drenching people who were not paying enough attention.

Afterwards, we went to go horseback riding! Iceland has this unique special breed of horses, they are a bit smaller than the average horse, more fluffy, can withstand crazy cold temps, and have some very special ways of running that no other horses have figured out how to do, no matter how hard they try. They are so special that Iceland has laws that no other horses can enter Iceland, and if an Icelandic horse leaves the country, it can never return. Even if it wanted to come back and visit for a little horsey vacation, it wouldn’t be allowed to, and would probably have to vacation elsewhere (Hawaii?). Anyways, the horses are insanely adorable, and it was super fun to get to ride them on the beautiful black sand beach.

We had a little time to kill, so we went to go check out the Yoda cave, so called because it looks like… well… Yoda, obviously. If something like this was out in the US, it would probably be overrun w/ tourists, but when we drove out there, we had it all to ourselves. It definitely did look like Yoda.

One of the popular activities in this area is this Lava Show. Iceland has a crapton of volcanos (130), and eruptions have had a major impact on the country, often times killing tons of people and/or disrupting airplane travel worldwide. Some people who are descendants of a lava eruption survivor, got together and created this experience where you go into a room, learn a lot about lava, and then they actually pour molten hot lava into the room, and do stuff like throw blocks of ice on it, or smash it with metal bars. I wasn’t so sure if this would be amazing or super cheezy, but luckily it turned out to be the former. Turns out, lava is awesome… who knew?

We finished off the day by going to the fanciest restaurant in town to celebrate Lucy’s birthday. Lucy got a few mocktails with dinner and a fun dessert that looked like a rock garden, but the rocks were chocolate and the dirt was… also chocolate.

We woke up in our plastic bubble with the forest all around us.  Quite a special way to start the day!  

Went out to breakfast… and damn, food is so expensive here!  Club sandwich at a diner – $30.  Brutal.

First thing on our agenda this morning was to go to this geothermal river, Reykjadalur.  I’ve heard of many hot springs, but have never heard of a whole river with warm water to bathe in, so this sounded super interesting.  unfortunately, i hadnt done a ton of research on this beforehand, so as i was reading about it in the morning, i realized that this was literally just a river out in the middle of nowhere.  No amenities at all.  Which meant we’d need our own towels.   But… we had no towels.  This lead to a bunch of frantic googling for stores that sell towels in the tiny “town” (village?) we were in, with zero luck.  

Finally, it turned out that there was one single store that sold towels and would be open that day (on a Sunday), but it didn’t open until noon.  Ugh… this really would fuck up our day, since we had a bunch of things on our itinerary, and waiting until noon would mess everything up.  Maybe we should just skip it?  I ask Lucy how badly she wants to go to the geothermal river and she says “very badly”.  I do some thinking and figure out a “solution”., we would just bring some extra shirts with us and use them as towels.  That should work… i think?

We drive out to the river, and head out on the trail…. it’s a 45 minute hike to the river.  It’s basically freezing outside.  Actually, scratch that, it is *literally* freezing outside.  Wind is blowing so hard that we are being blown back and forth across the trail as we walk and it’s hard to even take steps sometimes.  Not a perfect day for a swim, lol.  After 20 minutes of slogging, Lucy looks defeated, and i ask if she wants to turn back.  She does, and we give up.  We head back and buy yet more warm clothes.

The next two things on the agenda were two of Iceland’d most famous waterfalls.  As we drive to the first one, it starts raining.  Dammit.  We get to the falls and step out of the car.  It’s full on storming.  According to the weather report its 34 degrees Fahrenheit.  But due to the wind etc, in the “feels like” section, it says that it’s “fucking freezing as hell”.  Ok fine, it actually said it feels like 5 degrees Fahrenheit, but that’s basically the same thing.  So, we walk to the falls, being blown all over the place and being absolutely pummeled w/ rain.  Within minutes, my pants are sopping wet and my sneakers are soaked.

The falls themselves (Seljalandsfoss) are amazing.  Really stupendous.  And, one of the cool things about these falls is that you can walk behind the falls and look at them from the other side.

We drive on to the next falls (Skogafoss).  Another really spectacular set of falls.  But afterwards, we’re just spent.  We get back to the car, totally drenched and shellshocked from the rough weather.  We had one more thing to do on our itinerary for the day, but we just can’t muster the energy for it.  We decide to skip it and just drive onward to the hotel in Vik.

As we get close to Vik, the scenery gets more and more snowy.  Due to the weather, visibility is murky in the distance, and it’s just white everywhere, with giant snowy mountains coming out of the fog as you get closer to them.  It’s really ethereal and beautiful out here… a totally different landscape than the forests of Tahoe back home.  This is more desolate, almost haunting in some way, yet mesmerizing. It was really a beautiful drive.

We finally arrive in Vik.  It’s a winter wonderland.  We gratefully change out of our wet clothes, and eat some delicious burgers at a brewery nearby.  It was definitely an adventure of a day.  I kept reading before the trip that everyone should expect Iceland to be unpredictable and extreme, and I can definitely see why.

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.

For Lucy’s spring break, we decided to go to Iceland for 9 days. For some strange reason, I’ve never really been interested in going to Iceland, but then recently got super excited about the place.

They call it “the land of fire and ice” (not to be confused with “the song of ice and fire” with the dragons, zombies, and incest etc) because of all the volcanic activity and frozen glaciers. It really sounds like a mysterious and incredible spot. From what I’ve read, there are two Icelands: Iceland in the winter with it’s brutal storms, snow, darkness, and freezing weather and Iceland in the summer where everything is lush and green and the days stretch for hours. We’re going in the shoulder season in between the two, so it’s kind of hard to predict what we’re really gonna get.

Work has been bonkers this week, so i was frantically working right up until i started packing. I literally started packing at 4PM… for my 6:30PM flight. Our flight wasn’t super eventful, just the usual screaming babies, weird smells, and trouble sleeping. We had a brief stopover in London where I ate the worst potstickers I have ever encountered in my entire life. This is impressive because I have eaten a ton of potstickers in my day, and they have more or less always at the very least been “decent”, whereas these were absolute bland garbage that tasted like they were wrapped in crumbly cardboard. It was almost impressive how awful they were. Anyways, we survived our layover, and the next flight. Upon entering Iceland, immigration started interrogating me about my child and asking if i have a note from her other parent that shows they know she is crossing international borders. Now, I probably looked like shit and haggard after barely sleeping the last many hours, but I didn’t realize I looked like a child abductor. After a bunch of back and forth, and me showing them a text message I had sent Jamie about us arriving in Iceland, the grumpy agent finally let us in with an annoyed look that seemed to say she still thought i may or may not be a kidnapper. Crisis averted! Woo! We’re officially in Iceland!

We went to get our rental car, which they were out of, so we got upgraded to a fancy ass luxury Volvo. This thing has so many buttons and features, i can barely figure out how to use it, but it is dope! It even has a steering wheel that heats up… who knew these kind of things even existed?! So we finally step outside of the airport and… it’s snowing! Wow, we totally didn’t expect that at all! It was a really amazing and magical way to start off our trip!

We drove to Reykjavik and had our first meal. Food was good… lamb and arctic char. Lucy tried creme brulee for the first time. We briefly considered exploring town, but we were pretty beat, so just crashed out.