Nnnn-Iceland!

What a spectacular place! There is so much to see and do there; the 1½ days that we had to do stuff in just wasn’t enough to do it all.

The scenery driving around was pretty stunning – so different than anything we’d ever seen before. The roads were fabulous, with plenty of places to pull off and enjoy the view. I was totally awed by the size of the tyres on some of the buses and tourist company 4WD’s – can understand the need for them, just never seen their like before; didn’t see very many cars out and about though.

View out one apartment window of the Perlan

... and out the other side

 

 

 

Sheep roaming free near the highways, no fences to keep them off the road...!

 

 

Good Morning Reykjavik

 

 

Huge tyres on that truck!

 

 

 

 

 

Sign seen on the highways in Reykjavik itself...

Cam in a lump of lava by the waterfront

 

 

The view from our apartment room was pretty awesome – once you got past the buildings you could see one of Reykjavik two harbours, and the mountains beyond them. On the other side there were views across town to the Perlan – a huge storage facility for the geothermally heated water. But more on that later.

In the short time we had, we decided to tick off the major tourist attractions that were pretty close to Reykjavik itself, namely Geysir (which coined that name for every skyward-shooting jet of superheated water the world over), Gullfoss – a huge (though not very high) waterfall, and the Blue Lagoon – a hot spring in the middle of the laval plain that has a beautiful ice blue colour because of the silicates in the water, and that cost Calum and I $100 to get into (kids were free when accompanied by a paying adult). I’ll let the photos do all the talking for me about these attractions…

 

 

 

Playing in the hot water, wondering why their fingers are getting burnt

Before the geyser goes off, all the water gets sucked back in...

 

 

 

 

 

 

Rain on the way

Silica mud masks

What is the name of that drink again?

Calum and Danielle were feeling poorly during our time in Iceland, and didn’t feel up to exploring, so I dragged Cam on a nearly 4-mile walk to the Perlan - complete with observation deck on top of the storage tanks and indoor geyser...

 

 

 

the Hallgrimskirkja (an episcopal church) complete with statue in honour of Liefur Erikson (first European to travel to North America)....

 

 

and the sculpture of the Sun Voyager, which commemorates the arrival of the Vikings in Iceland.

 

And unless I can find puffins a little closer to home, who knows, I might even end up back there one day.

Jo. x