The first day was the flight - it was a red eye from the US to Iceland so I am taking a 'guess' that when I was flying by Greenland it was the previous day, but I have no idea (and it most likely was not). But lets pretend that I was still on US time. Anyways - it was awesome to see the mountains of Greenland rising out of the ocean. So beautiful! Also much less green than ICEland.
The first step for us after getting the car was to go to the Blue Lagoon - about the only thing our brainpower could handle after being awake for 20+ hours. The Blue Lagoon is a tourist trap, but it is a super awesome tourist trap. Giant pool of warm water in a lava field? Yes! And a bunch of saunas of various degrees of steamyness? Yes! The smell of sulfur was a little overwhelming but worth it. The only problem is that the sulfur does horrible things to your hair - mine was a tangly mess for a couple of days after we went even though I shampooed and conditioned twice. I loved the Blue Lagoon - the Myvatn Nature Baths are the cheaper version of it but not quite as impressive - smaller and not as good of saunas. After this we just went and collapsed at the hostel with a little bit of wandering around the city in between.
The next day we did the 'Golden Circle'. The geyser area was a lot of fun because Strokkur erupts every 5-10 minutes so it is not very long to wait until the next one. I LOVE this photo for capturing the water just coming out of the ground.
The following day was fairly bad weather. We did get to see some beautiful waterfalls but the highlight was going to the Jokulsarlon lagoon and looking at the icebergs. Hundreds of icebergs float in the lagoon and are of the most magnificent color. We even did a boat tour in order to get closer to them - no Titanics were pulled in the making of this photo.
Seeing sheep is not specific to the next day - we saw sheep every day. In quantities larger than people, horses and cows combined. They wander the countryside/highlands in the summer and then the farmers gather them up in the fall to get inside for the winter. I think they are adorable.
I ADORE this photo. This is Viti crater in the Myvatn area. That is Ryan walking away toward the crater. I think the wide angle shot really makes this photo look 'epic'. Capture the beautiful crater and the landscape. It even kind of looks like Ryan is going off to run into the lake?
The next day we spent a while in the Myvatn area again. These craters are on the south side of the lake, but they are not actually craters. They are this shape because they gathered up steam I believe and then dried in this shape, and not because they were all erupting volcanoes.
This is Hvitserkur - an amazing rock formation on the northern coast of Iceland. The white color on the rocks is all bird droppings - the area is filled with all types of birds. We decided not to go down to the beach in front of the rock because of the amount of birds present. One of the birds of that area has a tendency to dive bomb humans and pierce their skull (or other part of your body). Their eggs get stepped on by beach dwellers so it is understandable why they hate humans. Anyways - we didn't take a chance and admired the rocks from afar.
The highlight of the trip for me was seeing puffins. We went to Latrabjarg, which is the western-most point of Iceland to see the great puffin colonies there. The birds do not have land predators so they do not mind when you get inches away from them. They are clumsy and adorable. And they come out in thousands every evening when they come home from fishing. This was by far the highlight of the trip - to be sitting on top of bird cliffs surrounded by puffins (and other birds). A must for any Iceland visitor (from mid-June to mid-August when the puffins are there).
We actually loved the puffins so much that we came back the following day to visit them again. There are many more puffins out during the sunset hours, but there are a few puffins each day that decide not to go fishing. :) Most of them were actually laying and dozing off.
The last day in Iceland was spent in the Snaefellsjokull national park (and peninsula). The park is centered around the volcano/glacier pictured and is filled with amazing lava fields, chasms and rock beaches. I though it was the perfect relaxing end of the trip day. I wish we were there when the snows had melted a little more though so we could have driven up closer to the glacier. But this was the case for the whole country - it was a cold summer so the snow line was a lot lower than usual for the time of year.
And to finish off - these are our bags headed back from Iceland on the light rail in Seattle. An end to a beautiful trip.
Sorry for the short summary - I have been procrastinating on this for long enough. There are a lot more photos on flickr, and a lot more things that we did, but this is a short summary/advertisement of Iceland.
