Then winter never quite showed up in New York, though it did opt for its usual time share in Iceland. And so our week there saw a good amount of rain and snow amidst some lower temperatures, but the sun still found some time to shine every day, and the trip wound up offering very much more than just a tangible respite. It was five and a half days of discovery, exploration, and uncommon beauty.
I've got a deluge of pictures, but I'll unload them over the course of a few posts over the next couple of days (hopefully, assuming I don't get, y'know, lazy or anything). Here are some shots from our first couple of days there.
After taking an overnight flight (an easy 5 hours from New York), we landed outside Reykjavik around 6 in the morning. By the time we got to the hotel, through the circus of other travelers in the lobby, and into our room, it was close to 10. We had scheduled a half-day's tour to the famed Blue Lagoon Spa at 11 that morning, which would have been fine if any of us had actually decided to sleep on the plane instead of watching Date Night and Max Payne. In any case, we all (or at least I) more or less zonked out for the entire bus ride there, which, if the groggy 6 or 7 seconds I was awake for were any indication, actually had some pretty spectacular views of fog-wrapped peaks.
The spa itself ended up being the perfect way to rejuvenate. Nothing like lounging in piping hot geothermal waters in the open, wind-blown, just-below-freezing air to wake you up and soothe your soul at the same time. I didn't bring my camera, but I stole some pictures from Kris.
Mud on my face.
We wandered around Reykjavik a bit that night, eventually finding our way over to Þrir Frakkar (or Three Fathers. That "Þ" sign is basically a "th" sound), a restaurant a friend had recommended to me last Christmas for its minke whale steaks. Naturally, we also tried the smoked puffin appetizer. A little on the salty side, but altogether not bad.
Like regular steak, just a bit fishier.
Reykjavik is built of the same mix of quaint and cosmopolitan concrete usually making up other Eastern European capitals.
The next morning we embarked on a tour of the Golden Circle -- a collection of Iceland's most famous attractions and the most popular tour to take.
First stop was þingvellir, which is where Icelanders founded the world's first parliament in 930 AD, and also the borderland where the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates are moving apart from each other. I'm pretty sure I learned something about this in that one geology class I took in college, but yeah, y'know.
The ridge in the foreground is North America, the lowlands below are Europe. And it's sinking.
Down in the lowlands are several rifts that are filled with crisp, clear water. Travelers throw coins into them for luck, as you can seen from the shimmering bunch that line the bottom of this stream, about 12 meters down.
The second stop was Gullfoss, one of the biggest waterfalls in Iceland, which flows into a canyon.
The third stop was the geysers in the Haukadalur valley, including Geysir, which is the OG geyser that gave all other geysers their name.
Geysir doesn't erupt as regularly anymore, but Strokkur, which sits a few hundred feet away, chucks up every few minutes.
After a visit to another hot spring and a delicious dinner of lamb (with a seriously dope Icelandic mousse for dessert), we went hunting for the Northern Lights.
Spoiler alert -- we didn't find them. This would be the first of 3 attempts to hunt them down over the course of the trip, but there was simply too much cloud cover that week. Next time, I guess.
There was a bit of an opening in the clouds that first night, though, that lasted for about 10 minutes. While it was there, I figured I'd grab some long exposures of the stars.
And what do you know -- we couldn't see it with our naked eyes, but the camera picked up a hint of the Northern Lights' signature green band. I guess it was there the whole time.
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Whoa whoa whoa!!!!!!!!!!
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