I went to Iceland for 4 days at the end of August/beginning of September in 2013, and it was awesome.
The perk of going at this time is that some attractions have summer vs winter prices. Winter prices start September 1, so we did the things with prices that don’t change on the first 2 days and things with the reduced prices now on the last 2 days. Genius!
Reykjavik is small for a capital, with only 250,000 people out of a total population less than 400k on the island. Wow!
Interesting fact: you have to drive with your headlights on at all times, all days of the year.
We stayed at a cool hostel in Reykjavik that was an old department store converted into a giant hostel. It was also were many foreign exchange students were staying for the university, and they definitely treated it like ‘home’, rather than shared space. Anywho…
The market across from the hostel sells RC Cola, and we went out to the geyser park. Seeing some of the river/waterfall frozen was really cool.
Also near our hostel was the Phallic Museum, which was definitely interesting.
Reykjavik has some really beautiful art.
That night, we tried First Vegetarian, and it was A.MA.ZING. Go there, if you’re in town!
Day 2, we drove out to the Viking Museum, which is really cool. It shows how vikings lived, talks about viking mythology, and has the replica viking ship that was used to recreate Leif Ericsson’s voyage to Canada, which actually sailed to New York from Iceland in 2000. Wow!
Next, we drove to a bridge where you can walk from Europe to North America. Yep! The tectonic plates for these 2 continents meet in Iceland. I found out later you can go scuba diving between the plates. They’re moving apart at approximately 2cm per year.
After this, we drove to some scenic part of the coast, which was awesome.
Then some sulfur springs that were part of ancient myths.
On our last full day, we went to the famous Blue Lagoon. Freezing outside, like a hot tub inside, and the lifeguards are wearing full snow suits to stay warm.
It’s an Olympic event: the run from the changing rooms to get into the water, freezing in the air in just your swim suit.
That night, we had a red-eye out of Iceland and saw some really funny signs killing time at the airport.
Iceland is awesome. Go there.
This entry was posted in Europe, Iceland, Reykjavik
