Sunday, September 23, 2012

Iceland Review


We had a great time and Iceland and could have easily spent another 2 weeks exploring. Our first outing was the Golden Circle Tour, which is the most popular tour in Iceland. It was a great 8 hr overview of what Southern Iceland has to offer - volcanos, old volcano lakes, Geysir (what geysers are named after), bubbling pots, glaciers, and Thingviller National Park.
 

 It was absolutely beautiful and our guide Vigga was great. We would highly recommend Netbus to anyone visiting Reykjavik. The next day we were supposed to go on the Southern Iceland Tour because the Glacier Tour was no longer offered (lesson learned - visit Iceland before Sept 16th, that's when everything slows down), but when the bus arrived to pick us up we learned they were extending their glacier tour and offered us to go the next day for the same price as our Southern Tour.....of course we accepted I LOVE glaciers. So instead of another tour we headed to the Vikin Museum and got a private tour of the Odin - a coast guard boat that was used for 50 plus years up until 2006. They allowed us to visit almost every room in the boat which was different from most museums in the US. After we finished our tour we headed back to the room to pick up our swimsuits and left for the Blue Lagoon. The Blue Lagoon was different then I expected. The water wasn't very warm when we first got in, but you could find some nice spots if you searched. I think we expected to see something more natural but we found it very commercialized. It was one of the few places I've seen where the pictures turned out better than reality. When we go back I will skip the Lagoon in favor of one of the local bath houses which will be much cheaper and less touristy. The next morning we headed out at 7:30 for our 14 hr Glacier Lagoon Tour. It was about a 5 hr ride out to the lagoon and when were arrived we were greeted with tons of icebergs, it was breathtaking. We had the option to spend $35 each to take a boat ride but after watching people being packed on the boat like sardines we decided to take the walking tour while the rest of our bus group packed in a boat. We had a great time walking around the lake and taking pics. The lagoon had a short 500 m river that ran into the ocean and you could watch pieces of ice float out to sea.




On our way back to town we stopped at 2 waterfalls Skogafoss and Sleijalandsfoss.  They were just as impressive as the Golden falls we saw on the Golden Circle tour. We arrived at Sleijalandsfoss just around sunset and were able to walk all the way around the falls. Some of my favorite pictures we have were taken from behind the falls looking out to the setting sun. After arriving back at our room around 9 we headed out for our first meal on the town - having a kitchen saved us a ton of money as food is crazy expensive. At 4:30 AM the next morning we caught our ride to the airport and headed to London. We will definitely be back to Iceland!

More picture once we get internet that doesn't take 20 min/picture to post....

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