Ísland

Back when we first found out about being accepting into TAPIF, my friend Nick, with whom I had a couple French classes with, said he was interested in going to Iceland on the way over. IcelandAir has a great deal where if you are flying to/from the US/Canada/Europe you can have a free stopover in Iceland.

Our tickets were super duper cheap, too. Granted, we were only flying on a one-way ticket, but still $450 for a flight to Iceland AND Paris is pretty awesome. We didn’t count the ticket as a cost since we had to buy tickets over to France anyway, so we only paid $300 each for 5 nights accommodation AND a rental car for 6 days (roughly $60 per day per person.. not bad!). That was the only part of Iceland that was relatively cheap, though.

On Tuesday Sept 11 (not the best day to fly) Nick, our friend Olivia and I headed off to Iceland. It was sad to say bye to my parents at the airport, but I was also really excited for the trip ahead of us. The flight went by really quickly (5 hours) and I watched This Means War (only worth the watch for the eye candy that is Chris Hemsworth and Tom Hardy, otherwise it is not recommended), and then the Titanic, which I slept through most of.

We arrived early Wednesday morning around 6 am and were picked up by a rep. from our rental car company, SAD Cars. The guy was kinda punk rock, with his jeans hanging really low, a crazy 80s jacket and slicked back hair (like most Icelandic men wore their hair, I found). He had to show us ‘hood tricks’ to open the trunk, since we were having issues with it. Though we weren’t able to replicate these ‘hood tricks’ on our own later and we had to load/unload luggage via the backseat. We somehow crammed all of our luggage into the tiny 90s-something Yaris. All of the cars at SAD were old, and sad indeed, but the car was fine for our 6-day journey.

Although our boarding passes said our destination was Reykjavik, we didn’t realize until we landed that the airport is actually located in Keflavik, a town about 40 minutes from Reykjavik. Once arriving at the apartment we rented from Airbnb, we immediately crashed for about three hours, since none of us slept properly on the plane. Later we walked around Reykjavik in search of an ATM and food. Our first meal was at a kebab place conveniently located next to the ATM. We quickly noted just how pricey everything was. The kebabs were fine, but not the quality we paid for- about $10, especially considering in France you can get them for 5 euro.

Once fed and with cash in hand, we continued walking around the city. It’s more of a large town really. There are only 320,000 people that inhabit the entire island, and residents in Reykjavik make up probably 50% (or more) of that. Iceland is pretty famous for its wool and we saw lots of it pouring out of shop windows along the streets. We walked down to a building called the Harpa, which is the opera house. It’s located right on the bay and had pretty views of the surrounding area. The architecture of the building was really interesting: it was almost shaped like a parallelogram and made mostly out of wavy glass rectangles that were pieced together. From the inside, all of the glass seemed tinted blue, but once on the outside you could see some of the glass panels were actually yellow or purple.

The Harpa

Arctic fox hoodie

On the way back to our apartment, which was located adjacent to the big church and very close to the city centre, we stopped in one of the wool stores. I bought wool scarf with an attached hood, which I proceeded to call my arctic fox hoodie since arctic foxes are supposed to be populous on the island, although we didn’t see any. We chilled at the apartment for a little bit and then ventured back out (arctic fox hoodie included) to find some dinner. We were quite surprised to find that unlike France and the rest of Europe in general, all the restaurants in Iceland close early. We had difficulty finding a place that was still open even though it was only 9 pm (even restaurants back home are open later than that!) and finally found a bar that was still serving bread bowls even though their kitchen was closed. The bread bowls, along with a Gull beer, hit the spot. The soup was a delicious ginger & coriander and was just what we needed to warm us up (Iceland is COLD).

Fun fact: over half the nation believes in elves. They actually have an elf museum in Reykjavik, but unfortunately we didn’t go. I think it's great that over 80 percent of Iceland's total energy supply derives from domestically produced renewable energy sources, such as geothermal energy, hydropower, etc. I'd heard this before, but it isn't really promoted as much as you might think.

Thursday morning we headed out to the famed Blue Lagoon (Bláa lónið), about 30 or so minutes from Reykjavik. Apparently the water is recycled water from the nearby power plant (a fact I kind of wish I remained ignorant of) and then heated thermally by the earth beneath. The water is a crazy blue/green combination and it felt like we were stepping into a fairytale. The entrance fee was 5000 krona, or about $40, but it was definitely worth it.

Although the turquoise water stretched for miles around the lagoon, the actual swimming area was probably no bigger than a football field long. The water wasn’t very deep – I could stand everywhere – and was filled with sand (and in some spots hairballs, yuck). The water is apparently naturally cycled out every 48 hours or so, but we were questioning how clean it actually was. It was super relaxing though. It was probably 40 degrees out but the water was at least mid 90s. There were pots of silica (a mud extract from the lagoon that is supposed to be good for your skin) scattered along the edges of the lagoon for swimmers to rub on their faces/body as a natural exfoliant. We put it on probably three times. There was an area where you could get an in-water massage, a bar in the lagoon, a natural-massaging waterfall and steam rooms. We sat under the waterfall and went in the steam room once until we thought our faces were going to melt off (which was really only 5 minutes).

silica

After getting cleaned up, we drove a bit further down the road to a town called Grindavik to see if there was anything cool to see there (there wasn’t). We had lunch at a deserted pizza place there and then headed back to Reykjavik to talk to the tourist office about our trip the next day out to Skaftafell. There is a HUGE glacier (the biggest in Europe, I believe) in Skaftafell, called Vatnajökull and mountain guide companies will take you out on glacier walks. Not wanting to pay for one of these glacier walks, we asked if we could rent out crampons and ice picks and do it ourselves. Apparently it’s dangerous to do without a guide =P but the woman at the tourism office assured us there were loads of trails that led right up to the glacier. We then drove on to the Perlan, an observation spot on a hill above the city. The views were pretty awesome – you could see all of Reykjavik just from one side, but then view the ocean out to the left and the mountains to the right.

view from the Perlan

I drove the rental car that day – my first time driving in another country! And now I’m a pro. For dinner that night we drove down to the harbor, although it would have been an easy walk but it was freezing, to eat at the place voted the best restaurant in Iceland: a hot dog stand. It has also been voted the best hot dogs in Europe by some foodies. The stand was called Bæjarins Beztu Pylsur, or Town’s Best Hot Dog. The stand is so small and unassuming that we actually drove past it twice without realizing it.

It’s clearly a local favorite. It was easily 1030 at night and we walked up to a line of at least 10 people (mostly locals). The line moves quickly, though, the people at the stand are very deft at cranking out these hot dogs. We parked across the street, but noticed that most people drove right up on the curb and left their cars running while waiting in line. I think this is true of most of Europe, but I definitely noticed that especially in Iceland people will park anywhere, even to the point where they were blocking traffic. The great part was though that the other cars trying to get around didn’t seem to mind (no honking) and I don’t think they even know what ‘parking violation’ means – it would seem parking tickets aren’t popular there. I wish that was true in the U.S.

Each hot dog, if you get it with all the fixins, is made out of pork, beef and lamb and is stuffed with both fried and regular onions, mustard, ketchup and remoulade sauce. We shelled out about 640 krona (about $5) each for two hot dogs each (we were hungry). It was definitely our cheapest meal by far. We ate them at the little picnic table right next to the stand that had vertical slats to conveniently place your hot dog. They were amazing. I would definitely say best hot dog I’ve ever had, but that’s insinuating that bratwursts are in a different category.

Friday morning we got up early and drove out to Skaftafell. On the way out we passed Eyjafjallajökull, the volcano that erupted over two years ago and caused airports to close for weeks. You wouldn’t really know just by looking at it that it’s a volcano. We also passed the Seljalandsfoss waterfall, some caves out on the coastline and a couple of the other glaciers on the way out to Skaftafell. Once arriving, we ate the lunch we packed next to a French couple (there were quite a few Frenchies vacationing in Iceland). Afterwards, we hiked about 30 minutes out to the glacier that we were told we were going to be able to walk right up to.

Seljalandsfoss

Eyjafjallajokull - doesn't look like much, huh?

Well, that was a lie. We came over a small hill and all of a sudden saw a sizeable stream/river gushing down from the glacier. It was probably at least 10-15 yards across making it impossible to cross unless we wanted to dash across the freezing cold water in freezing cold weather and get hypothermia. We were all a bit sad because we were hoping to see something like this:

But only saw this:

Another view of Vatnajökull
Keep in mind this is a very small portion of the glacier

It was cool though to see the biggest glacier in Europe. We drove about 15 minutes further down the road to Jokulsárlón, a glacial lagoon that has been in existence since the 1930s when icebergs formed from the melting glacier. It was literally breathtaking and our sadness from not reaching the glacier was soon forgotten. We giddily hopped out of the car and ran around the dune down to the shore and just stood in amazement. It reminds me of the art term, the natural sublime that is associated with Turner, implying the overpowering magnificence of nature.

Some icebergs were white, and others were a piercing blue color, which Nick explained meant they were oxygen-deprived and had been there longer? We just sat there for a while looking out across the lagoon. There were two seals there swimming and playing around. Not wanting to leave, we climbed back in the car for the 5 + hour drive we had ahead of us. We stopped in a town called Vik (that the map made seem was a decent sized town, but really only had like 5 shops) for dinner. I had fish n’ chips (yum), Nick had soup and Olivia had a traditional Icelandic stew that would be fun to try to recreate sometime. We finally made it back home (after driving through a downpour and really intense fog – Nick did this part though, not me :D ) after a 16 hour day driving across the country. Needless to say, we slept in the next morning.

We decided just to hang out around Reykjavik on Saturday and explore. We wandered down to the flea market that’s held on the weekends down by the harbor. I think we were all a bit disappointed by the assortment of things sold there since one of Nick’s friends made it seem like there were tons of neat finds. I did get another wool scarf though, and for pretty cheap. We walked around the stores in the area to do more souvenir shopping before heading back to the apartment to watch the VT game against Pitt. On the way, we stopped at the big church, Hallgrímska, near our apartment to go up the tower for views of the city. The views from here were more spectacular than the Perlan since the church is right in the city. It’s easily the tallest building – Reykjavik is a very tiny and low city. It was cool to tower over all the other buildings and interesting to see all the different colored houses and architecture scattered throughout.

After watching the Hokies lose to Pitt (wahh), we decided to check out a restaurant that had puffin, reindeer (although when we got there, they had substituted the reindeer with lobster) & whale sliders as an appetizer on their menu. The restaurant was ridiculously expensive, even by Reykjavik standards, so we decided just to go to try the appetizer and get a beer and then go find cheaper food somewhere else. The waitress looked at us like we were crazy when we told her the three of us just wanted to split the sliders. We’re on a budget, okay! Also we weren’t sure if we were going to like the meat or not so we didn’t want to get more than one. It was actually really good, which I wasn’t expecting. I felt kind of guilty eating the meat from the cute little puffins we had read about, but I figure I had to try it once. They were all really yummy. We didn’t plan well, though because by the time we went to find cheaper food, all the restaurants were already closed! What is it with Iceland? We finally found a place called Noodle Station that was still open and each got bowls of soup that was really similar to pho.

That night, Olivia and I set out northeast of the city in search of the Northern Lights.  We got turned around a bit trying to find our way out and had to stop at a gas station to ask for directions. The woman who helped us was really nice but took about 10 minutes to explain where to go and we were in a bit of a hurry (we read that the viewing time for September is between 10 pm – 1 am and it was already 1130 at this point). Finally we found the road out – we were driving up towards Thingvellir National Park, which is where we were planning on visiting the next day. We just wanted to get far enough away from the city lights to have a shot of seeing the lights. Once we got off the lit roads, we both started getting really nervous, but we also started to see a faint red glow in sky to the right. Once we saw signs for Thingvellir, we pulled over. And then almost immediately turned the car back on and left. It was pitch black out and after midnight and there were absolutely no lights anywhere. Olivia and I were pretty freaked out and didn’t even get out of the car. We weren’t sure if the red glow we were seeing were the lights since all of the pictures we’d seen showed green/yellow hues. But we didn’t know what else it could be. When we got back, Olivia looked it up and turns out that the lights will sometimes glow red, which is more rare. It was very faint, but at least we saw them!

Sunday morning we got up and drove back out to Thingvellir – it was only about a 45-minute drive. I felt silly for being so scared the night before, because there were just rolling green hills and farm animals around. Thingvellir is where the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates are separating. There’s a viewing point in front of the lake there and you can see the tectonic plates slope off into the water. We actually were able to walk and hike in between the plates. We hiked off down a trail with the intention of hiking down to the lake, but then we couldn’t tell how far the trail went and we were hungry so we stopped and ate lunch in the meadow in between the plates. So we can now say we ate lunch (and also peed) in between the tectonic plates!

From Thingvellir, we continued up onto Geysir, an area with about 5 mini and big geysers. One is called geysir (weird, right?) and is apparently what all other geysers are named after. We didn’t see that one go off, since I’m not sure how often it erupts, but we did see one of the other big ones go off about 3 times.

We then continued a bit further north onto Gullfoss, which is a waterfall. When we came around the bend and the waterfall came into view, we saw it was much smaller than we were all expecting. In the postcards that litter every souvenir shop, the pictures make it seem like Gullfoss is this huge, towering, gushing force of water. Even though it wasn’t as big as we thought, it was still cool to see. There were rainbows bouncing off in just about every direction and it was mesmerizing just to sit and watch the water bouncing off the rocks and down into the ravine below.

We then headed home and made pasta at the apartment (with sauce that tasted like it was a bit stale) and packed and got ready for our flight in the morning. We got up at the ungodly hour of 4 am and left the apartment by 5 am to make sure we had the rental car turned in and caught our shuttle at a quarter to six. We spent the hour until our flight waiting in line at the tax-refund booth – that’s the great thing about Iceland is it offers tax refunds for items bought while on vacation there for anything that is over 4000 krona or something (roughly $30 some bucks), meaning I could get $25 back on my arctic fox hoodie. We dashed off, picked up a bite to eat and then ran to make our flight - everyone else had boarded, although we still had five or ten minutes to spare. And we were on our way to France!