Icelandic Road Trip!!!

Hello from Iceland!

After visiting with Carsten's parents and friends in Germany, we left on Sunday with a quick overnight in Amsterdam. We went to a bar to watch the Germany football ⚽ match. Carsten was representing!

Now we are in Iceland! Our flight landed at 7:20am - first stop Duty Free shopping for beer and wine. The VAT (tax) here is 24%, my guidebook said to buy booze at the airport! We have a lovely Dacia Duster rental car that will be our ride around the Ring Road in Iceland for the next four weeks! Get ready for lots of waterfalls and amazing scenery!

We drove out to a Thermal Bath/Spa called Laugaras Lagoon. It was super relaxing. Like the Blue Lagoon, the waters are naturally heated by the underground thermal heat. 

Also a dry sauna. There was a steam sauna, but if I wanted that level of humidity I would have stayed in Houston for the summer.

A cautionary tale: we have a waterproof case for a cell phone. To make it easy to use I temporarily removed the PIN security - too many numbers and swiping to deal within the water. The only issue was that it was always open and seemed to randomly take pictures. No idea why. In the locker rooms there are showers etc. and all the ladies are nude. I was super paranoid having that phone anywhere near me or anyone else for fear it would be taking pictures! Argh! No one needs to see any of that!!!

On our way back to Reykjavik we stopped for this spot.  Hrafnagjar is one of the places where the North American and European plates are drifting apart. This fault and tension fracture is 12 km long and up to 30 meters high.

Our hotel was nice, we even got a free room upgrade because we book so much using booking.com. Our room has a slanted side under the roof with cool windows, one of them converts to a small balcony.

I am glad I brought my sleep mask because we will not be able to block out the sun. Sunset is at 11:59 pm and sunrise is at 2:59am. It will never get truly dark. 

Today (Tuesday) after grabbing groceries, breakfast and a special gas card, we headed for Snaefellsnes Peninsula with a couple of stops in route. In Borgarnes we stopped at the Settlement Museum. Here we learned about how Iceland was settled, basically the first 600 years of settlers, starting in about 600 AD.  Two brothers, one killed early on by his slaves, the other settling down (presumably treating his slaves better) and populating an island.

The second part of the museum is about Egil Skallagrimsson, the national poet of Iceland. He was quite an interesting man, creating his first poem at age three and killing for the first time at age seven. He raided and plundered up and down the coast and (of course) was involved in the politics of his day. He was an unattractive man - according to the museum but you can be the judge:

His nanny:

That museum was a wild ride but we did learn some things. 

Leaving Borgarnes we headed to Barnafoss and Hraunfossar waterfalls.

Hraunfossar:

Barnafoss:

The name Barnafoss means "waterfall of the children". It is said that there was an accident in former times. There was a natural bridge over the waterfall and two children fell to their deaths crossing over the bridge. Afterwards the grief-stuck mother had the bridge destroyed.

Next stop was Grabrok, a crater was formed in a fissure eruption less than 3,000 years ago. It is 173 meters (600 feet) above sea level. I lost count of the number of steps on the staircase up to the top of the crater. It was a lot. The wind was crazy, we had to fight to not get blown into the crater!

We stopped a couple of times along the way, the scenery here is just amazing!

Finally we are at our hotel for three nights. Our view is pretty good.

As you can see in the pictures, the weather has been fantastic! We are very lucky so far - fingers crossed it will continue!

So much to report, we will be posting frequently!

Sheri + Carsten