I'm a little behind in posting blogs on this trip. We've been having some long days with little down time. We're finally got to the hotel at a decent hour. Although that's 9pm. It feels like 5pm here because it's still completely bright out. It never really gets dark here -- the closest thing to true night we've seen was inside a tunnel! The birds are still whistling away at midnight, too!
We landed after taking a red-eye from JFK so we were pretty dead. Still, the plan was to pack in a full day. We picked up our rental call -- a brand new 2016 Honda Civic with 1200 km on it. (When you rent a car in island you can get standard collision insurance as well as a host of other insurance -- gravel protection, super collision, and the best is SAAP (Sand and Ash Protection)! We declined them all so hopefully we'll be good..
Our first stop was Reykjavik, the capital of Iceland best known for the Reagan-Gorbachev summit in the 1980s. It was as I remembered it -- a small rustic capital. Iceland has a population of about 300,000 people with over 200,000 of them in the capital. My main purpose was to buy a handmade wool sweater there. I didn't pack enough warm clothes so I felt I needed a layer so I wouldn't freeze (Although after a few days here I haven't had a need for it. I've been surprisingly tolerant of the cold even though it's dropped down to 40F.). We were so tired that we stopped on the way to take a catnap in the car.
The main road in Iceland is the Ring Road going around the island. Our plan was to go counterclockwise. On that first day, we saw a series of interesting waterfalls (foss in Icelandic). There were great views of them with small hikes around them. I've included a few pics of them in the posts. For posterity, we went to Seljalandsfoss and Skógarfoss waterfalls.
After the waterfalls we went to Dyrhólaey, a black sand beach with a view of a basalt arch. We also saw Reynishverfi, another beach with a view of three stones in the ocean called the trolls. There were also basalt columns -- like Giant's Causeway in Northern Ireland. It's amazing that those are natural formations!
Our hotel was a little bit past Vik on the south coast. Rather than eating there, after checking in, we went back to Vik to have dinner at an oceanside restaurant. I had the local lamb and the local Icelandic beer. After dinner we walked out to the beach through a field of arctic lupins. It was nearly 11 and still bright out when we got back to the hotel. I promptly crashed and slept like a log...!
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