Dispatch 1: Iceland Roadtrippin
Hello world!
Our separate overnight flights landed in Reykjavík at 6am, with everything but Rachel’s bag (found 3 days later…). We picked up our tiny but sturdy rental car and made it to the city by 9am.
First stop is Reykjavík’s most recognizable landmark, the Hallgrímskirkja church.
It’s surprisingly plain inside but its outside is striking and has amazing city views from the top. We were lucky to have decent weather and could see the city’s multi-colored roofs for miles (kilometers?) to the North Atlantic.
Next up was one of the weirder museums I’ve ever been to: Iceland’s Phallological Museum.
A single room museum on a quiet street has the world’s largest collection of, well, penises. If you ever wondered what a whale, walrus, or racoon penis looks like, this is the place to go.
We spent our first full day driving the Golden Circle, a loop outside Reykjavík covering some best known sites. The North American and European tectonic plates split around this region, leaving tons volcanos, geysirs, etc.
We visited Þingvellir, the site of the continental rift and Iceland’s first parliament, the waterfall Gullfoss, the geysers Geysir and Strokkur, and the Kerið volcano crater. After a full day of driving we made it back to Reykjavík by sunset.
Day three was a serious driving day. We left Reykjavík around 10am, stopped by the Hraunfossar and Barnafoss water falls. We went out our way to see those, so we tried a shortcut road back to the highway that ended up not as short or as much of a road as we first thought. It led us across some beautiful farms and valleys though, so was definitely worth it.
The countryside is mostly farms, which have tons of sheep wandering inside and outside their fences. They just patiently munch on grass no matter the often tempestuous weather, and seem to love to run across the road when we’re driving.
That night we slept in a little cabin on Myvatn lake then went out to explore the area’s geothermal sites.
We got lost at first and ended up at a cave + hot springs.
We visited a few other geothermal fields, which reeked of sulfur and had steam pouring out and mud boiling all around.
Later we made the one hour drive up an unpaved gravel road to Dettifoss waterfall, definitely one of the most impressive we’ve seen so far.
Last, we stopped at the Myvatn natural hot spring before a two hour drive to east Iceland.
This morning was another heavy driving day but also one of the most beautiful, along the eastern coast and fjords. We ended up stopping every 45 minutes or so to wander around.
The highlight was definitely Jökulsárlón, the ‘iceberg graveyard’. Big chunks of ice break off from the nearby glaciers and float down to the ocean, where they’re tossed back up onto the black sand beach to melt.
Only three more days in Iceland before we’re off to Berlin and then Copenhagen!
