Episode 3 - Iceland 🇮🇸
Countless sheep, dozens of waterfalls, and the most beautiful place on Earth ❤️
My first out-of-country trip of my study abroad was to Iceland. What a start!
It has been an amazing 3 days, and I’ve loved every second of it. The landscape is out of this world, the company was wonderful, and I’m just so grateful I had a chance to go to this magnificent place. I will never forget it.
Let’s dive in! 👇
Friday 9/22/2023
The flight from Copenhagen to Reykjavik was uneventful, I watched the first half of Fight Club on Netflix (Netflix in Europe is so much better than in the US, so many more great movies), then fell asleep. I was woken up by the flight attendant, everyone had already gotten off the plane, and I left the plane in a daze.
At the gate outside the plane, I met with my group, and we were off on the adventure!
But before we get into the juicy Icelandic details, let’s set the groundwork for the rest of the post, including key people, terms, and activities:
First off, the squad. We had a lovely group of 4: João, Shirley, Camila, and myself (we are all on exchange at Sciences Po). João and Camila are Brazilian and from São Paulo and Rio, respectively. Shirley is American, though was born and spent the first half of her life in France! I went on this trip because João sent a message into the group chat of all the exchange students asking if anyone wanted to go with him to Iceland 2 weeks before the trip. I got coffee with him the next day, thought he was wonderful, and decided to go on the trip! I hadn’t met Camila or Shirley prior to this trip, and our first time seeing each other was at Reykjavik airport.
“Foss” means waterfall in Icelandic, so anytime you see a word ending in -foss, it’s a waterfall!
Icelandic is a crazy language. Less than half a million people speak it. I love Icelandic road signs (more on that below).
This episode will have lots of pictures because Iceland is gorgeous.
Great! We’ve laid the groundwork.
Let’s continue.
After taking pictures with a “Welcome to Iceland” sign, we 4 left the airport. It was 1 a.m. Because Iceland is in the Schengen Zone, there was no passport check or border control. I’m still not used to that!
We walked over to the car rental spot in the freezing cold (it was about 5 degrees Celsius, I had on 2 sweats and 4 jackets). We couldn’t find the car, had to ask a competing car company nearby where our company was located, and finally found the tiny building that had the keys. And then we had our noble steed for the trip! Cute, small, comfy, and crucially, a wonderful gas mileage (gas literage, I guess??).
Unfortunately, the car’s WiFi box didn’t work, so we drove over to the main office of the car rental company to get a new one. The gentleman who worked there was born and raised in Iceland, but spoke better and more refined English than most Americans I know. I was blown away. There was free coffee and leftover food from previous travelers available, too!
At this point, it was 2 a.m., and we began our adventure by driving all the way to Vik, a distant city on the southern coast of Iceland. João drove the entire way, while the rest of us slept. We stopped along the way briefly to stargaze and check out a beautiful waterfall! There was absolutely no one there, so it was amazing at night with no one else around.
Around 7 a.m., we made it to Vik to see the sunrise. I was speechless. The ocean was right there, a beautiful church was on a hill next to us, and the bitter wind was actively turning me into a popsicle. We took lots of pictures, then drove down into the town proper to get gas. I’m used to getting gas in dollars per gallon, but here it was in Icelandic kronor per liter.
Wild.
Our next stop was the black-sand beach just a ways away that has really cool basalt columns and gorgeous rock spires in the ocean. The basalt columns here cooled in hexagonal shapes, which was something I learned about in my uni geology classes but have never seen in person. What a great place to see it firsthand!
The columns cool in hexagonal patterns because that’s the most efficient way to relieve stress in the rock (only triangles, squares, and circles tesselate in nature, and hexagons are the closest shapes to circles). I met an Icelandic guy who was flying his drone at the beach and the pictures were absolutely stunning. Since we were there so early, we were some of the only people on the beach. Amazing!
Along the way, I saw my first few Icelandic sheep, and I LOVED THEM! They were some of the cutest animals I’ve ever seen. They seemed so happy and peaceful on the hills, and I loved looking at them with the dramatic mountains and hills in the background. I baaaaaa-ed to them, and they would baaaaaa back. I was so happy :)
After the beach, I hopped in as the driver and began driving to the next leg, which was a hike to an abandoned plane! The plane crashed along an Icelandic beach in the 70s because it ran out of gas, and it’s now a popular place for hikers to visit. It was a 7 km/4 mile walk round trip, and it was one of the most surreal hikes I’ve ever done (and I’ve been on many in my life!). The hike was along a vast, flat volcanic plain with mountains on the horizon, so it seemed like you were walking on the treadmill.
You walk. And walk. And walk some more.
The mountains on the horizon and the vast plain do not change at all.
And all of a sudden, the plane is there!
Our group took lots of great photos, I built a rock tower that was taller than Shirley, and together we found our very first Icelandic geocache (a film canister hidden inside the plane wreck). It was my ~2100th find, and their first!! As we were leaving, other tourists began taking pictures of the rock tower. Perhaps they thought it was built by an ancient Icelandic chieftain?
It was taller than Shirley. Let’s goooooo
We began the long walk back to the car when a large truck drove by offering a ride!!
It was 15 euros per person.
No thanks, we can walk.
45 minutes later, we were back at the cars and off to the next stop — a glacier adventure camp!!
I had never seen a large glacier in person before — the kind that is melting into a lagoon and people are kayaking in the freezing glacial water. It was amazing. The walk, the scenery, the views. I was on another planet completely.
On the drive there, I was blown away by the colors of the landscape. I was consistently blown away by the combination of colors that made the countryside so pretty and unique. I had never before seen such greens, greys, blacks, reds, and yellows combined in nature. I love it.
After our stop at the glacier, we continued on to the prettiest waterfall of the day — Solgafoss! The waterfall was the largest one along a river that is fed from melted glacial water high up in the mountains, and it is now on my bucket list to hike the entire 20 miles to the mouth of that river.
Solgafoss was really cool because there was a staircase alongside it where you could walk to the top! I counted 472 steps on the way up, and had a lovely time baaaaaaa-ing to some more sheep (they were grazing on the hillside!!). The view from the top was spectacular, and some of my favorite pictures from the entire trip were from Solgafoss. I also met some Russian-speaking Ukrainians and chatted with them for a bit at the top!
Portrait mode is unreal. My favorite picture from the entire day:
At this point, we were all super hungry, so we began the hour-long drive to Selfoss (this one is actually a town, not another waterfall!). Along the way, we stopped at another foss (see what I did there?), actually the same one we went to super early in the morning when no one was there (on the way to Vik)! This time there were a LOT more tourists, but I still enjoyed it tremendously.
At Selfoss, we found an Icelandic bakery for lunch, and Shirley found an amazing deal of unlimited (Icelandic) soup and (Icelandic) bread for only 1200 kronor (the exchange rate is ~140 kronor for 1 euro, so it was about 9 euros, what a steal)! The soup was delicious, and even more so when you would dip the bread into it. They also had a DELICIOUS tomato sauce that you could put on the bread, and then dip the tomato-bread soup into the soup.
On behalf of our entire group, we apologize to that Icelandic bakery for eating all of your bread and tomato sauce on that day.
After our late lunch, we proceeded to one of the unexpected highlights of the day — grocery shopping! Let me explain.
The grocery store is called Bonus (Icelandic for bonus, I believe).
*starts chuckling*
For some (unknown) reason, the store’s mascot happens to be an aggressively staring, slightly constipated, and very pink pig. Everything in the store is in Icelandic (who would’ve guessed!), and it was so interesting seeing all the different foods sold there. We had a great time.
At the refrigerated food section, Shirley and I observed that the fridge was the same temperature as outside. No need for a fridge at all! Just have an outside market.
In particular, Bonus’ dairy store was extensive. Icelandic cows are hard at work. There were so many different varieties of yogurt, milk, cheese, and kefir. I got a plain kefir for two reasons:
The bottle was a cool, cheap souvenir because it’s 100% in Icelandic.
Kefir is yummy.
I also got some Icelandic chocolate! Great souvenir and present for friends back home. I also found it very cool that they sold pineapples in that store. Modern civilization and trade infrastructure are developed enough to have pineapples from Hawaii be sold in freezing Iceland.
Ain’t that something.
Camila took the wheel for the drive to our home for our trip. It was her first time driving an automatic, and we all made it to our place in one piece.
Great job, Camila!!
The guest house was lovely. There were 10 different rooms with either 2 or 4 beds (ours had 4) and a shared common kitchen space. The beds were very comfy, the shared space was very clean and comfortable as well, and all the other guests were very kind and friendly. I met a wonderful family from New Brunswick, Canada that invited me to dinner with them. We had a delightful conversation, where I learned they had been in Iceland for 2 weeks and the parents (Greg and Sarah) met in Ghana! We all shared what we were grateful for, and then ate delicious home-made pizza. I hope to have a family like theirs one day.
After dinner, our squad hopped back into the car to go to Reykjavik. We were hunting for the Northern Lights! João really wanted to see them, and there was a forecasted gap in the clouds near the capital.
We had no luck with the northern lights (it stayed cloudy and started raining), but I did have (rather unexpected and unplanned) luck in the cat department. An (Icelandic) cat walked up to me, I picked it up, and proceeded to pet it for 10 minutes. My heart was full. I love cats.
I drove us all back home while Shirley, João, and I sang Imagine Dragons and other road trip songs (Camila was off in dreamland). Amazing vibes, and a perfect first day.
Saturday 9/23
My first night in an Icelandic bed was one of the comfiest I can remember. Super soft, comfortable, and overall fantastic.
I slept amazingly.
João and I both woke up before the girls, so we decided to go for a walk to explore the eco-village we were staying in. The morning air was crisp, the walk was lovely, and all the houses had grass on their rooves. Icelandic folks get creative with their insulation.
We ended up finding a hiking trail in the village that led to a forestry (where baby trees are grown). It was my favorite part of the walk. The trees were tiny, and my inner gardener was in love!
Iceland used to be 40% covered by trees, but it is now only 2% because of irresponsible logging practices over the centuries. Forestries like the ones we found grow new trees to plant in Iceland based on the local climate and soil conditions.
Awesome!
Later on, we found a couple of other cool spots in the village, including a troll garden, a gym (that has a basketball court, so you already know I dunked on it), more greenhouses, an art gallery, and even an Icelandic bookstore!
Naturally, I bought 3 books.
One is an English cookbook with cheap recipes, another is an English crime book written by J.K. Rowling (under a pseudonym), and the last one is a cookbook of traditional Icelandic desserts, written in Icelandic!
I can’t wait to cook some desserts :)
Each book was 300 and I got a 100 kronor coin as change when I paid with a 1000 kronor bill. The coin has a fish on it!
Our group left the house around noon, heading for the Golden Circle.
What’s that, you ask?
The Golden Circle is a popular loop in southwestern Iceland where you can see a major waterfall, a geyser, and Thingvellir National Park. We saw all 3!
On the way, we stopped at a tomato farm that is the leading global producer of Icelandic tomatoes. They grow tomatoes year-round using geothermal power and warm hot spring water!
It was one of my favorite stops on the entire trip.
We ordered tomato soup (which was DELICIOUS) that had nice, unlimited bread as well. I ordered a tomato beer as well (it was expensive but great, well worth it). The bartender was named Pyotr, was Czech, and spoke Russian because his girlfriend taught him.
Classic.
Naturally, he and I chatted for a bit in Russian, then I went back to my group to eat with them. Next to us were some sisters from North Carolina, and we chatted with them for a bit.
The tomato farm also had the best road sign I saw on the entire trip:
After the tomato farm stop, we drove to Gullfoss, one of the largest waterfalls in Iceland. It was the most northern stop of our trip, and well worth it!
The waterfall was absolutely amazing. I walked right to its edge and admired Mother Nature’s power. On the walk to Gullfoss, I marveled at the beauty of the tundra. Iceland is amazing.
After Gullfoss, we went to a nearby gift shop, where I got a sticker for my Yeti water bottle and 2 postcards.
And then we were off to the geyser! The site was basically a mini Yellowstone, with some hot springs, mud pits, sulfur gas that smelled like rotten eggs, and some geysers. By crazy coincidence, we saw the Canadian family that was staying in the same house as us. Awesome!
I’ve seen Old Faithful in Yellowstone. Iceland's volcanism was cute in comparison :)
After the geysers, we headed over to Thingvellir National Park, which is special for 2 main reasons:
It’s where the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates diverge, creating Iceland and the mid-Atlantic rift. As a geologist, I thought it was super cool.
Thingvellir is where Icelandic chieftains met for parliament hundreds of years ago. This park is where Christianity was adopted in Iceland in the year 1000, kings were crowned, and laws across Iceland were ratified. Amazing.
This was perhaps the most beautiful location we visited on the trip. Nature was gorgeous, we walked among rifting rocks, I touched water that was located in a canyon created by tectonic activity, and the panoramas were awe-inspiring.
It was beyond description.
Thingvellir National Park also happens to be home to the Prime Minister of Iceland’s summer home. We had to cut across the lawn to get to our car.
To the Prime Minister of Iceland, I apologize.
We left Thingvellir in the dark and made it back home in time for dinner. João made rice and meatballs, what a wonderful way to end the wonderful day.
João stayed up to look for the Northern Lights, but unfortunately, it remained cloudy. I stayed up to finish Fight Club (what an ending!), then went to bed myself.
Sunday 9/24
Woke up early for the last time in Iceland and had a great breakfast of 2 Icelandic yogurts, a chocolate muffin, and an espresso that an Italian guy staying in our home made for me with his portable espresso machine.
It was delicious.
I proceeded to have an amazing conversation with Greg (from the Canadian family) regarding Canadian politics, polarization from covid, and life in general. I love that in Europe (and while traveling outside the US), everyone is very open to talking about politics while separating it from personal relationships. You can have a debate about politics, disagree, and continue having a good relationship with that person.
In particular, I enjoy learning about how different governments operate and how they differ from the United States. I find it fascinating that we all have different governments, yet most of them work well. I got a picture with the family before they left. It was wonderful to meet you all!
This was our last morning at the house ☹️, so we packed up our things and headed off to Reykjavik (the capital). Along the way, we stopped at a volcanic crater (basically a mini Crater Lake), which was the windiest place I’ve ever been to in my entire life. I was almost blown over several times.
The crater was SO cool! There was a lake at the bottom and beautiful views of the surrounding countryside as well.
I drove us to Reykjavik, which was the most scenic drive I have ever done. The mountains were otherworldly, and I particularly liked the high-alpine moss growing on jagged volcanic rocks. I also loved the sheep we saw!
Reykjavik is the most northern capital in the world and was quite scenic as well. We parked next to the largest church in Iceland, swung on some swings, took some pictures, and saw a statue of Leif Erikson (the Viking who discovered the Americas in the 900s).
We walked down a main street towards the harbor, where we saw the Sun Voyager statue, which had a geocache nearby! The Sun Voyager is a giant metal sculpture of a Viking boat, and we climbed up it for some nice pics.
After, we continued walking along the harbor when we found another geocache (it was really cool, and earned a Favorite Point from me). A woman walking by asked what we were doing and I told her all about geocaching.
Turns out she’s a student from Estonia and is working an internship in Iceland for the semester. She made a geocaching account because of me! Mari-Liis, I hope you enjoy geocaching!
Along the harbor, we saw the National Concert Hall (what outstanding architecture), and then I finally made it to the most exciting part of Iceland:
The penis museum!
Yes, you read that correctly.
Reykjavik is home to “The Iceland Phallus Museum”, a museum home to penises from a much of different species across the world — bison, horses, whales, cats, bears, elephants, giraffes, humans, mountain trolls, stone giants, etc. I’d say it was the best 2250 Icelandic kronor I’ve ever spent. Some British teenagers in Reykjavik on a trip weren’t sure if they wanted to go, and I successfully convinced them to go.
That’s my good deed daily.
I bought myself a penis-shaped keychain and a nice souvenir cup from the museum as well.
Promptly thereafter, I walked over to the Iceland Parliament building, which was a tiny, humble, brick building. Makes sense. You don’t need a big parliament building when only 450,000 people live in your country!
I also fed some ducks near the Reykjavik City Hall. Thank you to the Ukrainian lady who gave me some bread to feed to birds.
After that, I went back to meet up with my group (they, unfortunately, didn’t go to the penis museum with me), got lunch at a Fish n’ Chips shop (with a very nice Czech chef Thomas), and we went shopping at a couple of shops. I got some nice socks, a beanie, and most importantly, an Icelandic flag for my collection!
I also saw the British teens from the penis museum along Rainbow Road. Naturally, we took a photo. Though I will likely never see any of y’all again, it was a pleasure to meet you all and chat for the short while we were together :)
After shopping, we walked back to our car, I dropped off the postcards in a cool (bright red) Icelandic mailbox, and we then bid Reykjavik farewell.
It was off to the Blue Lagoon!
Blue Lagoon is a natural hot spring that is Iceland’s most popular tourist attraction. We were there for 4 hours, and it was lovely! We got a free drink, facemasks, and relaxed in the hot water, steam rooms, and saunas. It was a highlight of the trip for sure :)
In an insane coincidence, I saw the 2 Ukrainian girls from 2 days prior at Skogafoss at the Blue Lagoon! We chatted for a bit in Russian, they taught me some Ukrainian phrases, and then we exchanged Instagrams. Maybe we’ll meet up in the future, who knows?
Blue Lagoon, and its complimentary facemasks, yielded my favorite picture of the entire trip:
After our 4 hours in the hot springs, it was time to head back to the airport and head home to Paris. Great vibes and music on the way back, quick and easy car returns, no hiccups with check-in. The perfect trip ended perfectly as well. I even met the Romanian women’s national handball in the airport, they were flying back from a game in Reykjavik.
And so the adventure ends! Those 3 days were some of the best I’ve ever had.
João, Shirley, Camila, it was so much fun exploring Iceland with y’all. You are all amazing people and I’m super happy we met :)
Iceland, it has been an absolute pleasure and privilege. I loved every second of my trip, and can’t wait to visit again. The entire Ring Road is now on my bucket list.
Until we meet again. 🇮🇸
My favorite episode so far 🥰