Iceland- Day 1 (Þingvellir National Park, Geysir, Gullfoss, Kerið Crater, Skálholt, Fried Hot Dog)!

Four or five years ago, one of my roommates talked about her visit to Iceland and how much she loved it there. After that time, Iceland kept on coming up in conversations and I only heard really good things about it.

Hearing so many people talk about their love of Iceland, it sparked a desire in me to visit there someday. I've been talking about going ever since and I've been trying to coordinate with people to go and this year it finally happened. My friend, Diana, and I coordinated schedules and made it happen! 

I loved Iceland! It was seriously so amazing and I now understand why those people that talked about their experiences there loved it so much!

Since I've returned home some words I've used often when talking about Iceland is otherworldly, beautiful, awesome, cool, out of this world. I will be using these words a lot in my blogposts. :)

We had a red-eye flight from BWI and got into Reykjavik around 5:00 AM. We got our rental car and hit the ground running. Our first stop was Þingvellir National Park. Þingvellir is the location of the oldest existing parliament which first met there in 930 AD and regularly convened there until 1798.

The park is also where the North American and Eurasian continents meet. It was seriously so beautiful!

Enjoy the pictures!

Still in Þingvellir!

I loved Þingvellir!

Look at that view!

Still in Þingvellir!

Our next stop was Geysir! This particular geyser no longer erupts, but it used to and is the original geyser. Meaning this is the geyser that the English word geyser comes from. (You can see Strokkur Geysir erupting in the background.)

Strokkur Geysir! This one would erupt every few minutes, sometimes big, sometimes small and everytime it surprised me. We stood there and watched it for awhile and I swear I jumped everytime it erupted, even though I knew to expect it.

Blesi!

Still at Geysir!

Gullfoss! Even though we definitely saw waterfalls at Þingvellir, this waterfall was the first official one of our trip and it did not disappoint. (By like the third day of the trip, I was calling Iceland the Land of Waterfalls, because I swear we saw them around almost every corner. :))

I feel like the pictures don't really do it justice.

Kerið Crater! A volcanic crater lake. There was a small entrance fee, but it was worth it. The contrasting colors of the red dirt, green moss, and turquoise color of the lake were amazing! The pictures don't really do it justice. The colors alone were worth the entrance fee, but we also walked around the whole crater. 

The colors seemed to change depending on where we were on the trail around and of course whether the sun was behind a cloud or not. It seriously was so cool!

I hiked to the bottom of the crater.

View from the lake!

On my way back up from the crater lake!

On the airplane ride to Iceland I read an article in a magazine about the horses in Iceland. The article mentioned that tourists often stopped in the middle of the road (not a good idea) to take pictures of the horses and sometimes to feed them random human foods (also not a good idea).

It also mentioned that there was one farmer who decided to make some of his horses easily accessible so people could take pictures safely and to also have horse food available for people to feed the horses instead of human food. So he built a little parking area in front of some of his older horses and had horse food available to purchase.

We happened to see this particular spot talked about in the article and stopped and watched the horses for awhile. I didn't buy any horse food, but some other people that were there had and so the horse had come up to the fence. Isn't it a beautiful horse?!

Skálholt! A small town that used to be a cultural and political center in Iceland and also the location where the last Catholic bishop of Iceland, Jon Arason, was executed. The leader of Iceland at the time was transforming the main religion in Iceland from Catholicism to Lutheranism. Arason resisted for about a decade and was eventually captured and beheaded in 1550 along with two of his sons. Arason was also known for being a poet.

The town is now exceedingly small, but it was fascinating to visit and learn a little bit about the history of Iceland.

This mural was inside the church pictured above.

There was a turf house next to the church. There was a time when almost everyone lived in turf houses in Iceland  (but I'll talk about that in another post.)

Still in Skálholt!

Before Diana and I left for Iceland, we had heard about their world famous hot dogs. That first night when we were trying to decide what to eat, we saw this hot dog stand and decided to give it a try.

I decided to go bold (or as bold as you can get with a hot dog :)) and get a fried hot dog with all of the works including doritos. I don't remember what else was on it, but it was a pretty good hot dog, definitely different than any other I've eaten. The one thing I had to say about it was that it was a bit salty.

 

This picture was taken near the hot dog stand in the picture above. We thought that the cloud was so cool and it actually stayed that way for a long time.

The road leading up to our bed and breakfast for that night. It was in the countryside and it was lovely!

Our bed and breakfast. It was a lovely place! It was clean, had awesome views, the owners were friendly, and they had an awesome breakfast in the morning!

The view from our room at 9:25 pm. Look how light it is still!

That's the end of our first day in Iceland! We were exceedingly tired at this point. Neither of us slept very well on the plane and were on the go the whole day. I'm pretty sure as soon as my head hit the pillow, I was asleep. :)

My knee!

I had a pretty eventful weekend this last weekend. I went to a charity dinner on Saturday evening where I got dressed up, ate delicous food and listened to interesting speeches as they tried to convince us to donate to their charity. It was a new and interesting experience to me. As much as I would like to talk more about this, I'm going to talk mostly about what happened on Sunday.

Just be warned this story might be kind of boring and if you get queasy reading about injuries (and seeing a picture of the injury at the end) then I suggest not reading any further...

The mid-singles had a potluck after church on Sunday. I was in the kitchen at the church checking my food that I had brought when I suddenly was in excruciating pain. I screamed loudly (and apparently made a howling sound according to some people telling me the story later). A few people came over to see what was wrong. 

My right knee had popped out of place and was not going back into place. It was excruciatingly painful. If you've ever had that happen before, you understand the pain. If not, then just know it hurts a whole helluva a lot. 

I was crying inconsolably and trying to remember to breathe. I was pretty oblivious to everything around me, but I do remember some snippets of what else was going on, but I'll spare you the details. 

Someone ended up calling an ambulance because they soon realized that no one there was going to be able to help me and I don't think I would have made it if someone had driven me to the emergency room in their car. (Meaning just the thought of someone getting me to their car and driving me with how much pain I was in, I probably would have passed out or something.) 

(One of my friends took some pictures during the process.)

The EMTs and firemen came and gave me drugs to help with the pain, but it didn't really help that much. I was still very aware of the pain and it didn't seem to lessen it.

(Thankfully my sister and brother-in-law happened to be at the church at the time. Lara and Glen have church in the same building but their ward gets done at noon. They are not usually at the church at 4 but happened to be this day and I am so grateful they were! It was comforting knowing Lara was there and she went to the hospital with me. Glen and Bishop L from my ward gave me a blessing before they took me out to the ambulance.)

While I was in the ambulance, the EMT called a doctor to ask permission to give me stronger pain medication. They gave it to me and it did not have the effects on me that it was meant to. It was supposed to sedate me, but it did not do that. It made me a little loopy (and I think that was part of what it was supposed to do), but it did not sedate me and the pain was still very apparent to me. 

The ambulance ride was very painful, pretty much any turn or stop they made, it hurt really bad. 

We finally got to the E.R. and into a room and the doctor came in and popped my knee back into place. Almost immediately my knee felt better. It was definitely sore, but just the fact that it was in its proper place, helped it immensely. They kept me there for a little while until my medicine wore off to make sure I was okay.

The doctor gave me a brace to wear for a few days and told me to take it easy, but she said she thought I would be okay and then released me from the hospital. 

My knee is improving everyday. I've been wearing the brace off and on during the day and icing my knee occasionally. It feels a little bit better every day. 

Thank you to all of the people who helped out at the church that I know and don't know about! Thank you Lara and Glen for letting me stay at your house for two nights so that you could take care of me and let me take it easy. Thank you Lara for driving me to and from work Monday and Tuesday.

Beware injury picture below...

My knee not in its proper place.