Iceland- Day 2 (Seljalandsfoss, Gljúfrabúi, Seljavallalaug Thermal Pool, Skógafoss, Dyrhólaey Nature Preserve, Reynisfjara)

I call this day The Day of Wetness! But in a good way. :)

I loved the fog in the morning of this day.

Our first stop of the day was Seljalandsfoss.

We had been warned before coming here that we might get wet so wear clothes that dry quickly. I had on my rain jacket and a pair of pants that weren't jeans.

Seljalandsfoss was a waterfall we could walk behind and would get us wet if we chose to walk around it. :) Have you ever walked behind a waterfall before?! If not, it is a really cool experience. :)

I left my camera in the car because I was worried about it getting wet, so these next couple of pictures are from Diana's waterproof camera.

 It was so cool to walk beside and behind the falls and come out on the other side! We definitely got wet, but it was worth it. :)

Thanks for these pictures Diana!

We just stood here for a couple of minutes and watched the waterfall and enjoyed the scenery from this view point.

Isn't it pretty?!

After we enjoyed Seljalandsfoss, we made our way toward Gljúfrabúi, which is about a 10 minute walk from Seljalandsfoss.

Along the way there were some other smaller waterfalls. (Remember from my previous post, there are waterfalls around almost every corner.)

We made it to Gljúfrabúi! To see the falls better, we either had to climb to the top of a pretty steep cliff or wade through a river. We chose to wade through the river. Even though there were stepping stones in the river, my shoes still got a bit wet. But it was fine. ;)

 Looking to see what the situation was to get to the falls.

 We made it!

If I'm remembering correctly, there might have been a hermit that used to live in a cave at this waterfall. This fascinated me since it was pretty wet and loud in there.

Isn't the waterfall so cool?!

To add from the wetness at Seljalandsfoss, I got wet in here too. But I was okay with it, since it just added to the adventure. :)

And I'm out of the cave and wet! I loved it!

 

You can see the top of Gljúfrabúi above the rock. This was the hill we would have had to climb to see it from the top. It was steeper than it looks in the picture and I think it was more fun to walk through the water to see it. :)

One more picture of Gljúfrabúi. Look at the light pillar!

One more picture of Seljalandsfoss. As we were leaving, there was a man playing music there. But it wasn't pop music or anything, just natury type music. I don't really know how to describe it, but it was interesting.

Our next stop of the day was Seljavallalaug Thermal Pool! The walk to this pool was seriously awesome! We saw no less than a dozen waterfalls along the way. The walk there alone was worth it, but the pool was awesome too. :)

On the way to the pool!

We made it to the pool! Seljavallalaug is the oldest still existing public pool in Iceland. It is warmed by hot spring water from a nearby volcano. It was built in 1923 and admission is free.

Since we walked all that way to get to the pool, we definitely needed to get in the water. We had brought our swimsuits with us and were able to change there.

The water was warm and the bottom of the pool felt slimy. I didn't like the feel of the sliminess so I tried to not touch the pool floor. ;) I also didn't have a towel with me so I used one of my shirts as a towel when I was changing back into my regular clothes. :)

Some of the area surrounding the pool!

Looking back from where we came from!

Look at that scenery! As we were in the pool, we counted how many waterfalls we could see from there. We counted eight. It was seriously so cool! The valley, the waterfalls, the walking across a river twice, the pool, the fog, all of it just made me so happy!

After the thermal pool, our next stop was Skógafoss! As you can tell it was sunny when we there and that made for some awesome pictures as we got closer to the falls. (And actually you can see a little bit of the color at the bottom right of the falls in this picture.)

Look at those rainbows!

There's a legend that an early settler hid a chest of gold behind this waterfall where it would be hard to reach. But if someone was able to get the chest, they would have great riches. Some men attempted to retrieve it but could not. There's a poem to go along with the legend.

The chest in Þrasi's secret lair
Under the Skogar waterfall
Rewards the one who ventures there
With endless riches, great and small

Alas I did not find the chest of gold, but the rainbows were seriously so cool! :)

We climbed 527 steps to the top of the hill next to Skógafoss to see the view from the top!

Skógafoss from the top!

For some reason it was scary to me to walk out on this thing. I did it, but I did it reluctantly, even though I knew it would be worth it.

Diana and I sat here for a few minutes soaking in the scenery.

We walked farther along the path. Looking back you can see the mist from Skógafoss.

This is farther up the trail. I had to take a picture of this man taking a nap near the edge. What a beautiful location, but a little too close to the edge for comfort. ;) This is just another waterfall along the path above Skógafoss.

Looking down the hill we came up.

The hill we climbed up and it's time to say goodbye to Skógafoss!

Dyrhólaey Nature Preserve! I loved this place! (Ok I'm probably going to say that about every place we visited, but it's true.) The views were amazing here! There was a lower viewing point and an upper viewing point. We went to both. This and the next couple of pictures are from the lower viewing point.

Look at that black sand beach!

Isn't it pretty?!

This is from the upper viewpoint. We had to drive up a narrow, gravel, steep road to get to it, but it was worth it. Diana did an awesome job getting us there safely. :)

I was in awe of this view! The pictures don't really do it justice.

That cliff and the black sand beach and the water, it was just so beautiful!

Lighthouse!

Still at the Nature Preserve!

The views from this place were seriously so amazing!

Our last stop of the day was Reynisfjara Black Sand Beach! The lava caves and Halsanef (a mini Giant's Causeway) were only accessible during low tide. Thankfully the time we wanted to be there was low tide. :)

I loved this place. (Does that surprise you?!:)) I became giddy when we first came to this place and I saw the mini Giant's Causeway. (In case you don't know I went to Giant's Causeway last year and loved it! You can read about my experience there here.)

Inside one of the lava caves! I look so tiny.

Mini Giant's Causeway! Yay!

According to folklore, two trolls tried to drag a ship to shore but were turned to stone when daylight broke and they became the two pillars in the ocean seen in the picture above.

This place was seriously amazing! We actually saw some puffins up in this little cove. We couldn't get super close to them but sometimes we would see them fly out to sea and then dive into the water. It was really cool! Puffins wings move really fast. I heard from one of our tour guides later in our trip that they flap their wings about 200 times per minute.

Although the picture is a bit blurry (because I was really zoomed in), you can see some puffins in the picture. :)

Me and the trolls. ;)

Black sand and fish skeleton!

Inside one of the caves. I liked the framing of this picture!

This was a fun beach to explore and I really enjoyed it! We spent quite a bit of time here. The scenery, the different rock formations, the puffins, the lava caves, the mini Giant's Causeway, the black sand, just everything about this place was magical!

Now it's time to go back to our Airbnb for the night!

On our way back, we saw that this church was in such a picturesque location that we had to stop and take a picture! Iceland actually has quite a few of these white and red churches and they're so cute!

A pretty view of Vik and the sky! We stayed in Vik that night!

This was the view from our Airbnb!

This picture was taken at 10:08 pm! It was getting darker, but it was still pretty dang light.

I seriously loved this day!

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. :)