Iceland
March 5, 2017
Heidi Marie Sassin
We visited Iceland in mid-March of 2016. It was nothing that I expected it to be. Iceland was the strangest and most beautiful place I have ever seen. From sunken volcanoes to boiling lakes, it was a country I will never forget, and I will always want to return to. It is a wonderful place, with the friendliest and happiest people I have ever met, yet nothing could have prepared me for how amazing and diverse the landscape is…even at the end of winter.
A Warm Welcome To Iceland
We got to the hotel around 7:30 a.m., a bit earlier then they were ready for us, and had to wait while our room was being prepared. We asked if they had some coffee and the attendant told us there was coffee around the corner. We walked to the end of the hall, and were confused, as we didn’t see any coffee. We walked down a second hall, and found a table set up with coffee and espresso machines, ceramic mugs, cloth napkins and fresh cream. We made our coffees and they were absolutely delicious–a luxury we are not often granted when traveling.
As we sat on the soft benches next to the coffee machines, women in business suits started to arrive. We were on our second or third cup, with our hair a bit disheveled and our eyes bleary from the red-eye flight, when one of the gathering women approached us. She asked if we were here to attend the women’s conference. We told her we were not, and then realized that my boyfriend and I had mistakenly gone into the wrong section of the hotel and were now drinking coffee at the woman’s conference, in our airplane pajamas. The people of Iceland are so kind, they just smiled and wished us a good day and went about meeting people from the conference. We poured one more cup, said goodbye to the women, while laughing at how we missed the very basic coffee machine with paper cups at the front desk, and realized we got a warm welcome to a wonderful country.
Walking Around Reykjavik
After a morning nap, we took a bus downtown, first stopping at the Hallgrímskirkja Church. Its dramatic concrete polygon wings stretch into a tower reaching up into the heavens. The exterior design resembles cliffs of basalt, which are naturally formed as lava cools into hexagonal columns. Inside the church is very simple, with the exception of a giant 5275-pipe organ gracing the back wall. We paid 900ISK ($8.00) and went up to the observation tower; which included taking an elevator that fits only a few people at a time, then climbing a couple flights of stairs. We looked down upon the city of Reykjavik with its beautifully painted houses and vivid rooftops. Everything from fire engine red to neon green was colored below us. Across the water, low-heavy clouds melted into icy snowcaps, streaking down over the blue-black earth of Iceland’s mountains and into the harbor waters below. It was magical.
The city of Reykjavik reminded me of any port fishing city on the Atlantic, with brick and cobblestone streets, small shops and family restaurants. We enjoyed a local fish stew and stopped in a few tourist shops. You can find almost anything here flavored with liquorice, from chocolate to salt, and if you love this unique flavor, as I do, it is delightful here. On our way back to the hotel there were single lost gloves with phone numbers hanging from a gate, looking for their “lost connection”. This was really cute, but I am very happy I found my connection a few years ago. Reykjavik is not a very large city and walking around downtown took just a couple of hours. We did not get to experience the museums or nightlife here, but were able to spend two afternoons exploring the city and had a lot of fun doing so.
Hot Springs and Northern Lights Tour
Our second day in Iceland, we went on a Northern Lights tour. The bus picked us up in front of the hotel in the late afternoon. Usually my boyfriend and I never do group tours, we like to have the freedom to roam as we please. This was not the best part of the trip, however, everything happens for a reason, and as I looked out the window of the bus, I saw the most beautiful blue mountains covered in fingers of snow, with lakes of mirrored glass expanding in front of them. The lakes were surrounded by white ice, and were filled underneath with deep aqua blue water. The pink sky and mountains reflected off the lakes and it was the most stunning landscape I have ever seen in my life. As the bus drove on, I wished we could stop to take pictures, and I marked this in my memory of a place I would never forget, even without a photo.
We then stopped at Laugarvatn Fontana where we soaked in outdoor hot springs and ate an Icelandic buffet dinner. We walked down to the lake, and could hear the water boiling. It was too dark to see anything, but the strong smell of sulfur and the sounds of the boiling lake intrigued us. It started to snow and we made our way back to the group. We all boarded the bus and drove around the rest of the night, waiting and hoping for the sky to light up with Auroras. We never did get to see the Northern Lights, it was much too cloudy that week, however our driver and tour guide tried their hardest for several hours to find them. If I could be disappointed with anything about Iceland, it was that I really wanted to see an Aurora, and even after going out again the next night on our own, we never got to see one.
The Golden Circle Road Trip
My favorite day in Iceland came when we rented a car and drove around The Golden Circle. This is a drive to see all the natural wonders around Reykjavik in one day. Driving in Iceland was easy, there was not much traffic outside of the city, and there are only few roads through the countryside, so it is easy to find your way from one point to the next. You can travel for fifty miles and never see another person. Small Icelandic horses wander around the farmlands stretching in every direction, and it is said there are more sheep than people in Iceland, but we did not see any that winter day.
Our first stop was the Þingvellir National Park. We paid 500ISK ($4.50) and parked the car, saw the rain coming, and put on our hiking rain gear (a great addition to our luggage!). It was an easy hike, not strenuous at all, but it did rain lightly most of the time. The landscape was filled with rivers, waterfalls, and old lava fields. There were pathways of asphalt and wood bridges to walk over. The park was home to Iceland’s first Parliament-almost 1100 years ago, where elders met to discuss laws and settle court cases. It is also the location where the North American & Eurasian tectonic plates are splitting apart, creating a giant fissure where the ground is opening up, its rocks sliding apart, the earth moving sometimes several centimeters a year. By the time we left the park, it was once again sunny with beautiful blue skies.
The next stop on our adventure was the Laugarvatn Lake that we had heard boiling the night before. I really wanted to see it in daylight, and it did not disappoint. While driving there, it rained again, but when we arrived, the sky cleared up, and only marshmallow clouds rolled across the blue sky. We walked down the path to the boiling lake, where to my surprise, birds were swimming on the left, and boiling bubbles were popping on the right. You could see the steam of the hot springs rising up out of the ground and water, floating off into the sky. The smell of sulfur is very overwhelming at these places, and it is just something you learn is a part of the adventure. Sometimes you just have to hold your breath and make some jokes.
We continued our drive until we reached the Geysers of Haukadalur. The geyser Strokkur reliably shoots boiling hot water into the air every five to ten minutes. There were also smaller hot springs, mud pots and volcanic openings all around the site. A lot of people stop here and most of the major sites, like this one, have a visitor center. Almost everywhere we went there were tour busses and groups of people. I was surprised at how busy every spot was. Hundreds of people flocked to see the earth shoot up hot water. I was one of them. How they all got here is a mystery to me, I did not see many cars or buses while we were driving, yet the parking lot was full.
We then went to see the famous Gullfoss waterfall. It was an amazing sight–a great waterfall disappearing into the canyon of the Hvítá River. Unless you are up close, it appears that the river just disappears into the earth. Rainbows reached their arms from the water’s edge across the blue sky into the puffy clouds, where another storm was brewing. The path that led directly to the waterfall was closed due to icy and dangerous conditions, but we still got a great view from the areas that were open.
I had read about this volcano that had sunk down into the earth, Kerið Crater Lake. It was not a usual tourist stop and I figured that maybe it would be more secluded than our other stops. When we first arrived, there were only a handful of people walking in and around the crater. The earth blazed with dark red clay and patches of mossy green grass poked through. Inside the sunken volcano was a blue lake, partially frozen and ice covered. This is a place I would love to visit in the summertime. It was very colorful and beautiful. We paid a small fee of around 400ISK ($3.50) and made our way down into the crater. We also hiked all along the top rim of the crater. As we were walking, an aqua-colored tour bus pulled into the parking lot, which now looked miles away, and we laughed about how there were so many people enjoying the beauty of this island.
The Glass Mirror Lakes
It was getting close to sunset, perhaps only an hour or so until it would get dark again, and as we got to the car I asked my boyfriend, if maybe, just maybe we could find the glass lakes that we saw the night before. He looked at me skeptically, and neither one of us thought we could make it back there before it got dark. We drove quickly through the expanse of farms, fields and horses. I couldn’t remember exactly where it was, only that it was 5 kilometers from the boiling lake. We backtracked to the lake, turned left instead of right and just as the sky was turning bright pink, and the reflections turned into perfect mirrors, we actually found my magical landscape.
The glass lakes were on a very long, empty road, with no place to park. We found a little bit of a turn off, where it looked like it was a 3-5 minute walk to take pictures. However the size of the landscape was deceiving. It took us over 20 minutes to walk down the roadway to where the lakes of ice were. Our car looked like a tiny speck, so far away. As we reached the lakes, I looked upon one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen in my life, everything about this landscape was from a fairy tale. Low clouds hung to the tops of the mountains, snow scattered across the earth in every direction, small tufts of green and yellow grasses poked out from the snow, but it was the mirror lakes that were the most amazing. The blue of the ice water shining from below, the pink of the sky shining from above, and the mountains, earth, and snow all melting together and reflecting back at one another.
Iceland was a land I will never forget, and will always come back to. I would like to visit again in the summer, when the midnight sun never sets and the northern lights will be impossible to see, but I know it will always be an enchanting land of elves, fairy tales and magical landscapes, no matter what season you visit.
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