Unexpected Iceland: The Worst and Best Ways to See Iceland

To be honest, the last day of my stay in Iceland was the best one - and also the one which finally made me believe that it's indeed an amazingly beautiful country, which I had doubted in the previous days due to terrible weather. But before discovering the true beauty of Iceland, we had to go through one of the biggest touristic disasters in my life :D

One evening we decided to go on an organised tour called "Northern Lights Mystery". I'm not at all fond of any kinds of organised tourism, but in Iceland you don't have much choice, because you can't really rely on the public buses, which can only take you to some towns, but not to the most beautiful places. So either you have/rent a car, or you go on such an organised tour. I felt a bit sceptical, but decided to give it a try. We were in a big bus full of foreign tourists with a guide who was talking nonsense (Icelandic is very similar to English? Oh really?...), but it all wouldn't have been that bad, if there hadn't been more than 10 buses going all together to one parking some 50 km out of Reykjavík. I bet there must be more parkings in the middle of nowhere in a country like Iceland, but apparently they believe that tourists enjoy traveling in a huge crowd. Well, maybe some of them do, but I definitely don't... So the whole crowd was standing on the parking in freezing wind trying to see something on the sky ;) There was something slightly green and let's believe that those were indeed the Northern Lights and not some unusual cloud. But it didn't look like what you can see on postcards at all. Of course, they always warn the tourists that there's no guarantee of seeing the Lights, so it's not their fault. But the whole thing looked quite ridiculous... ;) Then we were taken to the nearest village and told that we might buy some hot drinks... But then imagine people from all those buses rushing to that local shop/café :D We just stayed in the bus. Later we went to one more parking to hunt the Northern Lights, but both me and Søren were asleep, so we're not even quite sure how many stops there were afterwards :D

The next day we were supposed to go on a similat trip to see the Gullfoss waterfall, but you can imagine how I felt about the idea... Fortunately, we found a better solution: to rent a car! It's really great that, unlike me, Søren can drive a car :)

Yes, there are mountains!

We took the Ring Road towards Selfoss and then I could see it clearly that there actually were some mountains. :) The landscapes were so wonderful that I've taken a lot of photos from the car, which I actually never do, as I find it quite silly. But finally I could see what Iceland is really like - outside of the capital city and without rain! Everything was just white and blue. Only from time to time we could see some tiny villages.

On the way to Geysir

After driving for some 50 kms on the Ring Road, we had to take road 35, which actually leads into the interior of Iceland, but is easily accessible only until Gullfoss, which is one of the most popular tourist attractions. Fortunately, it was already afternoon, so we couldn't see a lot of tourists buses on the way ;) (Yes, now I'm very prejudiced towards organised tourism in Iceland). After one more hour of driving we reached our first destination...

in Geysir

It was Geysir, which is famous for geysers, as you may have guessed ;) The original Great Geysir, which gave the name to periodically spouting hot springs, isn't really active anymore, but in the past it could hurl water for up to 70-80 meters in the air! Nowadays the most active one is Strokkur, which hurls water for 30 meters "only" and errupts every several minutes, but that was enough for me to freak out... It's so easy to scare me, you know :D And yes, now I can perfectly understand why the hot water in Iceland smells so bad. It smells of geysers! :P It's not the lovliest smell ever, but it's certainly worth coming there to see this natural phenomenon.

I was afraid this one would errupt too :D

It was already sunset, but we decided to go to Gullfoss, which is located just 10 km away from Geysir nevertheless. It was almost completely dark when we came there, but it added some mysterious feeling to the process of visiting the great waterfall. First we could only hear it, but not see it :) We walked down the stairs, I fell on the snow while trying to take pictures, and then finally we could see Gullfoss. If you use your imagination, maybe you can also see the waterfall on the next picture! :D

This wonderful quality!

Of course, I wish I could see it in daylight too, but I was glad to come there when nobody else was around, it's so much easier to enjoy the amazing nature this way. Then it was time to drive back to Reykjavík. Actually, on the way back we've seen much more Northern Lights than during that lame tour! they still didn't look the way they do on postcards, but this time I had no doubts that that was it. The only sad thing was that the next morning I already had to fly back to Poland through Denmark and Sweden... Just hours after starting to discover the real beauty of Iceland. But who knows, maybe I'd have a chance to come there again and see more? A month ago the idea of traveling to Iceland sounded too unrealistic to me, but yet it happened in the most unexpected way. And if you've done something once, you can also do it twice, it's the first time which is always the hardest :) I'd love to see more of the Icelandic nature. Still, I think it's a pity they don't have railways and I believe they should certainly build some, but I doubt Icelandic president and prime minister will listen to me ;) It's a country, where almost everyone is used to having a car and so maybe they don't feel the need to have trains... But trainless life is very sad, isn't it? In any case, Iceland is definitely a country, which is worth visiting, even if I had doubts in the first days of my stay there. I'm really thankful to Søren for making this whole journey possible and I hope we'll meet again... in whichever country!

Unexpected Iceland: Reykjavík and Selfoss

I was supposed to update my blog again yesterday, but apart from being lazy I was also quite busy with all kinds of paperwork, so I'm writing today. :) Yes, the fight between me and my laziness continues, but I still think that would be a pity to give up on blogging now. I still believe that sharing my travel experiences here is a wonderful way to avoiding writing boring travel reports in my letters! Isn't that a serious reason to keep on writing?! ;)

During my stay in Iceland I lived in Reykjavík at Søren's place, so obviously I've seen something in the capital city. As I've mentioned in the previous entry, Reykjavík is actually quite big, even if it has relatively small population. If you can spend almost an hour traveling by bus within the city, it can't be small. It consists of many neighbourhoods, which have some long Icelandic names, but other than that they're known by their postal codes (which are only 3 digits long in Iceland). So, for instance, the central part of the city is 101 and I stayed in 109.

Sometimes you can see the sea and mountains in Reykjavík

This is one of the nicest things you can see in Reykjavík, at least from my point of view, because the city itself isn't really exciting. Well, maybe I'm just too picky, because in reality there are a lot of tourists from all around the world and they seem to be enjoying it. But it's also not that you can always see this beautiul view - for most of the time there was fog or it was snowing, so I couldn't see anything. :) Sometimes there would be really nice and sunny weather in Reykjavík 109, but terrible in the centre! Fortunately, I managed to take these photos the day before leaving Iceland, so I actually have a proof that you can see some of amazing Icelandic capital without leaving the capital city. :)

Locals on one of the main streets

After my short visit to Sweden I've developed my communication with geese skills and I had more chances to practise in Reykjavík. ;) Yes, you can often see them walking slowly around the city centre. But I'm even more lazy than they are, so I've spent most of my time either at Søren's work or at the post office instead of discovering all that Reykjavík has to offer. :) But at least I've managed to write and send two letters from Iceland (both have already arrived, because the Icelandic postal service is surprisingly fast):

For Olga in Belarus

For Sandra in Germany

What I enjoyed much more than trying to force myself to walk around the capital, were our afternoon trips. One of them was to Selfoss, which is a nice town some 50 km away from Reykjavík by the famous Ring Road. Once again, I was surprised to see that a town with population of slightly above 6000 can have so may different kinds of businesses. In Ukraine such a town would have had a few grocery shops and some poor café :D But I guess that as for Icelandic standards Selfoss isn't a small town at all and can even be considered some kind of regional centre of Southern Iceland.

Selfie with the bridge over Ölfusá river :D

We arrived to Selfoss about 17:30, so it was already getting dark. For this reason the photos from there look a bit gloomy (again according to my mum) ;), but I liked this place nevertheless. Actually, it wa funny how we started looking for a big mountain, which was supposed to be visible from Selfoss. We even started doubting, whether it wa the same Selfoss - who knows, maybe there are two towns with the same name? :D But it was the same town. Once again, it was just the fog, snow and rain to blame. Yet if you look very carefully at the next photo, you might see the mountain in the background.

There is a mountain. Really.

Still can't see it? So you'll just have to believe me that it really is there. ;) A couple of days later we drove through the same area while the weather was much better and could see it clearly - but I'm not going to tell you about it today. ;) While walking along the river and through the fields, I was trying to imagine, whether I could actually live in this country. I think I would find it hard, because although there is something charming about the darkness and the warm lights of houses in the middle of cold, white space, I'm afraid it could have a negative impact on my mental well-being in the longer run. I've talked to some foreigners, who have been living in Iceland for many years and they mostly complained about the lack of sunlight, not even about the temperatures, which really rarely get extreme. And of course, lack of trains would also be a huge problem for me! ;) But still, Iceland is a wonderful country, which I'd like to come back to at some point.

Houses in Selfoss

We ended up getting totally wet because of the rain again and went for a pizza while waiting for a bus back to Reykjavík. It was a really lovely evening despite the weather :) But the greatest adventures were only yet to come... ;) I'll tell you about them soon!

Unexpected Iceland: Crazy Walking and Swimming :)

It's been quite a while since I've written anything on my blog, because I've been tired and lazy (mostly lazy, let's admit that), but don't worry, I'm not abandoning it yet! ;) I just need some time to relax after the most adventurous winter I've ever had in my life. And of course to share my adventures with you. :)

I took the flight from Copenhagen to Keflavík on 6th February. Until the last minute I was worried that something would go wrong and so I wouldn't eventually fly to Iceland, especially after I tried to do self check-in at the airport and saw my name written as "Kseniamahanna", while in reality it's Ksenia Marianna. Fortunately, they didn't pay much attention to such tiny details, Kseniamahanna has become my new nickname, and I was finally flying to Iceland :) The island looked so beautiful from air that I even forgot to be scared of landing!

A few minutes before the landing

When we landed in Keflavík, we couldn't get out from the aircraft, because there had been a problem with electricity supply at the airport. The perspective of spending 5 days in the plane didn't sound like fun, but luckily the problem was solved after some 15 minutes! ;) Iceland welcomed me with a very strong wind and snow. I took a bus to Reykjavík and after some 50 minutes I was already in world's northernmost capital city. And, as it usually happens to me while visiting faraway countries, I still couldn't believe I really was in Iceland :)

Even when I finally met Søren and we went to have a lunch together, I still had the feeling that I must be dreaming and so I'd wake up in a while! But apparently it was reality, because the next morning I woke up and I was still in Reykjavík. :) Unfortunately, Søren had to work - that was the reason why we couldn't stick to our original plan of meeting in Sweden and Denmark - but we'd go on some trips or do crazy activities every afternoon and evening. :) The first adventure was a walk to Hafnarfjörður, which is a town located some 15 km away from the capital.

On the way to Hafnarfjörður

The road was actually much more busy than I had expected. In fact, Reykjavík also looks much bigger than cities of similar size in Ukraine in Poland. As the whole capital region of Iceland (which includes Reykjavík, Hafnarfjörður and a few more towns, which have names too difficult for me to remember) ;) has just about 200 thousands of inhabitants, so I expected to see a really calm and sleepy place, while in reality it's quite a busy city! It must have something to do with the fact that in Iceland almost everyone has a car, so the traffic is high. You see, it's a very poor country with no railways at all! :( After spending 5 days in Iceland I realised that you can't really do much there without a car, but I'll tell you more about it in my next blog entries. So we walked down quite a busy road through two other towns, but as soon as it was possible, we'd just walk closer to the sea, where I could see the black volcanic rocks. My mum saw the pictures on FB and said that it looks a bit like moon landscape. ;) Well, indeed, it does. But there's something unusual and tranquil about it.

In Hafnarfjörður

When we came to Hafnarfjörður it was already dark and we were completely wet after walking for more than 2 hours in the rain, but it was still such a great experience! And I didn't even feel tired after walking 15 km, but we decided to take a bus back home nevertheless. Then came my lovely experience with hot water in Iceland! :D You see, they have hot water for free, because the country is full of geothermal sources. Great, right? But the hot water stinks like... Okay, I won't write it here, because some of you might be eating while reading my blog. ;) Anyway, I ended up taking cold shower and even washing my hair in cold water for this reason. But you know, cold water isn't really a problem for me... ;)

Søren and me being crazy :D

The next day we went ice-swimming! On 1st January, when I decided not to swim in the ice cold sea while I was already sick, I promised myself I'd still do it this winter. But could I imagine that I'd do it in Iceland?! Never! :) There's just one beach in Reykjavík, because in all the other places the sea is just too deep and dangerous to swim. It takes quite a long while to walk there from the nearest bus stop and we had to walk against a storm wind, so I must admit I had some doubts whether we'd actually dare to do it! ;) But we promised ourselves and told some other people about our plans, so I'm afraid we had no choice! ;) In fact, the temperature of water in Iceland is higher than in Ukraine at this time of the year. That was quite surprising to me, because just the name of the country: "Iceland" already sounds quite freezing! ;) But in reality it has quite a moderate climate and the sea was +5 degrees warm. :)

I'm crazy and I love it!

Then we wore white robes on top of our jackets and were ready to head to Kleppur - Iceland's biggest mental hospital! ;) Actually, we walked like this almost to the city centre! I think it's really precious to have a Friend, with whom you can do the most insane things without the need to hide your quirky nature! :) With such person even a gloomy and windy day can turn intro a great and funny adventure :) We didn't go to Blue Lagoon or any other fancy place like that, but I bet it wouldn't have been even 1% as fun as swimming in the ocean in such a terrible weather! I'll tell you more about our next adventures tomorrow! (If I'm not as lazy as I've been lately!) ;)