Iceland

People have been asking what was my favorite part of our trip to Europe. You can't really compare Iceland (Ísland) to Amsterdam. Well, you can, but that's like comparing apples to oranges. (Or maybe sea bass to marijuana?)

Iceland was cold and grey when we spent time there, and beautifully sunny when we had a layover on our way back to the U.S. It is smaller than Minnesota and has a total population not much greater than Minneapolis. 

Iceland's energy is sustainable, since the ground essentially is dried lava on top of molten earth and hot springs. Houses don't have hot water heaters. They just have hot water, piped directly from its boiling source, which is also used for heating buildings and keeping the sidewalks from getting icy. As you drive through the countryside, you see wisps of steam coming out of the ground, lava fields, glaciers, and cool rock formations. 

It's a super tourist-friendly place to travel, other than being rather expensive. It was beautiful and amazing, and I hope to go back.

Here are a few photos as we wandered around Reykjavik our first jetlagged day. (I have more photos from our trip that I can share privately, if you need to see more.)

Lutheran Church with statute of Leif Erikkson

(or, if you prefer, Leifur Eiríksson). I guess I cut off the cross.

Some of the more historic, prettier buildings with the harbor behind my parents.
To the right of my dad is a bike lane.

On our second day in Iceland, we took a bus tour to see some of the countryside. We learned a lot about geology, volcanoes, and the history of Iceland. One of our stops on the Circle Tour was to this massive waterfall. It was way more impressive than any other waterfall I've ever seen, and is so much prettier and deadly than Niagara Falls. You can get a sense for how huge it is, when you see the people I included in the photo to better demonstrate the scale.

Looking upriver

Looking downriver into the deep gorge. The little dots on the right side
are people on the path and, a bit beyond, on top of the cliff.

After the waterfall, we went to see some geysers. I was lucky to catch one on video (below). From there, we went to our first hot spring (Fontana), where we ate bread cooked in the earth and I jumped in a glacial lake. I hope I will never forget the look on my Dad's face when he realized that he followed me into the women's dressing room. 

We then went to a big park with cool lava formations, spending our time looking at the area where the Viking settlers gathered for all of their important meetings as they established the government and laws of the land. 

I can totally pronounce these names, can't you?

In the late 800s, the Vikings used the little grassy green area
to the left of this woman, between lava formations,
as a corral for their horses.

That night, we had delicious, ridiculously expensive pizza and beer for dinner at a cozy little pub. It was a highlight of the trip.

The next day, we went to some great museums, had an amazing lunch with fish served family style in cast iron frying pans, and then went to our second hot spring, the infamous Blue Lagoon, with its eerie opaque blue water and Disney-esque queues to get into the facility. While the Blue Lagoon was striking and I'm glad we saw it, I don't need to go back.

As we drove up, I heard someone on the bus ask about the nearby factories.
All the steam is just that: steam. There isn't a factory out there.
Instead, the facility is in the business of keeping people from boiling to death
after paying an admission fee to sit in water together.