What’s it Like Driving in Iceland? Driving has to be one of the best ways of seeing Iceland. There are amazing places to visit, most of which are located away from population centers. While there is some limited public transportation, and there are tours available of all major sites, having a car allows you to […]
Knowing what to take on a trip can often be tricky. What we pack depends on where we are going, when we are going, and what we plan on doing. The weather plays a large part – will it be hot, cold, dry, wet, humid, etc. ? Will you be hiking/spending time in the outdoors? […]
What’s in a Name? A lot of Icelandic names seem almost impossible for many foreigners to pronounce. But most place names are actually descriptive, i.e. they are often derived from multiple words that mean something. So for instance, Reykjavik is a combination of reykja meaning smokey and vik meaning bay, so Reykjavik = Smokey Bay, […]
Planning a Geothermal Visit On our first day in Iceland, we went into the information office in Reykjavik. Amongst other things, we asked about getting tickets for the Blue Lagoon for a week later when we would be back in the area. They checked the Blue Lagoon booking system and found that all the tickets […]
Bird Cliffs After leaving our guesthouse in Vik we started back westwards towards Reykjavik. But our first stop was quite close to Vik at Dyrhólaey, a headland that has “bird cliffs”, promising a good opportunity to see more Puffins and other seabirds. There are actually a couple of spots to stop here. Most people seem to […]
Land of Fire and Ice Iceland is a truly amazing palette of the geological wonders of our planet. You can really see geological processes at work – the earth around you seems so young and alive. The presence of recently created volcanic formations as well as glacial features being created in real time have earned […]
The Vestmannaeyjar are also called The Westman Islands in English and refer to an archipelago off the south coast of Iceland. This small area has an active and interesting history. The name comes from its earliest history of being inhabited. From wikipedia: “Not long after Ingólfur Arnarson arrived in Iceland, his blood brother Hjörleifur was murdered by the slaves he […]
After leaving Grundarfjörður we drove back towards Reykjavik, stopping at the town of Bogarnes to see The Settlement Center, which contains two exhibits, one on the settlement of Iceland and the other on the saga of Egil. This “museum” has no historical artifacts, but instead provides two audio guide led tours through a series of […]
Names in Iceland can seem impossible to pronounce for travelers. One of the first regions we put on our list of areas to visit was Snæfellsnes, which until we learned how to say it (sn-ay-fells-ness) we would just refer to it by the name of the Muppet character Snuffaluffagus. Actually Kelly still calls it by that name! […]
The nature of writing this blog is that I can’t post real time and by the end of the trip, I am typically several days behind the events as they occurred. As I write this post, I am actually in my bed in Reykjavik on our final night in Iceland, but this will actually be […]