Not Necessarily the Iciest!

I hardly know where to start to convey how much I am loving this country and this break so far!

Team Iceland in our lovely Icelandic sweaters, blocking the Icelandic horses we befriended

First off, Iceland is not the iciest - although it rained a fair bit yesterday, we've seen the sun a fair bit so far as well, especially Saturday.  And the temperatures have been in the low 30s, but I haven't had to wear all of my layers at the same time, yet, which is kind of what I was expecting.  In short: not the tundra!


Breaking down our experiences so far: 

The view from the harbor, only about
4 blocks from our apartment

The City:  Reykjavik is small, but so densely packed with exciting things.  Our first two days were spent roving about the city, trying the fantastic food, buying the fantastic sweaters and wandering the fantastic museums.  Their settlement museum was one of our first stops, and it was the most interactive museums I've ever seen.  Basically, a few years ago they found ruins under a part of the city that were over 1000 years old (from 871), so they excavated them and built the museum around it.  I won't bore you with details, but either I need to visit more museums or American museums need to step up their game.  We also visited an art museum and the flea market, where we all found fabulous Icelandic sweaters for much less than the hundreds of dollars they sell them for in major shops.  The extra layer of wool has been much appreciated so far!  Bought mine from an old woman who was knitting as I looked through her wares, and it even matches the hand-knit accessories I've worn every day so far! Thanks, Nana.  We also went and found some geothermal pools in the Olympic center - so relaxing!

Staring at one tier of Gullfoss

The Sights: Yesterday marked us renting our car and venturing beyond the city, out onto the Golden Circle route.  They geysers and thermal pools were fascinating and sulfurous, like most of the hot water here, but were overshadowed by the other two stops on the route: Gullfoss and Thingvellir.  Gullfoss is a two-tiered waterfall which is huge, majestic and so obviously powerful.  It's breathtaking.  Just breathtaking.  After staring at that for a long while, we tore ourselves away for Thingvellir, a UNESCO World Heritage site and where you can see the country being pulled apart by the mid-Atlantic ridge.  That's right, Iceland sits right along the rift, where the Eurasian and North American tectonic plates are pulling apart at about 2.5 cm per year.  We had a lot more fun romping along the rift than with the old parliament area, though it is cool that Iceland has the oldest parliament and it happens to sit in the middle of what is now a national park.  We'll venture out into nature more in the next few days before we return to Reykjavik on Friday.

The Food: Is delicious!  We've had the most decadent lobster soup, the famous hotdogs and the spiciest Thai food, as well as gorged ourselves on skyr (a yogurt-y deliciousness).  We're not eating out constantly, as the food is rather expensive, but our splurges so far have been amazing.  One unfortunate thing: much of the candy features licorice, which none of us like.  Our next culinary adventure?  Trying the dried fish jerky.

This has already been a rather long post and there's so much we've done or seen or explored or enjoyed which just doesn't fit here.  But I will say this: warm spring breaks are totally overrated.