We stayed our last night in Reykjavik at another “tiny-ish” house, actually a converted garage:
Although we only met a couple of them, we had great hosts everywhere we stayed with great Icelandic names. (Anna & Herdis, Stella and Gisli, Salome, and Sigrun). It was a wonderful trip and we would recommend Iceland to anybody. We are excited to get back home and see Zeke and Moose and are VERY thankful to Lyssy, Norm, and Kathy for taking care of the dogs during our trip.
We had a grocery breakfast of bananas, toast, nutella, & Skyr, and headed off to our first stop, Fjaðrárgljúfur Canyon. The most foolproof way to pronounce the name of this canyon is to press your tongue against your soft palate, then pretend your mouth is full of marshmallows and start just saying random syllables with lots of f’s and r’s.
Jokursarlon was a spectacular place! It was already getting late and we needed to grab some dinner and drive all the way back to Reykjavik. We ended up getting a burger and salad at Kaffi Krus in Selfoss and then made it to our residence for the night around 9:30.
Today will be a short post as today is mostly a road trip day – ending up in Vik so that we can hit some Southeast Iceland spots tomorrow.
We started the drive back from the Westfjords and made a stop at Grabrok, a volcanic crater in the fjord of Borgarfjördur.
From Grabrok we headed to fjord town of Borgarnes for some lunch. Borgarnes was a key filming location in The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (the Ben Stiller version). We ate at the Settlement Center, which is both a museum of early Iceland and a restaurant, with a delicious vegetarian buffet. Then we grabbed drinks at a coffee shop called Blómasetrið (Icelandic for Flower Center, apparently).
From there it was a straight shot over to Vik, the site of our next AirBnb.
We retired to our cottage after a dinner in Vik at Smidjan Brugghus and a walk along the black sand beach. Tomorrow will be another full day, with Fjaðrárgljúfur Canyon (I don’t even attempt to pronounce it), Jokursarlon Glacier Lagoon, and Svartifoss waterfall.
The Heydalur guesthouse is tucked away in a remote area of the Westfjords mountains, hours away from the nearest town, Isafjurdur. It has a greenhouse, pool, a “hot pot” or geothermal spa, horse stables, and two amazing dogs, Loki and Bangsi. We had a delicious breakfast buffet at the Heydalur dining room, which included 5 types of housemade bread with local jams like blueberry and crowberry, bacon, scrambled egg casserole, cereal, fruit, as well as traditional Icelandic breakfast staples like trout, herring, and cheeses. After breakfast we headed off on a 2.5-hour hike along the valley river, passing by various waterfalls.
After a relaxing rest of the afternoon, we had dinner at the dining room.
Heydalur is definitely a hidden gem in the Westfjords and a great place to unwind and rejuvenate.
In planning our Iceland itinerary, we decided we wanted to pick 1 excursion to splurge on out of the many options (“inside the volcano” tour, ice cave tour, puffin-watching, whale-watching, etc.) It would be too much time and expense to do everything, so we narrowed it down between being pulled by a dogsled and snowmobiling on a glacier, and ended up choosing snowmobiling, the more interactive one. So the morning of August 17, we left Reykjavik and headed for Langjökull Glacier, making a quick stop at Faxi waterfall.
We were SUPER excited to get up to a glacier and ride around in a snowmobile on it. The Langjökull Glacier is the 2nd largest glacier on Iceland, only beat out by the gigantic Vatnajökull Glacier towards the eastern part of the island. We drove past Gullfoss and onto an F road up into the Icelandic highlands to reach the base camp for the company leading our excursion. We hopped into our overalls, ski masks, ski goggles, and gloves and started off on the bus ride to the glacier. After a mountainous, bumpy ride to the snowmobiles and a quick tutorial, we jumped on and rode off.
All in all, a ton a fun – a huge thrill and great views of the surrounding mountains. Our tour went a couple hours over time, so we got a much later start than anticipated for our drive out to our next stay – at the guesthouse Heydalur in the Westfjords of Iceland. The Westfjords are a little less touristed and more remote than many other parts of Iceland, so this was our getaway into a scenic and more secluded spot.
After a long, rainy drive through the Westfjords, we finally arrived at Heydalur around 11:00 pm. Looking forward to a chill day 6!
After a slightly more conservative day 3, we were ready for a deep dive into everything that the heretofore unexplored South Iceland had to offer. (If you’re sick of seeing waterfall pictures, you might as well just stop reading now.) After consuming copious amounts of oatmeal and berries at the AirBnb, we headed off to Seljalandfoss waterfall after a quick grocery pit stop at Kronan. (Skippable side note: the go-to inexpensive grocery stores in Iceland are Bonus and Kronan. Bonus’ logo is a devilishly winking piggy bank pig and Kronan’s logo can only be described as a … smirking lemon? Google it and tell me if you have a different opinion) So anyways, Seljalandfoss! AKA the waterfall that you can walk behind:
A short hike away from Seljalandfoss is Gljufrabui waterfall, a much smaller waterfall with a narrow opening between rock faces in the river below.
Then on to Skogafoss!
The top of the stairs at Skogafoss are the beginning of a long but very popular trail called Fimmvorduhals, leading from Skogar to Thorsmork, a mountain ridge. It is a 14-mile journey, so you can either do it in a day and have a bus pick you up on the other end, or do it in 2 days and camp in the middle. We didn’t have that kind of time, so we opted to do just the beginning of Fimmvorduhals, which passes by several smaller waterfalls:
It was a majestic hike with sweeping views and lots of sheep grazing nearby – one of the highlights so far!
We continued on to Solheimajokull, the only glacier in Iceland that you can basically just drive up to and take a 15 minute walk to see up close.
Our drive from Solheimajokull to Dyrholaey peninsula was interrupted …
Dyrholaey is a rocky peninsula near the town of Vik in South Iceland – it looks like this:
A short car ride takes you to Reynisfjara, the famous black sand beach of Iceland.
Dinner at Halldorskaffi in Vik, and meringue pie with chantilly cream and chocolate ganache for dessert. “broke da mouth”
Tomorrow might be a shorter post – we are snowmobiling on Langjokull glacier so we will probably not have much opportunity to take pictures!
Today was a slightly less ambitious day than the previous 2 (there was no way we could keep up that feverish, breathless pace). We headed north towards Thingvellir National Park, one of the must-sees on the Golden Circle, but first made a quick stop at Mosfellskirkja, a beautiful rustic church with unusual triangular-themed architecture that represents the Trinity.
After convincing ourselves that we improved the horses’ days, we trudged onwards past Thingvallavatn Lake to Thingvellir National Park. In addition to being a place with overall breathtaking scenery, Thingvellir is also significant for being the location of the Althing, the Icelandic parliament, for 800 years, from roughly 900-1700. It is also the boundary between the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates, so you can literally walk in a rift in between continents.
After Thingvellir, we headed back to Reykjavik to grab a crepe from Eldur ig os (“Fire and ice,” because they have crepes/hot food and ice cream). Somehow wherever I go I can’t resist crepes.
I had been searching for somewhere to hear live jazz in Reykjavik and had discovered that a jazz trio (guitar, bass, & drums) was doing a free concert at Salurinn Concert Hall at 5:00 pm. We drove through some crazy rush-hour traffic and made it just in the nick of time.
Finally we headed to Fredericksen Ale House to grab a hearty dinner.
Headed back to do some itinerary fine-tuning back at the Airbnb – Day 4 will be South Iceland!
Iceland’s so-called “Golden Circle” is a series of roads that cover some of the most popular destinations on the island, including Thingvellir National Park (which we are saving for Thursday), Gullfoss waterfall, and the Haukadalur geothermal area.
Our first stop was the 45-minute hike to Bruarfoss waterfall. The hike went along the Bruara river and passed by a series of “appetizer” waterfalls on the way to the final destination.
Hiked back to the car…next stop was the Haukadalur geothermal area, where Geysir (a geyser which used to erupt but has grown “temperamental” in recent years), Strokkur (which erupts all the time) and other smaller geysers are located.
Only 10 minutes away from Strokkur is the mighty Gullfoss waterfall, one of our most anticipated destinations on the trip
Onwards to Skalholtskirja, a site which was a center of religious and cultural influence in Iceland for hundreds of years. The current location has a church, mossy side-building, and underground museum/tunnel system.
Our next stop, the secluded Haifoss waterfall, was nearly an hour and a half away, and not really part of the “Golden Circle.” The only way to get to Haifoss is over 8 kilometers of F Road, which is an unpaved, rocky road leading up in the highlands of Iceland. Once we were up in the highlands, it was below freezing and rainy, but we soldiered on towards the short hike to Haifoss.
Last stop of the night was Kerid Crater, a large crater where brightly-colored aquamarine water has collected. You can hike down to the water level.
We saw Kerid just before the sunset, around 10 pm, then took a long detour around some construction to finally get back to Reykjavik around 11 pm. We hadn’t had a full dinner yet, and most of the restaurants that were supposedly open until 1 am were only serving drinks, so we got food from Hlollabatar, a food-truck fixture in Ingolfur square that served sandwiches, burgers, salads, piri piri chicken and more. 2 days in the books!
We landed in Reykjavik (actually technically Iceland’s only international airport is in the nearby town of Keflavik) at 6:20 am local time. We were determined to stay up all day to reset our body clocks and beat the jet lag, so we knew we had a long day ahead. The airport was very small and un-stressful and “cute” (Becky’s word) – we quickly got our bag and rental car and started the drive to Reykjavik. Beautiful 40-minute drive with the Atlantic ocean on our left, mountains ahead and on the right, and a kind of otherworldly volcano-like terrain on our right in front of the mountains.
Arrived in Reykjavik and got breakfast at the Grai Kotturin (the Gray Cat) after it took me (Matt) too long to decipher how to pay for parking downtown.
Then we walked along Laugavegur street (the main drag through Reykjavik) on our way to Hallgrimskirja Cathedral.
After lunch, took a walk by Lake Tjornin and Ingolfur Square, then headed back to our AirBnb to check in/freshen up.
Back to Reykjavik, went to the bank to get our currency exchanged, to the fascinating and well-put-together Icelandic National Museum, then to dinner. Matt got fish & chips from the Icelandic Fish Company (I think that was what it was called), Becky got the Anthony Bourdain-recommended lamb hot dog with fresh onion, fried onion, mayonnaise remoulade, dijon mustard, and a tiny bit of ketchup on a toasted bun from Icelandic Street Dog. Then to Loki Cafe for some sweet rye bread ice cream. (!!!!!)
After seeing the Sun Voyager, we stopped by the Perlan Glass Dome to look around and see some views of the city, then to Kronan to get some groceries for breakfasts and to eat on the go throughout the week. Went to bed around 8 pm because I could not keep my eyes open.
View of ReykjavÃk from the top of Hallgrimskirkja cathedral
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