Iceland has been on my list of places to visit for ages, and thankfully, Andrea was excited to visit too, so we booked the 2nd half of our trip here! In winter, the sun rises around 11am and sets at 3:30pm, so it was dark for much of the day. It was very weird to get up and start the day, when it doesn’t get light until almost lunch time. 😂

The Blue Lagoon

This geothermal hot springs is located in a lava field about 30 minutes from Reykjavik. It is one of the 25 wonders of the world and the milky blue shade of water is due to the high silica content.
We read that it could be very touristy and were worried about it being busy, but when we arrived at 9am, still in the dark, it was peaceful and lovely. We did a silica face mask, had drinks at the pool bar, and soaked for several hours…it felt very luxurious!

Reykjavik

It snowed off and on during our exploration of the city, but was really beautiful (and much warmer than Finland). We were able to see the Sun Voyager statue on the water front, walk and shop along rainbow street, and visit the Perlan museum. In the museum, we watched a neat northern lights presentation in a planetarium, visited an ice cave and ate some delicious Icelandic ice cream.

Golden Circle

We took a day tour through this popular route to visit a volcano crater, a national park, the Gullfoss waterfall and a geothermal area that contains geysers.

Southern Iceland Tour

We took a second day tour to see more of the southern part of the island, including a black sand beach called Reynisfjara, formed from previous volcanic eruptions. The beach had a small area of basalt columns similar to those found in Northern Ireland! We also visited waterfalls, a glacier, and a quaint little village with pretty Christmas lights.
The tourist rest areas were really nice and usually included a restaurant and cafe, souvenir shop and large bathrooms. The food was super expensive, but was always really high quality.

Hotel art work

In our hotel, which was super nice and felt fancy (Andrea had points and we got an upgrade to include a nice happy hour spread each evening), we were amused to find the following unusual paintings hanging in the hallway of our floor. 😳😂

Thanks again to everyone who has been following along with me on this journey!

I am so grateful for being able to connect with friends and family throughout these last few months, and especially grateful to have had a friend come and meet me! 😀