Scenes from Iceland

We took a trip to Iceland in early June for our summer vacay and I finally got around to posting a few photos here. It was a great trip - the weather was relatively warm with only some occasional drizzle. Reykjavik is a fun city with great food and great shopping. The scenery away from the city is beautiful. We started the trip with a visit to the famous Blue Lagoon. A visit to the Blue Lagoon is basically hanging out in a giant geothermal hot tub while covering your face in a silica mask and sipping on a beverage. It was great fun!

Here's a view outside of the Silica Hotel at the Blue Lagoon, showing all the moss covered volcanic lava.

This is the famous Harpa concert hall in Reykjavik.

This is a scene from the fun main shopping street. We were there in the first week of June before the major crowds got there.

Here's a pic of the famous church.

The central Reykjavik area has tons of great outdoor art painted on many building walls. Here's a few of the them. The fourth mural is on the wall of a bakery called Brauð & Co.

We weren't in Iceland long enough to travel the ring road around the country and we didn't rent a car. We took a couple of big-bus excursions to see some of the sights outside of Reykjavik. The first excursion covered the popular golden circle loop and one stop was a geyser ("geysir") field. This is one of the geyers.

This tour includes the impressive Gullfoss waterfall.

Another stop is Þingvellir National Park. Here you can straddle the mid-atlantic ridge that separates Eurasia and North America.

The second excursion was a tour down to the south coast and back. This area covers a lot of different scenery. One stop is the famous black sand beach where you can see the rock formations that were the inspiration for the church in Reykjavik.

Here's the beautiful Skógafoss waterfall.

And here's a view of a glacier. There were more adventurous travelers hiking on the glacier, but we just viewed it from a distance.

This is a scene from the road.

Back in town, this Sun Voyager sculpture is located along the waterfront. I took this photo at around 11PM at night. It's a strange feeling to be walking around so late with sunlight and so many other people out for a stroll.

We didn't see any of the cute Icelandic horses in their natural habitat, but the Reykjavik zoo had some. They're smaller than the typical horse but very strong and also very friendly to humans.

We had a fabulous time and I'd definitely recommend a visit! Oh, I should mention that I did NOT buy any yarn on this trip. I did visit a couple of shops that stocked yarn, but I found that the yarn from the sturdy Icelandic sheep is just too scratchy for me to wear.