A blog of travels & renovations.
3 weeks touring Santorini, Iceland, Norway & Switzerland in September / October 2015
Reykjavik has a very active street art scene, particularly around the downtown area. We had a great time hunting some down – some were in more prominent areas than others.
It will be interesting to see if this is continued to other parts of Iceland. Will keep an eye out!
Our first day on the road!
After a leisurely morning of finishing our packing, having a buffet breakfast and taking photos of some of Reyjkavik’s very active street art scene, we grabbed our trusty steed (a brand new Suzuki Vitara) and hit the road!
Today was all about The Golden Circle – 4 landmarks that are often done in a (very long) day. Unfortunately, one of the biggest attractions, The Blue Lagoon, had major issues with the water pipes and as such, had a 4hr waiting time! Needless to say, we didn’t hang around and hope to do this at the end of our trip now instead.
We pushed on and drove to an important landmark for various reasons in Iceland – Thingvellir National Park. It’s the home of Iceland’s first parliament set up by the vikings in the 900s and it’s also the meeting place for the European and North American tectonic plates which are slowly separating.
Next on our list was the home of the original geyser, Geyser! There’s a bunch of very active geysers with one going off every 10 minutes or so.
The whole Golden Circle has so many vantage points for incredible scenery – Autumn was clearly an ideal time to come with the colour of the leaves and folliage.
Last on the list, but by no means least, was Gullfoss Waterfall. Absolutely spectacular waterfall with a massive drop and spilling tonnes of water every second. It’s impressive just how close you can get to the waterfalls without the enormous barricades we’re used to back home…
Tonight we’re staying at an AirBnB place in Vik, South Iceland. From our last Golden Circle stop, it was about a 2.5hr drive. We turned that into a lot longer drive as we saw some truly amazing scenery on the way. We saw a large waterfall from a distance so we stopped at that as the sun was setting…
And then not too much further down the road, we start to see some snow-capped mountains. Kept driving and we ask ourselves, “is that a glacier?”. Sure enough, a 5minute drive off the Ring Road and only a 10 minute walk we’re looking at Solheimajokull Glacier. It was around 7:15pm so light was fading quickly so it was a quick snap and back to the car unfortunately:
Our accommodation is fantastic. Our host is very nice & after a delicious pizza around the corner at the local restaurant, we collapse into a comfortable bed after another huge but incredibly satisfying day.
Our first full day in Iceland! We’re staying at Hotel Fron, right in the heart of Reykjavik’s central area. This city is amazing!
Basically today was get a lay of the land kind of day… Lots of walking around, seeing the sights and soaking in the funky architecture, cool shops and bars and eating as much of the food as possible!
Our rather large day consisted of:
Here’s a few photos of our day!
When you’re traveling between somewhat unusual places, travel time always takes longer as there’s stop-overs and lots of time in airports waiting for flights. That’s what today was.
We left our beautiful accommodation in Santorini with a bit of a heavy heart thinking perhaps we could have spent an extra day or 3 here, but that’ll likely be a common feeling we’ll experience more in the near future. As part of our car hire deal, we got to leave the car at the airport with the key under the front mat, doors left unlocked, which was bloody fantastic. Like many things in Santorini, it’s a bit of a case of close enough is good enough with the airport. It certainly adds to the charm, but there’s a few things that could be improved which would increase the level of comfort… such as a few ceiling fans in the waiting area so you can try and move the smell of passengers around a bit waiting in the unairconditioned old building.
From there – the day was pretty uneventful. Plenty of waiting in Athens airport, then we arrived thinking how bored we’ll be in Copenhagen Airport with another near 4-hour wait. Well, we were wrong about that! Basically Copenhagen has the most amazing airport we’ve come across. The floors are parquetry designed floorboards, there’s classic Danish design everywhere and the wings of the airport are themed totally differently. Simply put, it’s amazing. The only thing that trumps it? The fashion parade that is the Danish travelers. Never have we been more self-conscious about how poorly dressed we were (we dressed for comfort – big mistake) where as the Danes look like they just stopped in at one of the many, many high-end fashion boutiques the airport has to offer.
The airport is so good and the people so well dressed we’ve now put Copenhagen as a spot we’d love to come back to. Can’t say that about too many airports!
We finally got onto our flight with Icelandic Air. Now this is how to run a low-cost airline. There’s funny stuff galore – from the welcome video to the menu… it’s just superbly done and would 100% fly with them again just for their efforts.
Once we arrived at Iceland airport (it too very impressive), we grabbed our bags and proceeded to do some shopping at the largest duty free shop we’ve seen. Glen bought 3 x 6-packs of local beer as well as some travelling chocolate. No customs which was kinda weird!
First error for the trip was around the corner… Glen mistakingly assumed that the airport shown on Google Maps was the international airport which is literally 3km from the city centre. Ummm ,no, that is the domestic airport. The international one is a whopping 55km away. We didn’t price the taxi and given it was 10:30pm, we just jumped in. 15minutes in Glen asks the driver how far it is and then we learn. It ended up being the most expensive taxi ride of our lives at near-on $200, but oh well! Live and learn! After traveling for 18hrs, we were just happy to get to our very nice accommodation and get some sleep!
If you’re keen to see more of our photos, I’ve uploaded them to Flickr and you can check them out here.