I may not be traveling right now, but I certainly have lots of travels to recount. In conjunction with the podcast that Ryan and I are planning to start, I thought I would do a throwback to our first 6 month adventure in 2011 and begin to write about some of those amazing travels. First stop: Iceland.
To begin recounting a trip from over 3 years ago, I pulled out my travel journal from 2011. I have to say, I’m a little disappointed with the details in my journal. I wrote a total of 4 pages for 3 days in Iceland. I’m not sure if I was scared to be honest about everything I was feeling at the time, but my first 3 days had very little depth to them. Let’s see if I can retell Iceland a little better here!
The month of May before Ryan and I left on our trip was one of the toughest months of my life to date. I had just moved out of the house that I had lived in with my 4 best girl friends from university, and I was devastated. I was excited for my next chapter, but I just wasn’t quite ready to close that last chapter. High school had been hard on me, and university was a breath of fresh air with new friends, new experiences, and way too much fun. On top of that, I had no idea what I wanted to do career wise, which made my decision to travel that much easier. Moving into the basement of my parents house was a less than stellar way to spend my first month as a new grad out of university. On top of that, I was working a soul sucking job that I hated. My saving grace was my best friend, Courtney, who was in a similar position to me. Since neither of us had many other friends left in Cochrane, we basically spent all of our free time together, rekindling our friendship after spending 4 years apart at university.
Ryan and I happened to have a flight booked out of Calgary at midnight the night of the Stanley Cup Finals where Ryan’s favourite team, the Vancouver Canucks, were playing the Boston Bruins. We caught a ride into the city to watch the game at a bar, where Ryan took significant flack for being a Canucks fan. After a brutal 4-0 win for the Bruins, we both left the bar feeling sad – Ryan was sad that the Canucks had lost, and I was sad to have said goodbye to some more of my good friends who had come out to watch the game with us. Either way, 2 sad people isn’t a good combo heading into a 6 month trip. When you add a sleepless red eye flight and a nasty lay over in New York to the mix, you get 2 fairly unpleasant people. We grumpily boarded our Iceland Air flight, and our moods began to turn around as we settled into our comfortable, spacious seats and were provide beverages and snacks by happy-go-lucky Icelandic flight attendants. Perhaps this traveling thing wasn’t going to be so bad after all.
After leaving North America and soaring over the Atlantic Ocean, we finally made it to Iceland. We touched down at the airport at about midnight, and I was shocked that the sun was still sitting on the horizon, creating a dusk like feeling. As it turns out, the sun never sets in Iceland during the summertime. Not only were we tired, and jet lagged, but we were now also very confused about the time of day. Nevertheless, one of the things I have grown to hate the most about traveling is arriving in a new city when it’s dark, so I think it’s safe to say that our arrival in Iceland at midnight with the sun shining was a blessing in disguise. Iceland was Ryan’s first country that didn’t speak English, and I know no Icelandic, so we were both feeling nervous about a potential language barrier. Considering Iceland only has a population of about 320,000 people, most people speak English on top of Icelandic. We were later told that if you speak a Scandinavian language, such as Norwegian, Icelandic isn’t actually that difficult, but for Ryan and I it was completely foreign. Being that there were English speakers, we had no problem making it to our hostel in the heart of Iceland’s capital city, Reykjavik. We checked into our hostel and headed straight to bed. We were both feeling overwhelmed so we cuddled up in the bottom bunk together hoping to get some sleep. I wrote in my journal that we woke up feeling refreshed; however, I have very distinct memories of music blaring from a nearby bar until nearly 3am, the unrelenting sun shining through our mediocre blinds, and the worst snorer I have encountered to date on over a year of backpacking serenading us with his rather loud, obnoxious, and irregular snores.
Tired or not, our first full day in Iceland was Iceland National Day, so we headed out in the morning to check out the festivities. As it turned out, the festivities didn’t begin until well into the afternoon, so we spent some time exploring the city. We went to a famous hot dog stand called Baejarins Beztu and enjoyed what is apparently “Europe’s best hot dog”, which included some strange Scandinavian sauces and fish flakes. Because I can’t eat wheat, I only ate the wiener, but it was pretty tasty…. for a hot dog. From there, we explored some of the famous buildings in Reykjavik, and watched strong man competitions set up for Iceland National Day. One thing that we observed early on in Iceland was that everyone seemed to drive really nice cars, dress very nicely, and food and alcohol was insanely expensive. At this point in time, Iceland was having a bit of an economic crisis, so we hadn’t anticipated the insane expenses. Our first real meal in Iceland consisted of 2 drinks and an appetizer shared between the 2 of us, because it was simply that expensive.
After enjoying some of the Iceland National Day festivities, we made our way back to our hostel for some more celebrations, which also happened to include hot dogs (I passed this time around). We hung out with an interesting group of people, and this was our first experience being with a random group of people from a hostel. One thing that I love about travelling is meeting people from all over the world, and forming a friendship or having a really good conversation with someone that I perhaps never would have given a second look to back in Canada. Although the group we were with was different than us, we still had a fun time with them, making our way to a vegetarian restaurant for a real dinner, followed by a Hoffi Hoff concert. Hoffi Hoff, for those of you who haven’t heard of him, is a very unique, Icelandic pop star. YouTube him – you won’t be sorry! We spent about an hour enjoying some Hoffi Hoff before making our way back to the hostel to pre drink and then head out. We headed to the bar somewhere between 11pm and midnight and the bar was dead. It wasn’t until well after 1am that the bar really began to become busy; however, at $12 a drink and still overcoming jet lag, Ryan and I called it a night sometime around 2am.
The following morning, Ryan and I headed out for a full day tour at around 7am. Although I didn’t write about feeling tired, I must have been. Just thinking about this now makes me feel tired. Perhaps that is a sign of my old age coming through. Anyway, we headed on what is called the Golden Circle tour, stopping at a beautiful, deep crater lake, a series of geothermal geysers, and the Golden Falls, all of which were spectacular. The scenery in Iceland is absolutely phenomenal, and like nothing I had ever seen before. I particularly enjoyed the geysers because they seemed to erupt right as we would be taking a photo at the wrong angle. The result was a series of very interesting and silly photos! From there, we enjoyed some typical Icelandic stew for lunch before making our way to the continental rift. Having taken 2 geology classes in school, I was pretty excited to see something that I had learned about up close and personal. Once we had returned from our tour, we made our way to the Blue Lagoon, which is probably what Iceland is most famous for. It is a geothermal hot springs that is a beautiful baby blue colour. Arriving around 7pm, it was cool to see the sun sitting in the sky as though it was 3pm. On top of that, the Blue Lagoon is located in the middle of a gigantic lava field, and we wound our way amongst the lava in order to get to the Blue Lagoon. While in the hot springs, Ryan and I put the white muddy minerals on our faces – apparently it is good for the skin. The Blue Lagoon is fairly developed, yet is still able to maintain the “natural” feel of the hot springs, which I love. I hate going to a hot springs that is simply just a pool with hot water that is apparently natural. On top of that, there was a really cool card system set up where you could put everything on your card, such as towels, lockers, and food (which we couldn’t afford) and then you pay on your way out. Due to the incredible beauty, and the organization, I think the Blue Lagoon was my favourite part of our time in Iceland.
Once we had finished at the Blue Lagoon, we arrived back downtown and went for dinner at a traditional viking restaurant at around 10pm. Although this is very late at home, it is a fairly normal time to eat dinner in Iceland in the summer. By that point, we were (admittedly) very tired, and headed to bed in preparation for our flight to London the following day. Overall, I really enjoyed our time in Iceland, although I wish that we would have had more time and more money to really get out into the countryside. My ideal way to travel Iceland would be to rent a car, rent camping equipment, and scour the most desolate and beautiful locations of the country. Until next time, Iceland!