Let's Talk About Iceland

Iceland is a Northern island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, halfway between North America and Europe, that is home to about 330,000 people. Like other Scandinavian countries, Iceland is winning with education and healthcare guaranteed to all citizens, paid for by taxes of course. They also believe in gender equality and just passed an equal pay law that requires businesses to show proof of equal pay between females and males. Iceland has an extremely low crime rate averaging 1.5 murders a year. Not too sure how the half murder works out. Because people aren’t out committing crimes, they have very few police officers. Iceland PD is Instagram famous (@logreglan) with an account detailing all of the things they do all day since they don’t have to fight crime. Still not impressed? Police officers in Iceland do not carry handguns on their hips. They use their batons and/or their words to deescalate situations that occur. Now there’s a blue that we can back! To all you second amendment lovers, Icelandic people love their guns and they have tons of them. However, ownership is regulated by law and requires a medical examination and written test. Let’s give Iceland the biggest round of applause for being so awesome. Could other countries (*read: ones that think they’re great) take notes?

Okay, enough of the Iceland love fest. Everything about the country is not all great. It is one of the MOST expensive countries that we have ever traveled to. Yall, Cheerios cost $9! Eating out at restaurants was a painful mix of being so dang hungry but so dang cheap at the same time. We ate expensive pancakes, expensive hamburgers, and drank expensive soda. But guess what? Tipping is not a thing in Iceland…which I just really love! After a few days, we found a grocery store and bought expensive groceries that my mom proceeded to cook on two hot plates in our Airbnb. Another crazy part of Iceland is that they only have about 5 hours of daylight during the winter months. We actually arrived on their Winter Solstice which is the shortest day of the whole year. There is nothing stranger than going to sleep and waking up to darkness. Okay…so not a very long list of negatives.

  

After 17 hours of travel from Kuwait to Turkey to Amsterdam to Iceland, we walked off the plane and were hit in the face with a slushy mix of ice and rain. It was then that I knew that I wasn’t ready for 5 days of cold. The actual city of Reykjavik is about 45 minutes away from the airport. We chose not to rent a car for this trip because let’s face it, what do three Texans know about driving in real snow? Charter busses, equipped with USB charging ports and free wifi, are standing by ready to take you into the city for a pretty price. Sidenote: My mom arrived 11 hours earlier on WOW Air from Dallas to Boston to Iceland. Check them out if you’re trying to find affordable (*read: definitely not that comfortable) ways to travel. Our IKEA decorated Airbnb, that I forgot to take pictures of, was perfectly located in the “downtown” area in walking distance to the bus stop and restaurants. By the time AJ and I arrived in Iceland, rode the bus to Reykjavik, dragged our luggage through the ice from the bus stop to the house, we couldn’t do one more thing. Luckily my mom froze tamales from home and packed them in her suitcase. You can’t tell me that black people aren’t resourceful (*read: perhaps a little ghetto)! So, we spent the first night catching up, warming up, and eating tamales.

The next morning we woke up and walked down the hill to find a breakfast spot. We stumbled upon a place called The Laundromat Café. Little did we know that we would return to this same restaurant another day because they knew how to do breakfast: pancakes, hash browns, bacon, eggs, you know regular non-European stuff. After breakfast, we found the nearest bus stop and figured out our way to the mall. I think I have mentioned this in another post, but public transportation in other countries has a way of making you feel dumb. It could be that I can never pronounce the bus stop names or that I am directionally challenged. Like just tell me which number bus I need to be on! Thankfully, AJ is really good at navigating without internet. We walked through the Kringlan Mall, very typical of a regular mall anywhere, looking for Santa Claus to take my annual picture. Well…the 28^th picture with Santa didn’t happen. I ended up taking a picture in Gryla’s cauldron on the last day of our trip. Gryla is a mythical giant troll that Icelandic people use to scare their children into being good. If you’re bad during the year, she’ll come down from the mountain, cook up the naughty kids in her pot, and eat them. And some people think Santa is creepy…ha! After the mall, we relaxed at the house for a few hours in preparation for a long night of Northern Lights chasing. Our tour started at 8:30 pm and lasted until a little after midnight. In order to see the Northern Lights, there has to be clear skies and complete darkness. An oversized, jacked up diesel snow truck picked up our tour group of 8 people and drove out of the city of Reykjavik into the mountains. The tour guide drove us to several different locations, where we pulled over and waited, but the cloud coverage never cleared up.

 

On day 3, my mom booked a twelve-hour tour of the Golden Circle which consists of several different popular locations on the southside of the island, about a two hour drive away. Our tour started in the darkness at 8 am when a green minibus picked us up and headed to the first stop, Thingvellir National Park. This was the location of the first parliament in Iceland and it is also where the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates are splitting apart from each other. Iceland is the only place in the world where you can walk between the two plates, as they are above ground. The next stop on our road trip tour was Haukadalur. This is a geothermal area where geysers explode boiling hot water every few minutes. It was at this part of the day when it started to snow and taking pictures became scarce because keeping your hands warm was the priority. The next stop was the frozen 100-foot waterfall called Gullfoss followed by Kerid Crater Lake, a collapsed volcano. Our evening ended at our final stop, the Blue Lagoon. Goals! Only because I saw an episode of Keeping Up with the Kardashians where Kim went to the Blue Lagoon…ha. Let me just tell ya, the tickets aren’t that cheap! But it was definitely worth it and the coolest part of the trip. Once you arrive, you store all five of your winter gear layers in storage lockers and change into your swimsuit. Then you have to hold your breath and walk out the door into the freezing cold for about 15 feet until you reach the entrance to the lagoon. Once your feet hit the water, you instantly feel better because the pool is 100 degrees. There is a swim up algae mask station and bar inside the lagoon, but mostly just a bunch of people with selfie sticks marveling at such a wonder. Hot, blue geothermal water that makes your skin feel silky while snow is falling on your head. It is an experience like none other.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Day 4 was Christmas Eve and we were three tired, cold humans. We attempted to pull it together and venture out into the city to find a Christmas market that we read about online. A trek to the bus stop and a 20 minute bus ride later to discover the market was not opening on Christmas Eve. We figured it would be a good idea to get some essentials from the grocery store since everything was closing. Then we went back to house and watched Netflix all day and caught up on rest.

 Our final day in Iceland was on Christmas Day, and like most other European countries Christmas is celebrated in a big way. Everything shuts down and it’s almost impossible to do anything or even to find an open restaurant. I thought it would be a great idea to book one of the few tours available on Christmas which just so happened to be a city walking tour of Reykjavik. 3 hours of walking outside on what turned out to be the coldest day of our trip, not to mention that it snowed 2-3 inches the night before. Despite the weather, we had a great time learning about Icelandic cultures and customs from our tour guide Erik who was very knowledgeable and equally as excited to learn about us. By the end of the first hour I couldn’t feel my fingers, and by the end of the second hour I was wincing in pain from frozen toes. Fortunately, by the time everyone was at the max walking outside limit, Erik took us to a restaurant where we had Christmas dinner (tomato soup and bread) and talked with everyone on the tour. After the tour was over, we walked back to our house and opened presents that Santa Mom brought for us. My favorite gift was Aunt Aggie De pralines all the way from Sinton, Texas. Google it…they’re the best! Later that night, we started packing up our stuff as we were all heading out the next morning. Mom back to Texas for basketball practice. We were headed to Amsterdam! < Post coming soon!