If you're looking for an adventure-filled trip, I would hiighly recommend Iceland, because it has all you want to see from natuure itself. The more you visit this country, the more you want to stay longer to explore all it has to offer. ( By the way, I included all our trips in one city because I couldn't find the regions/towns on the site. )
Day 1,
My friends and I arrived to Reykjavik, the infamous capital of Iceland, full of beautiful places to visit and explore. The plane landed in the Keflavik International Airport ( KEF ) at 11:30 AM. We immediately took a taxi to the place where we rented a car for the next 5 days ( Discover Cars ), for the price of just $26/day and a discont of $15 dollars for the 5 days, a great deal. My friends and I drove to the Iceland Comfort Apartments where we booked 1 room for 85$/day ( we could't find a better deal, as we were 4 adults ). We ate some very good dishes of scambled eggs with cheese and bacon for our breakfast because we wanted to keep it simple so we could try more traditional dishes further on. My friends and I were tired, so we decided to sleep for a couple of hours before visiting the city center.
We woke up 2 hours later, feeling well-rested and ate lunch at one of the restaurants that had been in business for the last 60 years, Bæjarins Beztu Pylsur. They prepare and sell pylsurs, which are Reykjavik's traditional hot dogs. They include crunchy deep fried onions, raw onions, sweet brown mustard, a delicious mix of lamb, beef and pork meat, and a creamy remoulade.I want to give you guys 2 pro tips : Order two, since you're bound to gobble up the first one too quick, and make sure to bring small bills so you don’t hold up the (already very long) queue. The pylsurs were amazing, delicious and prepared with love. After that, we visited Miðborg, Reykjavik's city center. We had a great time there, making bonds with other tourists, eating snacks, drinking wine. Before we knew it, night came. I told my friends to gather up at our car at 9:00 PM. They were all there, in the car, waiting for me. We drove to the hotel and, feeling tired, took a great nap.
Day 2,
We started off the day with a nice walk on the streets around our hotel. It was 9 o'clock in the morning and we already were traveling to the "point number 1", the infamous Blue Lagoon. Over 70% of the people who visit Iceland make their way to the Blue Lagoon, making it Iceland's single most popular attraction, and with good reason : named in 2012 as one of National Geographic's “25 Wonders of the World", this geothermal spa is located in the middle of a rugged black lava field in Grindavík and is filled with warm milk-blue water that is said to have extraordinary healing powers. After visiting and bathing in the Blue Lagoon for a couple of hours, we got back in our car and drove to the Bláfjöll Country Park, where the late morning and early afternoon will be well spent exploring what is widely considered the most magnificent natural phenomenon of its kind, the empty magma chamber of the Þríhnúkagígur volcano. A Þríhnúkagígur volcano tour is literally an excursion into the cold heart of a dormant volcano, where orange and scarlet walls tell stories of ancient cataclysms and terrible destruction.
In the afternoon, we drove to the small town of Hveragerði, where you will spend the night after hiking into Reykjadalur, a steaming geothermal valley that cuts through the mountains above the village. Hot water pours from the Reykjadalur's surrounding hills, forming a warm stream in the bottom of the valley. We bathed there until dusk came, but we were eager to do more in the beutiful town of Hveragerði, so we took a guided horseback tour that took us even further into the mountains above Hveragerði and discovered mighty lava fields and geothermal hot spots of bubbling mud pools, on the back of the strange but pretty creature that is the pony-sized Icelandic horse. After the tour, we drove back to Reykjavik, to our hotel where we ate a lamb meal for dinner and slept.
Day 3,
Waking up feeling well-rested and energetic, we went to the Bæjarins Beztu Pylsur once again to eat some pylsurs for the last time in Reykjavik, before driving 127km ( 1 hour and 50 minutes aproximatively with a car ) to Seljalandsfoss, one of Iceland's highest waterfalls. Seljalandsfoss drops over 60 meters over a misty cavern wherein you can walk behind the cascade and experience a feeling I called "spiritual freedom" from a point of view that is extremely rarely granted by mother nature. We relaxed our bodies and minds, before walking to the next attraction point near Seljalandfoss, which is Gljufrabui waterfall. It is a beautiful spot to your mind, talk with your friends while hearing the soothing sound of the water hitting the rocks below. We took the car and drove for about 5 minutes ( 6km ) to the Gamla fjósið restaurant where we had to choose between a nice lamb meal and rye bread. We went with the rye bread. Mike ( one of my friends ) and I wanted to top our slices of rye bread with delicious slices of smoked salmon and cream cheese, while Daniel and Darius went with the classic soft butter and jam. The tasty dishes refilled us with the purpose to visit more of the beutiful Iceland.
Next, we drove to Seljavellir, where an old path took us to Seljavallalaug, one of Iceland's oldest swimming pools and the south's most iconic construction. In 1923, the pool was attached to a mountainside where it collects the warm water from the steep hills, where to this day you are free to bathe in this stunning example of organic architecture. We booked a room for 4 adults at $74/night at the North Star Cottage, a beautiful place where the views truly make you go insane! For the rest of the evening, we chilled at the hotel with a couple of beers, before taking a good nap to get us refilled for the next day in this stunning country.
Day 4,
Mike and I woke up early and decided to go for a walk around our cottage, before bathing in the hot pool made from rowan wood ( Recently, in an article, I saw that the pools were removed ). We then woke our friends up for eating breakfast together. Like in day one, we ate scrambled eggs with cheese and bacon, but topped off the dish with a cooked salmon. My friends and I took the car to go ten kilometres east of Seljavellir, where we located the mighty Skógafoss, one of Iceland's largest waterfalls, located on the river of Skoga. It plummets 60 meters from off the towering cliffs that make up the border between the lowlands and the Icelandic Highlands. The land below the waterfall is flat, so you can walk until the water sprays on your face ( tip : be sure not to walk too close or you might get trenched! ). It is said that the vikings who lived there hid a tresure chest behind the waterfall which contained many golden objects. I said "contained" because the chest has been found by a group of geared-up tourists. They said that they only found a golden hand before the chest dissapeared in the water. By the way, at Skogafoss, there will always be a rainbow on the sky when the sun shines ( this is because of the spray that the waterfall produces ).
After visiting the mighty "guardian of the south", we accosted the Skógar Folk Museum, whose six buildings display more than 18,000 regional folk craft artefacts. It is an interesting place to learn about the history of the country, the tools that the people who occupied the land of Iceland used in crafting and building, the weapons used in wars and many fascinating pieces of history. We then spent the afternoon exploring Reynisfjara, one of the world's most beautiful black sand beaches. It is adorned with titanic rock formations that make up an enormous cliff face in which strange dark caves open up towards the open sea.
After we took a long walk around the beach of Reynisfjara, my friends and I drove back to the North Star Cottage where we booked another night to sleep well for the final day in Iceland.
Day 5, final day,
We were in a hurry because it was our last day and we wanted to visit more of the stunning Iceland. Our first visit-point Skaftafell, a national shrine that covers over 4800 square kilometres of surreal wildlands where black desert sands meet a birch wood oasis under a spur of the Vatnajökull ice cap. This land is famed and crowned for its warm summer climate and the locals offer excellent services including guided glacier hiking and ice climbing tours, transportation, food and accommodation. From Skaftafell's visitor centre and campsite, a multitude of hiking trails will take you into dreamlike realms of mesmerising beauty.On Fossaleið, Hundafoss will be the first and highest of a set of cascades on the path which to Svartifoss ( Black Falls ) waterfall. This is the waterfall that impressed me the most and made me feel amazed and proud of myself, becuase I had the chance to see this wonder. It was not the waterfall itself but the naturally-formed basalt collums of black stone. I couldn't actually believe that the mighty, tall walls were not man-made! Whitin a 30-minute drive east the campsite, you will find one of Iceland's ( and not just Iceland's, I considered the world's ) most treasured masterpieces of nature, Jökulsárlón. It is a glacier lagoon, on which you can join seals in travelling amongst the mountains of ice that have broken from off the Breiðamerkurjökull glacier in the north. For decades, Jökulsárlón has attracted large crowds from around the world, and to this day it remains one of Iceland's, if not the world's most beautiful natural relic. When the icebergs of Jökulsárlón have melted, the Jökulsá á Breiðamerkursandi glacial river transports them south into the sea, where the waves polish them into blocks of ice that eventually wash onto the obsidian sands called the Diamond beach. It is said that the remaining fragments of the iceberg's are 1000 years old. After walking alongside the Atlantic Ocean, touching each and every one of the glacier fragments, we walked back to our car and drove a long way ( arpoximatively 4-5 hours ) to Reykjavik's International Airport, Keflavik to take the plane back to our home country.
Thank you for reading this itinerary! I hope this article helped you on planning your trip to Iceland and I am really greatful for having the pleasure of sharing this with you!
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Are those pictures for REAL!? Just Wow!!