Hi all,
I am finishing up my trip to Europe and the best word to describe it is EPIC. I have never done so much in a week. Worn out and tired, I am still high on ecstasy, because I have many more memories to last me forever.
To start my trip, I bought a one-way ticket to Iceland. WOW has crazy cheap flights to Iceland, so I figured that Iceland will be my gateway into Europe. I didn’t want to spend too many days there because A) there isn’t a lot of land to explore and B) it is super expensive in Iceland. I knew this from all of the travel YouTube videos I watch daily.
The flight left at midnight, and being an early bird and very resilient against time zone changes, I knew I would suffer on this trip. Luckily for me, sleeping on planes isn’t a problem…even though I got the middle seat (BOO).
I woke up a little out of it, somewhat looking forward to the notorious fart-smell. My friend and I rented a car and our adventures began. He drove and I navigated.
Let me tell you something. Navigating Iceland is hard work. Thank gosh Dennis had international data; We have no idea what we would have done without GPS. However, even with GPS, the voice would tell us to turn on the third exit named ABC, but when we would take the exit, the road was named XYZ. Also, you have to be looking at the screen because you can’t even guess how the word was spelled from the audio. We dont know Icelandic. It was very confusing.
Ok, so while I tried my best to stay awake to help Dennis navigate, we looked up things to see around the Golden Circle. I would say the land was pretty uneventful, and I was starting to wonder if this is the same tourist- hotspot on YouTube.
Iceland is beautiful by the way. I feel like you drive and it is very uniform, so you start getting bored. Then, BAM, you get to the attraction and nature surprises you. Mother nature knows what she is doing; I shouldn’t have doubted her.
We hit up the following places in this order:
- Thingvellir National Park
- Geysir
- Gullfoss
- Kerid Crater
From there, we left the Golden Circle and went straight to the Blue Lagoon, which was where the sulfur really kicked into the nostrils. The egg-smell is so unappetizing. So I read somewhere the Blue Lagoon is man-made and the water comes from a power plant. I can’t confirm if the water comes from the plant, but the plant’s industrial size cannot be missed in the background. Mmm, the epitome of serenity.
By midnight, we got to the AirBnB and we were lucky. What was supposed to be a shared space, we got all to ourselves. The sun was still out, so we had to roll down those no-nonsense shades to fall asleep. Out like a lamp. The next morning I got up for our flight to Hungary (my country pick).
-Amy
amy 