Iceland
At the beginning of the month, I went to Iceland, Reykjavik with my family for the weekend. Iceland was a lovely place, everyone was so nice there!
We woke up on Sunday morning at around 3:00AM and went to Bristol Airport to fly to Keflavik and we go picked up from the airport Keflavik when we got there by Alex. We went on the tour 'Time Tours' in Iceland and they took us around...
The first day when we got there we went to the Blue Lagoon, which was one of Iceland's main attractions because Blue Lagoon is one of the Geo-Thermal Spas in Iceland which basically the heat comes from the rock on the floor. The rock has always been there and will always be hot and they won't lose any electricity because of the rocks there. As soon as we go out of the airport it was freezing it was known as 'hurricane weather' at the point, it was very windy and it was raining.
When we travelled to the Blue Lagoon in the mini bus, the mini bus was tilting to the side because of the weather at the time, Blue Lagoon from the airport was like probably half an hour - quarter of an hour journey. I remember when we got nearer to the Blue Lagoon you could start smelling the Sulphur, which was basically like a rotten egg smell. The whole area was filled with molten rock from the previous volcanic eruptions and the rock have just been left there and not been removed, so it was a really nice view but because of the 'hurricane weather' it was a bit foggy
so I couldn't really capture a picture of that.
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When we got to the Airport, there was a Victoria Secret shop and I went in the Blue Lagoon boutique and bought the gift box which had the Silica Mud Mask from the Lagoon and the Mineral Moisturising Cream!
Our trip to Iceland, was amazing! I loved every single bit of it and I was quite sad that we was leaving, because Iceland is such a great place.
Here are one of the pictures I could get from the Blue Lagoon after I been into the spa. As you can see in the image theres not much people there at the time because of the weather, it was absolutely freezing at the time, its probably one of the worst times to go into the Blue Lagoon, but our tour guide Alex from Times Tours said that was the perfect weather to go into the Blue Lagoon because the weather out is cold and the water in the lagoon was warm. But in my opinion because it was windy, it kind of made the water rather cold too, so I found the lagoon at that time cold too. After we went into the lagoon we went back indoors and then we went outdoors again and we went into the sauna, it was quite of a walk to get to the sauna too, because it was outdoors and you had to walk over these bridges, I remember that I was screaming at the point because it was ever so cold. The sauna had a really strong scent of the sulphur too (rotten egg). We also go the silica mud mask too from the lagoon, I remember because you had to look for it, I asked a lot of people where they god the mud mask from then we sent my uncle outdoors in the windy weather to go out and look for it. Then when we got back a guy from the lagoon that worked there, got everyone some silica mud mask and there was no need for my uncle to go outside to get it.
After we went to the Blue Lagoon, we went back to our hotel. I wouldn't say it was a hotel really because it was actually an apartment. Our apartment was in the city of Reykjavik, it was a lovely place to stay. There was three rooms, kitchens, bathroom.... I'll link a link to the place we stayed here .
The place we stayed was absolutely gorgeous, the reception was really nice and they really welcomed us. They gave us cereal, orange juice, milk and all that for free. That evening after we go back from the Lagoon and checked it we went into town found some food from the supermarket 'Bonus' which was an Icelandic supermarket and because it was raining that day we went to a Vietnamese restaurant instead of going to the seafood restaurant we was supposed to go to which was near the port. We came all this way to Iceland, instead of trying the lovely seafood and lobster soup we had Vietnamese dining, the next day when the tour guide Ronny was talking to us to take us on our Golden Circle tour he was even laughing at us. That night we was also supposed to see the Northern Lights but because of the bad weather we didn't we just stayed in and we went the next day......
The next day, we had to wake up early because we had to go on our Golden Circle tour. Sunrise was at 10:30AM. So when we woke up it was still very dark and when my friends was just waking up going to school, it was still dark for us in Iceland. We woke up at 7:00 and Ronny our other tour guide picked us up from our residence hotel at 8:00AM.
Because the mini bus we went on wasn't the greatest and it was snowing that day we had to go to the garage where all their mini buses were parked and we went to get another one that Ronny could drive. At that time it was still very dark. It was still very dark until we got halfway up the mountain.
When we got to another city in Iceland, Ronny started telling us a story about the Icelandic trolls.
-Short Summary-
- There were these trolls - One boy, one girl.
- They became the best of friends.
- When the grew up they were still together.
- They parents didn't agree with their relationship because they were still young.
- They met every night until one day, they were both out until sunrise and they kissed and they eventually turned into stone because trolls don't like going out at night.
Here is what the crack looked like but obviously without the lava. The lava on the other hand is fake, its just a light. It's there to just show effect obviously. After we had our toilet break we went further up in the mountains to start out Golden Circle Tour.
Ronny took us to an extinct Volcano.
This place the crater we visited, was apparently a private property so you would had to pay to see it. But luckily at that time because we was still early and nobody was there working yet, we managed to sneak in, well I wouldn't really say sneak because they wasn't a gate there or anything to stop us from going there.
After we visited the the crater we went off again, further up into the mountains and we visited another place, I don't know what it was called but basically there was a river where the salmon would be able to jump up and stuff...
At the time, I didn't see any salmon jumping. In fact it was snowing, very heavily. It was a lovely view.
We then went to the top of the mountain basically, the national park of Iceland Thingvellir we visited the Gullfoss, if I am correct, because we visited two waterfalls.
After we saw the waterfall, it was basically lunchtime so we went to have lunch in the nearby Cafe. We had one of Iceland's famous lamb soup, it was absolutely gorgeous, it was like the Maconochie Stew I had in Belgium. It was also a free refill and we had free french bread with it. So it was all goodie good! :)
Eventually, when we finished our lovely Icelandic Soup we went to the Strokkur - Geysir.
We watched the Geysir bubble up and explode. We had to be very careful when we visited the Geysir because some parts of it contained very hot water. The Geysir is very active, it was erupt every 5 minutes or so, everyday. Its continuous, I don't think it ever stops. Well from what I witnessed, I don't think it ever stops. If any of you have Vine, on my vine profile, I have got a video of the eruption.
Luckily, I was able to capture a picture of the Geysir Eruption. I was very please with this image.
After we visited the Geysir we went to the Mid Atlantic Ridge. This is how my Geography skills take place. I was telling my mother about these tectonic plates and how I was pro at them when I was in Year 9, in my Geography lesson. But before we went to the Mid Atlantic Ridge we stopped to feed the horses nearby.
The horses in Iceland were very different compared to the ones, we usually see in the UK. They were much fatter and cuter. They didn't smell either. I usually hate horses, but obviously I did not hate these ones, they were very friendly, maybe just because we had lots of food. On the other side of the road too, there was like two times more horses and they came near us too well to the barrier, thinking that they were gonna be feed too, but sadly we didn't feed them because we didn't have enough food. We feed the horses with the french baguette we had from the cafe when we had the soup. I didn't feed the horses sadly because I was scared they were going to bite me because they bit my uncle. LOL.
When we got to the Mid Atlantic Ridge we had to walk up the hill. It was a lovely view, it was probably a 20 minute walk though, Ronny met us at the top of the hill to pick us up.
The Mid Atlantic Ridge was one of the last destination we visited before we went back to our hotel and went off to have dinner. We got home at around 17:00PM. We had dinner at the place we were supposed to go to on the first night which instead we had Vietnamese instead.
The place we had dinner was called 'Sea Baron'. We had Lobster Soup, we tried a variety of fish even whale steak. Which I did not even BOTHER trying, the sound of Whale Steak already puts me off!
Later than evening we had a email off Ronny saying that the Northern Light tour is on because the skies were clear. Which made us all VERY happy. Because you can't just go to random countries and be able to see the Northern Lights suddenly. You would have to look for them. Thankfully Ronny our amazing tour guide knows which area the Northern Lights would be and took us there and we saw the BEST NORTHERN LIGHTS EVER!
A memory I would never forget, that night I also saw the Big Dipper - the constellation now! It was absolutely amazing!!! That night we didn't go home until 2:00AM. I was very tried indeed and before we even went home we went to another place which was basically a toilet break and to see more of the Northern Lights but basically I was too tired to be focused on seeing anything. So we got escorted into the Cafe and we went to the toilet but because the Cafe was so dark - they were about to close the cafe. I sat there with my head on the table sleeping until Ronny came in and shouted 'THE NORTHERN LIGHTS ARE OUTSIDE NOT INSIDE' so we got told to go out and see the Northern Lights but because it was so cold as well, it made me just want to snuggle in the mini bus and go to sleep. Before I knew it, we were going back to our hotels! I was very tired indeed.
The last day which was the Tuesday, we visited one of the Churches in Iceland. We went to the top floor and we had a birds eye view of the city. I told my cousins that the church was Princess Elsa from Frozen's castle.
A very big thank you to Ronny and Alex from Time Tours for taking us on a wonderful EXPERIENCE, that I was NEVER EVER EVER forget!!!
