golden | TravelGypsea

The last stop on our Round-The-World-From-Scratch included a week in Iceland. Iceland Air offers a deal, when traveling from North America to Europe, to have a free stop over for up to 7 days.

Making the most of our time there, while still allowing ourselves to relax and enjoy the last of our travels, the Reykjavik city pass allows you free entry to some of the city hot pools and many of the museums, with discounts to other museums, hot pools, and restaurants. (available at the tourist info centre, by the Knitting association shop where you can pic yourself up a nice Icelandic jumper.)

One of the free things to do is to take a ferry over to Viðey island just off Reykjavik. Once on the island, the small hiking trails take you on a maze of the small island where you can see artwork my various artists including Yoko Ono’s Imagine Peace Tower.

Beyond the city, which is home to 2/3rds of the population of Iceland, remains the almost desolate expanse of green and black (the remnants of lava flows) with the occasional waterfall, (10’s of thousands just that are known by locals, not including the ones inland or away from popularly traveled routes.)

The two most popular tours through many of the tour companies include the Golden Circle, And the South Coast.

The Golden Circle journeys inland and will normally stop at the Geothermal Powerplant (which powers the nation), The National Park (the location of the first parliament, the rift between the North American and European plates, and filming location for Game of Thrones), Two of the major waterfalls, The geysers (including ‘Geyser’, the one that we got the name from,) and the crater lake in the sunk-in remains of a volcano.

The South Coast goes, you guessed it, along the Southern coast. The Highlights include The Black Sand Beach, Eyjafjallajokull (‘ay-ya-fall-ya-yoke-ul’, the volcano that stopped the world in 2010), Seljalandsfoss (the waterfall you can walk behind), The glacier, and Vik (a small farming town along the south coast.) We got lucky, and at the Black Sand Beach, even though it was foggy and rainy, there were more puffin than our guide had ever seen before!