Party like it's 1989

We arrived in Keflavik on September 2, about a 45 minute drive from the world's most northern capital city, Reykjavic. We spent our first two nights here.

I didn't know much about Iceland prior to going, but here are some basic level facts:

• Iceland is a little smaller than the island of Newfoundland
• If you want to know the cost of something in Canadian dollars, divide the Icelandic cost by 10
• The total area of glaciers on Iceland amount to the size of PEI, twice.
• There are lots of big waterfalls (foss means falls in Icelandic)

Reyjavic actually wasn't too exciting. It was very expensive (slice of pizza around $7-8), and is certainly not Iceland's main tourist draw. However, it’s always cool to walk around a foreign city, which is free of course, so we did plenty of city exploring.

Our first big event was a tour of Iceland’s main brewery (the first brewery of many for this trip), which was AWESOME.

Not only did we get an in depth look at the alcoholic history of Iceland from our charismatic tour guide, we got to drink more than I thought was legally permitted through a brewery tour. 

It was like 4 pints each, plus some vodka, and a new-to-me liquor affectionately referred to by the Icelandic as Black Death (see below).

A standard sanitation requirement when entering the Olgerdin Brewery

Black Death, not too bad

The Black Death was actually pretty good, Lindy didn’t like it so much, but I thought it tasted like an improved Sambuca.

After the tour, we went with our newfound brew tour friends from Scotland and B.C. to view the Iceland V. Netherlands soccer game for a final pint, and pondered the next day’s adventures on the walk home. The next day we would be renting a car and driving the Golden Circle.

You hear about the Golden Circle shortly after arriving in Iceland, it’s their go-to tourism draw. It’s a short distance from the airport/Reykjavic, you can do it in a day, and you see some remarkable sights. The first of these sights is Þingvellir park.

GoT fans might recognize Iceland's continental rift at Þingvellir as the non-CGI base of the trail to the Bloody Gate.

Next was Geysir. You might think that is an unoriginal name for a geyser, but in fact, every other geyser in the world is named after this one. This is the one Geysir to rule them all. There was two geysers at Geysir, Strokkur erupts about 20 metres in the air every 5-8 minutes, and GEYSIR can erupt to over 70 metres high.

Lindy and I had seen the smaller Strokkur erupt several times and I was getting ready to leave. But rightfully so, Lindy wanted to see the big Geysir erupt before we left. We thought we saw it erupt as we were parking our car in the distance so we figured it’d be at least every hour. 


When an hour had come and gone we decided to cut our losses and move on to Gullfoss.

On our way out of the park, we read the signage at the entrance. The last time Geysir erupted was 1973. After we saw that we were very comfortable moving on.

The Golden Circle day’s weather was golden. Warm days, blue skies, smooth driving. The day after was quite the opposite, and made me quite thankful Lindy insisted on having good wardrobe for all conditions.

We got wet at one of Iceland’s tallest waterfalls, dried off while walking to a super cool glacier, got more wet whilst puffin viewing at a black sand beach. Finally, we had enough involuntary water so we just went swimming. Although it was a balmy 10 degrees or so, the thermal vents at this state of the art luxury facility made for a lovely dip.

After the swim, it was off to our last tourism item in Iceland, ANOTHER waterfall. Could this one really be that different from the previous ones? By this point we’d seen a bunch of beautiful waterfalls, it was getting late in the day, and we had just started to dry off. We were actually considering skipping it and heading back to Reykjavic to get our final sleep before Norway.

BUT we smartened up and pulled into Seljalandfoss. I’m really glad we did. Not only could you walk behind this waterfall, but it had a few smaller waterfalls near by. 

One was inside a cave, and one you could CLIMB UP! TO THE TOP OF THE CLIFF! I got REALLY excited by this and it was REALLY great. I’ll post a video of the climb and the view at the top to YouTube soon.

What we learned that day, and have had reaffirmed since, is waterfalls are all really cool and unique, so don’t make assumptions after you’ve only seen a couple.

"insert real life metaphor about waterfalls here"

This way to Norway!

After a foggy, rainy drive back to Reykjavic, we settled in for a 4 hour nap at our hostel. The next day we would be flying to Bergen, Norway to see some familiar faces, have our legs destroyed by a 30 foot troll tongue, and get weirded out by some freaky deaky statues.

How’d this post go? Too long? Too short? More or less pictures? Let me know how this blog could be better, make a comment below.