A Road Trip Around Iceland

The five of us from SF were all on the same flight (3pm departure, 5am arrival) into Keflavik International. Arriving with the sun and little to no sleep made for a very long first day, but excitement definitely pushed me through.

We picked up our rental car and hit the road towards Reykjavík for breakfast. Reykjavík (Iceland’s capital and largest city) is about a 40 min drive from Keflavik. In that short first stretch we already thought Iceland looked cool. Most of the drive we were accompanied by miles and miles of green moss, extending from the highway all the way to the horizon. It looked like soft carpet laid overtop of cartoon clouds. It was adorable and weird.

In Reykjavík, we ate at Karli’s favorite bakery, Sandholt. There was a take-out counter specifically for bread loaves and pastries (their two specialties) but also a handful of tables we decided to sit at.

For our first meal in Iceland, Sandholt met my expectations for prices ($$$) and surpassed my expectations for quality. Most of the crew ate a sort of gourmet breakfast sandwich, and I got some Icelandic yogurt. The plating was beautiful (they served me butter on a rock) and the bread was top notch. Breakfast gave everyone a little energy boost at 8am, but nothing was really open in town so we decided to head towards the Golden Circle.

The Golden Circle is a short and popular one-day road trip, and was a great place for us to start our adventure. We drove to the Geysir Hot Spring Area first. There were boiling mud pits, more than a dozen hot water blow holes, and Strokkur, the largest geyser, spouting water 100 feet into the air every few minutes or so (shown above). It also gave us our first whiff of the eggy sulfur water, something we'd grow very used to on this trip.

We continued driving the Golden Circle, stopping sporadically to take pictures. There's quite a bit to be seen directly from the road: highlights for me being strings of Icelandic Horses and the mossy-sided Kerið, a volcanic crater lake.

Our next major stop was lunch. We ate at Friðheimar, a tomato-themed restaurant inside a warm, functioning greenhouse, where every menu item is made from one of the four different types of tomatoes grown inside. There was tomato beer, tomato ravioli, even tomato cheesecake! To us, the obvious choice was the bottomless tomato soup and bread buffet. I know I was tired and slightly delirious at this point in the day, but I still swear that was hands-down the best bread I've ever had in my life.

We had lost almost all daylight at this point, so we decided to crash a little early and check into our Airbnb. The boys all napped while Karli and I soaked in the hot tub. The water situation in Iceland is fascinating to me. It’s naturally hot and needs to be cooled in order to be used. The cold water is filtered, fresh, and drinkable, while the hot water reeks of sulfur and can easily burn you if you're not careful. It was nice to never have to worry about luke-warm showers, especially with 7 of us in one place, but we had to get used to filling up the hot tub every time we wanted to use it (natural hot water flowed in from the bottom). A few hours later we caught a second wind and decided to grab dessert at Efstidalur, a small cow farm nearby. We sat eating homemade ice cream and petting baby cows. We were very satisfied.

Danny and Analia arrived the next morning. Before meeting up with them, we set out to find the remote Bruarfoss Waterfall. We had shotty directions from our host written in broken english, and couldn't find any exact GPS coordinates to map to, so we had to resort to our eyes, ears, and internal sense of direction to track down the falls. It became clear this was a local secret, not intended for tourists, but that made it even sweeter to discover. We finally found the bridge overlooking what seemed like a million tiny waterfalls, all merging into one seriously blue rambling river. We were able to trek down the muddy river banks to get a closer look.

We met Danny and Analia for lunch at Tryggvaskali in the town of Selfoss. Again, the food was delicious (but expensive). Service was slow, and our company was good, so we ended up spending a couple of hours there just catching up with eachother. On our way out, we saw our first Icelandic Rainbow! From this point out, we'd see at least one rainbow every. single. day. One day I tried counting and lost track after number seven. They never got old.

We had about a 1.5 hour drive to Reynisfjara and the town of Vík, our next destination, and ended up making it just in time for golden hour.

Reynisfjara is black-sand beach, ranked among the top 10 most beautful (non-tropical) beaches in the world, and we quickly understood why. As the rocks turned into sand under our feet, we were met with roaring Atlantic waves, stunning panoramas, and an eerily-beautiful sunset.

...more to come
(these things take a while to write!)