Stuffed puffins in a souvenir shop in Reykjavik

The last day of a trip always brings its own special pressures — usually in the form of a plane we have to get on before it takes off and the multiple hurdles we have to jump to get there.

This year there was an extra hurdle:  We had to submit to a Covid test before the US would let us back in.  Jen had appointments for tests all set set up, and she also arranged for an early evening flight so we would have time to experience a little of Reykyavik before leaving iceland.

And, we were well set-up for the day.  Our slightly-sketchy-from-the-outside-but-really-nice-on-the-inside hotel was a short drive to our main stomping ground for the day: downtown Reykjavik.

Smoked puffin on a menu in downtown Rejkyavik

Before we headed out in the moring, there was a little jostling to do, moving belongings that had become loose in the back of the car back into our suitcases, adjusting things so that we could get as much in our checked bag (and as little in our carry-ons) as possible, clearing out all the cupholders of Werther’s wrappers and napkins.  This is all prep-work for the final goal of getting ourselves on the right plane at the right time, and the prep-work has to start early on departure day.

We should note that the parents of this operation have been pretty good at getting ourselves up at a reasonable hour — 6:30- 7 am, local time — and we were able to take care of most of our shufflng and packing without disturbing the girls’ sleep.   Like several nights on this trip, we were sleeping five to a room.

What we weren’t able to do today was find coffee, save for a jar of instant grounds in the communal kitchen on our floor.  Prep-work today would have to be performed without the aid of caffeine, though there was the stimulating smell of a bacon factory a few blocks away as we roamed around in a fruitless search for a cafe.  Sadly, there did not seem to be a direct sales outlet attached to the bacon factory.

On the rainbow road in the heart of the tourist district

Caffeine-deprived and bacon-starved as we were, we all were sufficiently packed and in the car by 10 am.  A 20-minute drive got us right to the center of the capital, a city of low hills surrounding a bay and spreading tidily inland in residential waves.  The highways had expanded to three lanes but the bustle was manageable and parking was not difficult to procure even though the downtown streets were narrow, in the way the European city streets are.

Thus commenced our only major urban hike of the trip.  With somewhat blind luck we managed to park only a block from the main pedestrian downtown network, and Jen had just enough Icelandic coins to procure us parking until 1 pm (and still leave one coin for our family foreign coin collection).

Zoe in front of the Hallgrímskirkja

Reykjavik is a fine walking city.  We followed cobblestone streets past food stands and souvenir shops, plus plenty of restaurants and bars that didn’t look like they would start stirring for another few hours.   After experiencing relatively infrequent eating options for most of the trip, we were facing a potentially paralyzing wealth of lunch options as well as shopping spots.  Fortunately, we had a few goals in mind to help focus us.  One was find a Christmas ornament (the traditional family gift we buy ourselves when we travel to new places).  The other was to sample the fish and chips here — reportedly an extra-fresh, extra-delicious experience in this cold-water port.

This street was painted to look like a track meet

With a 1 pm parking deadline hanging over our heads (and then a 2:30 pm Covid test to get to after that), could we take care of all this business?

Well, despite the fact that the pedestrian section of downtown Reykjavik has surprsingly more ground to cover than we expected, we are happy to say: “Missions Accomplished!”

Taste testing fish and chips — the winner is…101 Reykjavik street food, by a nose.

We even had enough time to visit two fish and chips establishments and hold a taste test.  We put Rick Steves’ favored version against that of another outlet we passed in our amblings.  Reykjavik Fish gave an impressive amount of thick cod, that it advertised as being fresh daily.  It also costed about $4 more, but it had Rick’s blessing.  In the other corner was 101 Reykjavik Street Food.  Portion size was smaller, but so was the price tag.  The crust on the fish was crumblier but very tasty.  In the end, it came down to the potatoes.  101 Reykjavik Street Food had crispier fries, and thus edged its way into the Pavlik family fish and chips endorsement.

Aaah. Gelato

(Note: Nadia passed on fish and had a waffle for lunch.)

Having taken care of this buisness, and having adequately covered the quaint streets of old Reykjavik, we picked up some gelato on our way back to the car.  Then, it was time to hurdle the Covid test.  It took about half an hour from when we walked in the door of the clinic, but when we walked out we were certified Corona-free.

Next was dropping off the rental car (and taking advantage of the free coffee maker, which was no longer in cleaning mode).  Then navigating the airport and sliding into our seats.

Check out the icebergs around Greenland.

It was an uneventful flight, with the exception some cool views of icebergs off Greenland.

After that, it was only a matter of Jen finding a suitable implement to scratch the coating off Iceland on the kitchen table map.

The Pavlik family 2021 Iceland  trip is now officially complete.

This is the dairy department in Seydisfjorder. Icelandic yogurt is very good.

Zoe has the best phone and, with it, the best camera in the whole family.   Like everybody, she can be seen taking lots of pictures here; but don’t expect to see many of her pictures here in the In The BIg Picture blog.  Just about every one else in this family except the parents keeps all her photos to herself.

So you’re stuck with pedestrian picutres of sometimes pedestrian things that we do here.  Like go grocery shopping in real Icelandic grocery stores.

Jen drove most of the way today. She did a great job. Driving in Iceland sometimes requires nerves-of-steel passing skills.

I take lots of pictures while we’re driving because the scenery is so magnificent here.  Driving pictures are the worst, though.  They never come out like they look in real life.  They don’t on my camera, but I wonder what they would look like on Zoe’s phone.   Even when I get pictures of goats — it’s actually pretty difficult to get a picture of scenery here that doesn’t have a goat in it because goats are omnipresent in Iceland.

Today was a little driving-centric.  We broke things up by making an impromptu stop at a beach by the side of the Ring Road.  It wasn’t even mentioned in our guidebook, but we had a fine time feeling the breeze and sifting through the rocks.

We could not linger too long because we had an afternoon appointment and we wanted to check into our hotel before moving on to the big excitement of the day.  (I know!  More exciting than grocery shopping?  It’s true!  Keep reading.)

So now we get to the point of it.  We had a terrific experience at two glacial lagoons today, but not long after we arrived at the first one, the sun went away.  By the time we got on the Zodiak boat for our glacial lagoon tour, the light had flattened out to en extent that our mid-20teens camera can’t really compensate for.  Zoe took pictures, but is not willing to share for the blog.  Somewhere along the line we made a terrible mistake as parents and now our children have trouble sharing.

At least someone’s getting a good picture of this.

Some of our pictures of the glacial lagoon came out nice.  What you’re seeing is chunks of the Vatnajökull glacier that have calved off and are floating around in two lakes very close to the island’s eastern shore.  This glacier is the largest in sub-Arctic Europe — it covers more land than the state of Rhode Island, according to Vincent, our Zodiak captain.

The lagoons are deceptively deep, and the vast majority of the icebergs are beneath the water.  We are not in danger of sinking from crashing into an iceberg, though they did give us special coats to protect us from the cold water and life vests to keep us afloat.

A nice couple from Spain took this picture of us duriing our Zodiak trip.

There is a slight danger from large waves caused by a new ice berg calving off of the glacier and hitting the water.  We stay more than 200 yards from the glacier to give Vincent time to take evasive action in such an event, though he admits that calving only happens on about five percent of his tours and calving of large ice bergs is even more rare.

Sampling a bit of a 500-year-old iceberg — according to our guide, the purest water anywhere.

He does note that sometimes ice bergs turn over and, theoretically can land right on top of the boat, but he doesn’t seem too concerned about that.

Close-up of the glacier

And anyway, not to dampen the suspense or anything, we survived the ice berg lagoon cruise.  Not only did we survive, we saw two seals on an ice berg.  What do you think about that?

The last stop of the day was at Diamond Beach,  the black sand of which is a striking contrast to the small crystals of ice that wash up when the ice bergs make it out to sea.  The crystals look like diamonds.   Our camera has a nice micro zoom feature and I tried to take some close-up pictures of the ice crystals.  I don’t know if Zoe’s camera can do that.

“Diamonds” at Diamond Beach

This is our second-to-last night in Iceland.  Tomorrow is a bit of a heavy driving day, but it will drop us off in Rekyavik.  We had the pleasure of eating delicious artic char this evening for dinner (it’s like salmon).  Tomorrow we’re going to try one last time to get fish and chips.  Somehow we just keep missing out — mostly because the restaurant or food truck closes down just before we get there.  Maybe we’ll have better luck in the big city.

We spent the day circumnavigating great Lake Myvatn.  It’s like the World Showcase Lagoon at Epcot, except with ancient volcanic wonders to explore instead of shallow international facades.  If Iceland were to be featured at Epcot, its section might just be a mini Lake Myvatn with plaster volcanic craters all around it that you can climb on.

Up the outside of Hverfjall

But the real lake would be better.  Rick Steves, whose guide to Iceland is heavily influencing our decisions here, says this is the place to spend two days if you have an extra day traveling the Ring Road.

Here’s one reason why — the Hverfjall Crater.  It looks like an enormous grey sand dune. It sticks right up not far from the road, visible for miles. You climb up the side and see it’s a hollowed out crater in the middle.  Then you can walk along the edge of the crater viewing the lake on one side and a variety of landsapes on the other.  We saw flat wastelands pocked with smaller craters.  We saw steam plumes of geothermal rifts in the distance.  There was a field of fanciful columns of lava in the general direction that we were following the loop.

On the crater rim

If we had gotten to Hverfjall a little sooner (we lingered over a fine breakfast at our guest house and didn’t hit the road until around 11), we would have seen some competitors in something called the Island Volcano Marathon.  The poor souls in this race had to run up the side of the crater, and then around the mile or so trail along the rim, and then stumble back down the powdery path.  What a tortuous challenge to put within a mile of the finish of a marathon.  Who knows what other horrors the runners had to complete before they got this far.

Myvatn fatigues

Well, one of them might have been the midges.  The name Myvatn is actually a reference to the small flies that swarm around everything in this region during the summer.  We showed up equipped with head nets, thanks to a tip from the guidebook, but today’s breeze seemed to keep the midges pretty much under control and we ended up not wearing them for most of the day.

Anyway, walking the trails Hverfjall was good enough for us.  We’ll leave the running to someone else.

On the hunt for the Yule Lads

Our next stop along the lake was at the dark field of pillars we saw from the top of the crater.  Dimmuborgir Lava Formations  reminded us of South Dakota’s Badlands National Park even from a distance.  Up close, the main difference was that guests are not able to climb all over these lumps and hillocks like they are at the Badlands.  This is one rare instance where the clampdown is tighter here than it is at home.

Part of the reason is that they are in the process of re-foresting the area and they don’t want people stomping all over their bushes and grasses that keep the volcanic silt from blowing around and covering up the features.  The restrictions make it difficult to hunt down the Yule Lads, who are a gang of holigan-esqe Santa Clauses who cause mischeif but also bring Christmas spirit to Iceland when the season calls for it.  They’re supposed to live here among the lava formations, but we did not see any of them.   There are 13 Yule Lads and we didn’t even see one.

At “the Church”

We did see a cool cave formation called “the Church,” which was worth the walk out to see it.  Then we looped around and had lunch in the parking lot.  If you’re keeping score, you’ll note that we’ve already eaten twice today.  Could it be that we’ll actually get in a full complement of meals?  Stay tuned.

As we zip our way along the shores of Myvatn, you should realize that all of these features are right next to the main road.  It is incredible to think of all the amazing things might be over the next hill or on the other side of this river, but people don’t bother to go there because there’s so much wonder right by the side of the road.  It probably made Rick Steves’ job a lot easier.

Staring down goats

A quick turnoff to a small parking lot set us up for a walk through the Hofdi Promontory, a nature preserve that includes — great wonder — trees!  Lacking in much of the country, mature trees are a sight to see here.  These trees were apparently painstakingly planted and nurtured on this small strip of land by a couple who wanted to help in the reforestation of Iceland.  Reforestation helps preserve the soil and brings the island back to the natural state the Vikings found it in.  This particular forest also provides cover for at least one band of rampaging goats, which was stomping in the opposite direction down the same path we were following.  After we got into a little stare-down, the goats decided to vacate the path and resume their stomping in the woods.

A hidden garden in the Hofdi Promontory

The Hofdi Promontory also featured several hidden gardens to discover, and — like all the attractions along the lake — did not charge an entrance fee.  You can just park and walk right in.

After this we planned to visit a cluster of pseudo craters, which are not typical volcano craters but the remains of enormous lava bubbles that popped and left circular holes all over the landscape.  This particular group of them was very inviting to wander over (and to ponder the size of the bubbles that caused them), until the rain started to fall.

Retreating from the pseudo craters

We made it along the shorter of two trails through the park, but then huddled in our car to puzzle out a dilemma:  We had arranged for a horseback ride in half an hour, but suddenly the prospect of riding out in the elements did not seem as pleasing.  Jen had made the arrangements at lunchtime, when the sun was shining.  The weather here is similar to April in New England.  Cool and comfortable, generally, but subject to some variety.

As the rain fell, it became clear that any sightseeing we might do from horseback would be limited by clouds and fog.  We made the reluctant decision to postpone the riding until tomorrow and came back to our guest house to reorganize.  Thus, we finished our trip around the lagoon without visiting all the countries featured.  But we were not done with our day.

Rejuvenated by the Myvatn Natural Baths

The weather rained itself out and left us with an evening of options.  Our first choice was to visit the Myvatn Nature Baths.  These baths are not as famous (or expensive) as the Blue Lagoon, but they do offer the benefit of being on top of a hill with an incredible view of the lake and the lowlands around it.  Every place we visited during the day was in view of the baths.  It was a good way to sum things up and to soothe bodies that have walked quite a bit during this vacation.

Having restored ourselves in this manner, we then set out to actually eat in a restaurant.  It almost worked.  We found a very nice place, but then found we needed to have made reservations.  Then we found a pizza place, but it was too crowded so we opted for takeout.   Some day we might eat in an actual Icelandic restaurant, but for today we settled for just getting three meals in.

Twelve hours of sleeps does wonders for the nervous system, but it can cause havoc with carefully laid travel plans.  We needed the sleep after yeserday and a half, and our hosts accommodated by setting a noon check-out time.

So we slept in, and paid a price a little later in the day.

The short seasonal darkness and the blackout shades in our bedroom creates some evening/morning confusion.  This would have been a great trip to bring a watch to set to the proper time zone, but for some reason I did not pack my watch.  Phones and tablets are looked on with some scepticism — some have changed to the new time and some have not.

We eventually got ourselves in the correct morning state of mind, ate our Bonus-supplied breakfast foods, pack the car, and hit the road before noon, but a little later than Jen had planned for.

Oh, and some of us even squeezed in a visit to the local livestock.  Our night 1 accommodations were not only perched above an inlet overlooking the Borgarnes across the way, they were also on a working farm.  The sheep were curious, but not necessarily cuddly.

Once we got moving, we zipped around the inlet and into town for an abridged visit.  Essentially, it was a coffee run. Borgarnes provided a funky cafe with lots of latte, but we didn’t take time to wander around like we tend to do.

Some of the waterfalls here come right out of the banks — the river is channelling inside the lava rocks.

Driving is pretty easy here.  They drive on the familiar side of the road.  Traffic is limited.  Signs are legible, even if we would be woeful if we had to pronounce the place names.   GPS has been helpful.  It got us to our first destination, a set of incredible waterfalls, with no problems.

GPS has been helpful, but not flawless.  Google tried to route us to our second destination via an unmarked farm road that seemed to be going in the opposite direction of where we thought our destination lay.

We decided to take the long way around, adding 10 minutes to our trip.  I have no idea where we would have ended up if we took the unmarked road (just about all the other side roads are labeled in some way — perhaps with the names of the people who live on them?  We really did not put in any effort to learn about the language here, so it’s tough to tell.

Happily, though a tad later than expected, we made it to destination 2, the largest goat farm in the nation.  Among the draws were goat’s milk ice cream, plus sampling of fresh cheese.  But, c’mon,  this was the real draw of the Icelandic Goat Center at Haafell.

This farm, inspired several decades ago when an Icelandic farm girl read Heidi, has almost single-handedly preserved the breed of Icelandic goats that has remained undiluted since original settlers arrived more than 1,000 years ago.  It also supplied goats for a Game of Thrones scene involving a dragon.

Peppermint flavored goat’s milk ice cream — served in a reusable canning jar

We lingered here for quite a while — the goat’s milk ice cream proved to be a winner and we picked up some cheese for our picnic, too.  But our timetable got pushed even a little further back.

We pushed on along the ring and found that driving itself was a satisfactory way to pass the time.  The landscape took on a very accute resemblance to the American West, with wide valleys, steep cliffs and lots of open space.

Our third stop for the day was a quick hike around a volcanic crater, not terribly unlike the one was saw yesterday — except this one was several thousand years removed from bubbling lava.  It was right by the side of the road, and a wooden staircase led us to the top.  Then we circled the crater, taking in views in all directions.

Actually, there were three craters here.  We were able to climb and walk  along the biggest one.  The crater hike and the waterfalls earlier in the day were very quick visits — and definitely worth the time.  Because of our late start, though, and the goat farm (also worth the time), we were starting to foresee problems.

It was already almost 4 pm and we hadn’t had our picnic yet.  Plus, we were meant to check into our hotel by 8 pm, and we still had a significant amount of driving to do.

Our picnic wound up in an un-scenic rest area/gas station by the side of road, and our afternoon soak in a geothermal infinity pool had to get cut out entirely.  These are a few of the repercussions of being behind in the timetable.

On the bright side, we got to see a lot of Iceland while we were driving, and as we entered the northern part of the country the American West scenery evolved into alpine Europe.  More accurately, it was alpine on one side and ocean on the other, which I don’t think even Europe can offer.

Sheep are omnipresent

The water side — a little precarious

American West

Alpine with ocean

Stepping into downtown Siglufjörður

Our hosts in Siglufjörður were able to accommodate our late arrival — we checked in much closer to 9 pm than 8.  Happily, we still had energy to roam this lovely small town in the late evening sunlight.  Unfortunately, another consequence of our late arrival was that all businesses that might have provided us snacks were closed by the time we hit the streets.  No fresh fish and chips for us — or even frozen Chinese food from the grocery story.  Even the food trucks at the micro-brewery shut down minutes before we got there.

But, the beer was still flowing.  So we had that going for us.

We’re staying at the northern tip of a peninsula on the northern end of Iceland, very close to the Arctic circle.