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Norway and Iceland - April 2018, Page 2
Link to Norway / Iceland Page 1
Link to Norway / Iceland Page 1

      After a 2 hour flight from Oslo, we landed in at Keflavik Airport, which is the main airport in Iceland and is about 30 miles
      outside the capitol city of Reykjavik, Iceland.  We got a nice VW station wagon but forgot to get any money exchanged at
      the airport so our first stop was for money and supplies in the town of Keflavik.  It was cold and windy and raining (same
      weather every day in Iceland).  The first café we went into was actually the public library,  but we found a bank with an ATM
      after 20 minutes.  The exchange rate was about 100 Icelandic Krona (ISK) to $1.

      One of my first impressions of Iceland (other than the cold, windy and rainy weather) was all of the volcanic rocks.  I think that
      everywhere we went in the SW corner of Iceland, we always could see lava rock or rocky mountains.  Some places looked
      like the moon landscape, just miles of rock with moss and lichens and not a tree.  Other places had tall mountains and dormant
      volcanoes and on our last day we went to a black volcanic sand beach.

      These photos are not in any order yet, just wanted to start putting pictures on our site.  

      Because Iceland is pretty big and we only had 3 full days, we decided to stay in the southwest corner of Iceland.  There is a lot
      to do around Reykjavik and we decided to drive around the Golden Circle to get a good sampling of rocks, rivers, mountains,
      waterfalls, craters, geysers, glaciers, volcanoes, and stinky sulphur steam coming out of the ground.  We spent our nights seeing
      the capitol city of Reykjavik, where 2/3 of Iceland lives.  Iceland has about 330,000 people and about 220,00 people live in the
      city area, leaving 100,000 people spread across the rest of the island.  And Iceland is not small, it is about 1/5 the size of Texas,
      so people are few and far between (and we also found out that businesses close early in the day) so eat early and stock up!

    Sort of the order we did things before I forget them
  • Flew into Keflavik Airport, drove through Reykjavik to the town of Mostellsbaer, stayed at the Hotel Laxnes
  • Started Golden Circle drive - stopped on the road to see things, we could have stopped in the road just as easily
  • Stopped and put on my rain pants and left them on, the waterproof jacket and pants stopped the wind, stopped the rain and kept us warm
  • Went to Pingvellir National Park, where continental shelves are moving apart and where Iceland's first parliament was founded in 930 AD
  • Walked around the tectonic plates from European continent to North American Continent, only moving an inch a century, saw first waterfall
  • Drove to the Geysir hot springs area, saw steam coming out of the ground, a geyser that spouts high every 6-7 minutes, boiling mud pits       
  • Iceland doesn't have the safety & warning signs we have, a rope is all that keeps crazy Chinese tourists almost falling into boiling water
  • Went to see giant Gulfoss waterfall, not the highest we saw but very wide falls in two tiers, I have a good video on our YouTube Site
  • Figured out that "foss" means waterfall.  We probably saw a hundred waterfalls, most unmarked, with water from the melting glaciers
  • Went to see Seljalandsfoss, a taller waterfall.  I had on my rain clothes & climbed up and walked behinds the falls.  More good videos
  • Went to see the Kerid Crater which had a frozen lake inside, still had on rain pants for windy walk around the top of the crater       
  • Saw steaming hills and valleys and drove through a town that was powered by steam
  • In Reykjavik we walked through the old harbor area and saw ships, museums, tour boats on the piers, pubs and had some very good seafood
  • Vikings from Norway settled in Reykjavik about 870 AD, we went to the National Museum on our last morning to see how Iceland was settled