Better late then never...pic spam, part 1
Yes, I am a dreadful, lazy person, but I have an excuse, sort of - work has been busy.
So without further ado, my recount of a short trip to Iceland.
NB: All pictures are behind the cut except the first one, which is a link. Almost all of them are 1024x768. I had taken a few with the slightly higher resolution of 1600x1200, but most should be 1024x768. That is why I did not specify the image size in the info box.
There is only one flight from Copenhagen to Reykjavik on Saturday. The trip is only 3 hours long, but as a side note, I'd like to gush about Air Iceland a bit. I have been traveling fairly extensively recently and unfortunately, work does not allow me to take higher then economy class for European flights. However, everyone knows economy flights, no leg room, no side room and a privledge to sit VERY closely to a total stranger for several hours. To my surprise, there was actually quite a bit more leg room then in any other airline I have flown before and I have flown quite a few now. Perhaps. not enough for a very tall person, but certainly more comfortable.
Anyhow, The airport, Keflavik is about an hour away from the city. The bus ride introduced me to the beautiful frozen landscapes of Iceland. Unfortunately, it was slowly getting dark and one thing my camera does not do well is taking pictures in the dark, even with the night-mode enabled.
view from the hotel
The hotel is near the central street, however opposite the hotel, is an old-style bookshop. You know the ones, full of books crowding the small space, remeniscent of the 70's spy novel for agent-to-agent meetup. It is run by an elderly gentelman, who barely spoke English.
Picture here
Down the road from the hotel, the view is breathtaking and my camera simply cannot do it justice.
Still down the road, the view of the harbour.
The next day, I flew down to Akureyri, the most northern town in Iceland. Whilst on the plane, I managed to snatch a few pics of the ground below.
I did a few more snapshots until we landed here, in the tiny airport on this runway.
We were met by the tour guide, who after announcing his long name (Icelanders still keep to the old tradition of naming and thus do not have surnames, but rather use patronymics), but pronounced that we can call him Rabie. During the short trip around town (with a population of only 18 000 people it is not very big) he amused us with the stories about the police department - 5 guys needed during the shift, 4 to play cards and 1 to make coffee - and of the fire department - 3 guys needed, call the spare guy from the police shift to have 4 hands to play cards - he finally took us towards the nature of the Northern part of Iceland. I thought Iceland was a very pretty place - I was wrong, it is magnificent!
The first photo stop of the day was the Waterfall of the Gods. Legend has it, that when Iceland has accepted Christianity in the 10th century, one of the elders who was instrumental in the parliament decisions, came home and threw the pagan idol statuettes into this waterfall.
So to this day it is known as Waterfall of the Gods, and due to cold and hot springs underneath, does not fully freeze.
Our next stop, was at a forest, which had a lake with volcanic structures peaking out. It is a popular spot during summer.
The featured guest is a fellow tour member, an Australian firefighter.
The forest is really pretty in wintertime and we have been assured that in summer it's breathtaking.
Can you imagine this place in summer, in full bloom?
On the way to another photo stop, I got to see some more mountains. I really like the mountains, I can snap pictures of them all day.
On the way to the lava park, we stopped off to feed a few Icelandic horses. They are a very popular breed, a very hardy animal that due to isolation of Iceland, remained bred true as opposed to other European breeds. It is docile and has 5 gaits instead of the usual 4. These were very friendly horses, greedy for the bread we gave them.
I think this is the end for this post due to the heavy pic spam I just bestowed. Next post about Iceland - Lava park trolls!