On Monday, Greg and I left San Francisco, our friends and family and most of our worldly possessions and started our journey around the world. Our route started with a redeye from Seattle to Iceland, which unfortunately we had trouble sleeping through, although the views from the plane were incredible:
Greenland glaciers from Icelandic Air flight.
Happy and jet-lagged, we landed in Iceland and were promptly introduced to our travel companion, 'Babe.' (Greg being a bearded Midwesterner, the allusion to Paul Bunyan really isn't far off.) Babe is our blue 1995 Subaru Legacy rental. He has ~170K miles under his belt and has already added quite a bit of color to our trip...
Greg + rental car on the side of the road in southeastern Iceland.
Babe's back bumper is falling off, he occasionally refuses to allow his trunk to close and he completely blinds you if you try to use his windshield wipers in the rain. His Check Engine light turns on and off often and unpredictably, and roughly nine out of ten times you try, he refuses to let you take the key out of the ignition. Suffice it to say that he is as much of a POS as he looks. And we kind of love him, because Babe has taken us safely(ish) to some amazing places over the last couple days.
We drove out from Keflavik airport along the southern coast of Iceland and up the eastern coast, stopping our first night at a farm stay on Seglbudir sheep farm.
We drove out from Keflavik airport along the southern coast of Iceland and up the eastern coast, stopping our first night at a farm stay on Seglbudir sheep farm.
The view from our hot tub at Selgbudir farm
On day 2 we started to head up the eastern coast of Iceland where we saw gorgeous landscapes and sights including Skaftafell, a glacial & mountainous park, Jökulsárlón, a glacial lagoon & black sand beach, and Laufskálavarða, where visitors since 894 AD have stacked rocks in little piles for luck.
Towards the end of Day 2, Babe brought us to back to Dyrhólaey. It has a sheer cliff covered in bright green grass that looks out onto a black sand beach. Arctic terns swoop around, seagulls nest in the cliff and eider ducks waddle adorably along the beach. But most importantly, there are PUFFINS! The adorable birds - basically flying penguins - were all over, and a pair hung out about ten feet away from us and modeled for our photos.
What else can we say? Iceland started for us as an extended layover, not somewhere we had really planned to stop on our trip. It's been absolutely stunning on all fronts and also very easy to travel through.
Yesterday (Day 3) we hit up Iceland's famed golden circle, and today we're in Reykjavik - we'll post pictures / thoughts once we have them gathered together. More to come!
- JC & GK
Yesterday (Day 3) we hit up Iceland's famed golden circle, and today we're in Reykjavik - we'll post pictures / thoughts once we have them gathered together. More to come!
- JC & GK
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