Hello! I went to Iceland, and it was very exciting! We stayed in Reykjavik, which is the most northerly capital in the world, and I estimate that it's probably also the smallest and prettiest. It's like a little picture-book place, full of brightly coloured houses, most of which are made of corrugated tin.
Geysir is the original geyser, after which all others are named. Unfortunately it only does its stuff after an earthquake, so we had to make do with its smaller neighbour, Strokkur:
Þingvellir is the site of the original Icelandic parliament, which was founded over a thousand years ago! A thousand years, imagine that! Tony Benn was one of the original members! (satire) It's in the rift valley between the American and European continental plates, under the cliff formed by the edge of the American plate:
It's yet another beautiful spot - Iceland is very good at these.
See that river running through the field? It used to run all the way along the top of the cliff but when they started having the parliament there, they diverted it as they needed something to wash all the human waste away while thousands of people were camping in the field. Pretty clever, eh?
I also went on a whale watching trip, but sadly it was a bad day and we hardly saw anything - a few porpoises, one whale and a seal. It was still a nice trip though, as it went along the coast and there were lots of nice mountains to see.
We went to the Blue Lagoon, a big natural pool around a hot spring, where the water looks a bit like this:
Wacky sign in shop window:
There were lots and lots of cats in Reykjavik, including a Hitler cat:
So, in summary, Iceland is very good. It's one of those places where everything works, and has obviously been thought through, and there's lots of tasty lobster soup. There are more photos on Flickr, and at some point I might even get round to putting descriptions on them.
Excellent! Assuming you like fish (and are staying in Reykjavik) you have to go to Sea Baron which does big chunks of fish on skewers, and is one of the lobster soup places.
We actually have only the first and last nights in Reykjavik, staying in the Hostel nearest the docks. The other nights we're staying in Hotel Ranga, which is a bit further along the South coast than Hella. Lots of glaciers, and no-where stuff planned.
I am quite excited to get the shellfish, but the friend I'm going with *hates* all kinds of fish (she worked in a fish factory for a while in her teens). She is expecting to starve. But I might persuade her to go somewhere I can get lobster.
We booked our flights and accommodation through Expedia, or one of those types of website, and then just booked daytrips from various places. It was quite expensive, but food wasn't too bad - I don't think there's anywhere we ate that would have been significantly cheaper in London. Adding lots of booze might make a difference to that.
I went to Iceland for a weekend about ten years ago. It looks like I did almost exactly the things you did, although you got better weather. I need to go back for longer.
We were amazingly lucky with the weather - it was drizzling when the plane landed on Saturday, then it didn't rain again until the Friday just before we left. We did mostly indoor things that day.
