Operation Iceland - 2023

When amazing friends invite you along for a 50th birthday celebration in Iceland, the answer is definitely yes.

Despite my mad skills as a travel expert, our preferred airline doesn't fly to Iceland in April and we had to fly from Bangor... so after surviving the whirlwind of Easter week (part of which had Greg stuck in Montreal at a hotel with no power following an ice storm), off we went to Maine on a sunny Sunday. Who doesn't love driving away from the destination you're headed to and then flying even further away from it? The joys of travel from NB! Uneventful drive, stopped for a beer and lunch at 2 Feet Brewing, parked the truck at the airport, and away we went. Flights were on time, layover at JFK was as expected, and our longer flight had movies (always a win!). Landed at Keflavik around 9am (three movies later). Immigration took 5 minutes, luggage took much longer but arrived. Erika was waiting for us in Arrivals and away we go.

Day 1: After a brief stop at The Retreat to refresh and change our clothes (soooo thankful!), and of course to pick up Chris, we were off to start our epic trip around the island. First stop, UNESCO site Þingvellir national park - an excellent place for a walk to stretch your legs after flying through the night and it was lovely to spend more time there since we visited on a tour previously. Þingvellir was the site Iceland's parliament centuries ago and it sits in rift between tectonic plates allowing you to literally walk between two continents. If snorkeling is your jam, you can snorkel the fissure here. There's also a waterfall of course!

Stop number two - Geysir geothermal area. We visited on our previous visit, but it's interesting enough for a second visit and there's some nice trails here if you're not in a rush. The geysir named Geysir is mostly inactive at this point, having last erupted in 2016. The smaller geysir Strokkur still erupts every few minutes though. We spent the night at Geysir Hotel across the street - it wasn't a late night, since we still hadn't slept from the day before.

Fun fact: the chef from the hotel buries rye bread in the ground in the geothermal area daily to bake for 24 hours.

Day 2: The bulk of our days were planned in a way that we weren't covering a ton of ground between hotels, so we could spend as much time as we liked stopping here and there. After checking out, it was off to meet some friends for breakfast - Icelandic horsey friends! The owners at Brú farm (between Geysir and Gullfoss) have set up a little parking area so tourists can pull off and visit with some horses. You can buy some horse-safe feed there for your visit. If you're driving around Iceland, you'll see plenty of horses, but stopping on the road is dangerous and tromping onto someone's property is rude, so this is a great option.

And then it was time for some more waterfall action (get used to this if you're reading all the way through because Iceland has more than 200 named waterfalls and thousands without names) - this time at Gullfoss. If you're visiting and doing the incredibly popular Golden Circle tour - this will be one of your stops. We practically had it to ourselves and the weather (it was snowing a little) added a little something. After Gullfoss, we made a stop at Faxafoss and did have this waterfall to ourselves for nearly our entire visit.

After a morning of exploring, it was time for lunch at Friðheimar tomato farm. This place is incredibly cool - it's an active greenhouse growing a huge chunk of the tomatoes for all of Iceland. But they've also set up a restaurant in there where you can enjoy all things tomato, including tomato cocktails! The food was excellent and the atmosphere is so fun - definitely worth a visit. I loved all the little bees flying around.

All warmed up from delicious soup and bread (alllll the bread!), we were off to do some exploring inland a bit, as much as the roads would allow. The inland portion of Iceland is mostly serviced by roads they call F-Roads - they are not open all year round and require a four wheel drive vehicle to access. Some were still marked impassable, so we just did some alternate exploring when we encountered one. The Commonwealth Farm, which is a reproduction of a Viking longhouse, wasn't open for the season yet - but you could still go to the site and walk around, so we visited that for a little bit. A visit to Kerið crater wrapped up the day, before we headed to Greenhouse Hotel in Hveragerði for the night. Tasty beer and pizza at Ölverk Pizza & Brewery nearby, after dinner drinks at the hotel, and we called it a night. This hotel is very conveniently located in terms of 'stuff' - nearby there's some restaurants, a grocery store, gas station, and bakery. The hotel itself also has a food hall on premises.

Day 3: Happy Birthday Chris! With beautiful sunny weather and bellies full of deliciousness from Almar Bakery, we set off for Vik. First stop Seljalandsfoss - a beautiful waterfall on the Ring Road. You can go behind this one later in the season, but there was still ice on the path so that part was closed. On this stop, you can see a couple of other waterfalls as well, including Gljúfrabúi that is partially hidden behind some rocks and you need to walk through to fully see it. Greg and Chris got thorougly drenched checking it out for us.

Next up, Skógafoss. On our last visit, we didn't have time to climb and explore, so we definitely had to fit that in this time. Greg must climb all the things. I climbed to the top as well, but not nearly as quickly (it's about 400 steps - heads up!). The view from the top is beautiful and you can keep hiking back along the falls to see the other levels. From here, we headed to Rútshellir cave for a quick visit. Continuing on it was up, up, up to Dyrhólaey lighthouse, with amazing views from the trail.

Wrapping up the day was one of my favourite spots (it's very hard to pick favourite spots in Iceland), Reynisfjara beach and Hálsanefshellir cave. Between the black sand and the stunning basalt columns (I love rocks!), I could spend hours there. If you find yourself in Iceland, this is a must see... but it's also dangerous, so abide the signs. This is not a swimmable beach and the water is fairly unpredictable. If it looks a little familiar, it's been in some pretty popular shows/movies - Game of Thrones, Star Wars, Vikings, and more. Hotel for the night - Hotel Kría,

Day 4: When there's a cafe set up in a school bus behind your hotel, you definitely have to check it out before you hit the road for the day. Skool Beans - super cute, great coffee. A quick pop up to visit the little church on the hill in Vik before we kept heading east. We made a visit to the Yoda cave (Gígjagjá) and did some walking along to see all the birds nesting on the cliffs there. Moving along, we visited the lava ridge Laufskálavarða and the cool mossy landscape as we drove through the Katla geopark. We made a brief stop at Fjaðrárgljúfur Canyon, but they were rebuilding the trails for the season, so we didn't do any exploring. Next, a quick photo stop at Fossálar waterfall (this looks more like rapids) along the side of the road.

We did some more random pitstopping (I love random pitstopping) for scenic viewing and adventuring, including a lovely spot with a pretty river that I can't find on a map, a walk in to see Skaftafell glacier, and the Skeiðará Bridge monument. This bridge used to be part of the Ring Road, but when Vatnajökull erupted in 1996, it caused massive amounts of glacier melting and flooding, which wiped out this bridge. To wrap up another most excellent day, we hiked in to Svartifoss and enjoyed some fantastic views. Final stop for the day was our hotel - Fosshotel Glacier Lagoon.

Day 5: Bring on the glaciers! First up - Fjallsjökull Glacier Lagoon, a lesser known stop before you get to Jökulsárlón and there was pretty much no one there. Really lovely and peaceful and definitely worth a stop. It was so quiet there you could hear the ice cracking. A guide was getting some boats ready, so later in the day they must do tours. Then we carried on to Jökulsárlón Glacier Lagoon, which was definitely one of the highlights of our last visit to Iceland. They've added some more infrastructure here since our last visit, including some food trucks that open later in the day. Seeing this early in the day was amazing and I highly recommend stopping here. Before moving on, we popped over to Diamond Beach to walk along the icy bits washed ashore.

After some already epic stops in the books for the day, we kept heading east to Höfn. We had lunch at the Viking Cafe (the food was meh but the desserts look fab), before exploring the abandoned movie set of a viking village. It's pretty rundown at this point and was built for a movie that didn't end up being made. More recently, they say it will be used in something having to do with the Witcher and in another Icelandic film. It's interesting enough for a quick visit, but the surrounding scenery of Vestrahorn mountain and Stokksnes beach is really the reason to visit. From here, it was time to keep heading north to Egilsstaðir for the night (Gistihúsið - Lake Hótel).

Day 6: Up over the mountains we go to visit the tiny town of Seydisfjordur. We were there quite early in the morning on a weekend, before the town really woke up, but it's really lovely. You often see pictures of the rainbow walk up to the church from there - it hadn't been repainted after winter yet, but still cute (especially with a cat on it). Back through the mountains to make our way to Dettifoss - the most powerful waterfall in Europe - and Selfoss. There was definitely still snow up in the mountains, so this was a bit of a trek. We were essentially walking on packed down snow on top of where the trail might be - we could see the top of the trail markers poking out here and there. Several paths that would normally be accessible were still snow covered and only one road in was clear. Still absolutely worth a visit and I'd definitely like to get back here.

After our waterfall adventures, we stopped for some lunch at Vogafjós Farm - the most delicious meal I ate the entire time we were in Iceland. From there, on to check out Grjótagjá Cave - a neat little cave with a hot spring inside (and another GoT filming location). Just a quick stop here before carrying on to Dimmuborgir Lava field. This was amazing (because again, I like rocks) - but it's a great place to just walk around and explore even if you don't like rocks as much as me. Be sure to find the hole in the rock and the church. Final stop of the day - Laxa Hotel. This was my favourite of all of the hotels we stayed in - you can't beat the view.

Day 7: We'll call this day 'the day we had the waterfall of the gods all to ourselves'. We saw a lot of waterfalls on our trip - Iceland just has so many - but there's something incredibly special about not having to share them. I really love this one (Goðafoss), especially with the bridge available allowing you to easily explore from both sides. We had a lot of driving to do today to get to Reykjavik so we didn't do a ton of stopping. We did have some lunch at B&S Restaurant (life is wonderful, you are important - this was on their sign) and did some leg stretching at Grábrók volcano crater.

We home-based in Reykjavik for the rest of the trip, staying at the Reykjavik Edition downtown. It's a lovely hotel with views of the harbour and a great location for easily walking to most things. We had dinner and drinks at the hotel, and spent some time in their roof top lounge to wrap up the day.

Day 8: We spent the entire day in Reykjavik today with no driving around. It's been nearly a decade since our last visit and there's been some real changes there. The hotel we stayed in didn't exist on our last visit, a ton of new attractions for tourists have been created near the waterfront, and you really notice all of the additional housing that has been built there. For most of the day it was sunny, always great for exploring. We started the day with breakfast at Sandholt and then just did some walking around. Later in the day, we took in the Flyover Iceland attraction and had some lunch at a nearby food hall. Our friends finished their day with a visit to the Sky Lagoon and we did some more walking around (I love looking at all the street art), with visits to Reykjavik Roasters and Brew Dog. Drinks at the hotel wrapped up our day.

Day 9: Off to the Snæfellsnes Peninsula! Another long day of driving because we covered a lot of ground, but definitely worth it (and I'll definitely spend some more time here on a future visit). First up, a quick visit with the trolls before carrying on to Bjarnarfoss. The boys had some climbing to do for this one, but they made it to a great viewpoint. We made a little photo stop at Búðakirkja (the little black church), before heading over to Arnarstapi for lunch.

After lunch, we visited the Bárður Saga Snæfellsás Statue (a tribute to the guardian spirit of Snæfell) and then we had some cliffs to walk along and some birds to observe. There's so many great trails in this area and they are definitely worth visiting. I love watching crashing waves and I love birds, so this was a perfect stop for me. And there was more interesting rocks of course! Wrapping our time on the peninsula, we found another waterfall (Svöðufoss) and had to go see Kirkjufellsfoss and Kirkjufell (the pointy mountain). Back to Reykjavik after that, some dinner at Punk, and that's a wrap.

The lovely Erika kindly dropped us back to the airport in the morning and we began our very long travel day back. The Delta employees didn't really get why Canadians were flying to America from Iceland, but after a few questions and some general chit chat, we sorted that out. One of the agents was really more interested in our birthdays being close together.

Flight was uneventful and we even scored an empty seat in our row. Customs at JFK was painless, though a little slow, and then we began the giant wait. Our layover was so long (we knew this was coming - when there's no lift, there's no lift and sometimes there's nothing you can do when you don't live in a major center) that we could not actually connect and had a few hours to kill before we could put our suitcases back into the system. So we headed over to the TWA Hotel at Terminal 5 for some lunch and coffee and exploring - an excellent way to kill a chunk of a long layover, especially if you're interested in aviation.

Back to Terminal 4 to kill the rest of our layover. Putting our luggage back into the system was mildly annoying, going through security took about an hour, found some food, found some coffee, killed some time. Flight to Bangor delayed on the runway for a while, but we finally made it after midnight (about 22 hours after we left our hotel in Reykjavik). Grabbed some sleep at the connected Aviator hotel and we drove home in the morning.

I loved this country the first time I visited it. I still love it now. I'm sure I'll love it the next time I go - and there will be a next time because I keep finding more things I want to see. If you have never considered visiting before and nature is your jam, you really should.

Insider tip: If you go during aurora season, have your hotel put you on the call list for if they appear in the night. We were at the tail end of the season - Erika and Chris got a little view their first night, but we didn't see anything. Most nights were too overcast or too warm.

Bring layers - weather in Iceland is all over the place, no matter what time of year it is. We got incredibly lucky (thanks to my yellow 'bringer of sun' hoodie I think).

If you want official help with a trip, you all know what I do for a living - feel free to reach out.

None of these pictures were edited in any way and most of them are from my cell phone - even without green grass yet, this country is absolutely stunning.

Go to Iceland.

Ange out.