It was a beautiful morning when we arrived at the Reyjavík city airport for our third flight into the skies above Iceland. Our trips over the Golden Circle and the Westfjords had been outstanding, and today we'd be soaring over Iceland's four biggest glaciers, the Þórsmörk Valley and the Westman Islands.
Located appropriately enough on Reykjavík's harbor, the Víkin Maritime Museum provides a comprehensive overview of the history of Iceland's fishing industry. It's a massive place which is more interesting than a fishing museum really has any right to be, and could easily eat up hours of your time.
We had already walked around Heimaey, but we also wanted to check out the island from the water, and so we bought tickets for a 90-minute boat ride offered by Viking Tours. Caves, cliffs, seals, puffins and some of the other uninhabited islands which make up the Westman archipelago were all part of the program.
A stroll around the island sounds nice, we thought. A leisurely pace, pleasant weather, verdant hills, volcanoes, beaches, cliffs and a bit of puffin-spotting... a perfect way to spend the afternoon! Hours later, collapsed onto a couch from which we were physically unable to arise, we reflected on this early optimism. The ridiculous buoyancy in our step as we set out on an "easy stroll" around Heimaey. Oh, we remembered how cheerful we had been. We remembered with blackest hate.
Nothing is so important to Iceland's cultural identity as its sagas. Transposed onto vellum leaf by anonymous scribes in the 13th and 14th centuries, these are the blood-soaked stories of the country's settlement. Today, the best collection can be found in the Þjóðmenningarhúsið, or the Culture House.
The first two things you see when approaching Djúpavík are a defunct herring factory and a shipwrecked boat just offshore: rusting shells that set a mournful tone in this tiny northern town. We made a short pit-stop here on our way to Norðurfjörður, and were entranced by Djúpavík's melancholic beauty.
Bumpy gravel roads, killer avalanches, and jagged mountains carved out by glaciers are among the defining characteristics of the Westfjords, the giant peninsula which makes up the northwest of the country. We rented a jeep, packed our tent, and spent six days exploring one of the wildest and most remote regions in Iceland.
"Stop corruption: We promise to stop corruption. We'll accomplish this by participating in it openly." Now that's a political promise I can believe in! It's just one of the excellent items in the platform of The Best Party, led by Reykjavík's Jón Gnarr.
A steaming pool of milky blue water in an unforgiving landscape of lava, the Blue Lagoon is among Iceland's most attractive sights, and perhaps its most popular. At $60 per head, entrance is scandalously overpriced, but that doesn't deter the crowds from pouring in. And it didn't deter us.
As amazing as it was to stand on the cliffs of Þingvellir and survey the rift valley where two tectonic plates are separating, it was even more amazing to fly over that same valley. I think I know why so many birds spend their summers in Iceland. The views are hard to beat.
