Europe trip: Days 1 & 2, Home & Iceland (Friday & Saturday, August 8 & 9)

Considering the fact that I bought my initial flight to Iceland back at the beginning of February, this trip felt like it was years away. And then of course it comes up faster than I think possible and all of a sudden I only have a few weeks to get ready for it. Let's just say amazon and my credit card became quite good friends within the last few weeks..

Finally the day arrived and after packing up my little backpack, I met up with Tom, Liz, and Logan to head to the airport. We had a quick flight to Denver with a short layover and then we were on our way to Iceland!

The arrival into Iceland was beautiful. We were able to watch the sunrise after only having seen the sunset a couple hours before. 

Sunset

Sunrise

We arrived in Iceland around 6:30 am August 9th after a seven hour flight with very little sleep. I slept for probably a total of two hours and knew it was going to be a long day (and it probably didn't help that the previous night I only slept for about five and a half hours..) but we only had one day in Iceland so we all had to survive without going to sleep and just start our day right then and there. Plus it would help us adjust faster to the time difference anyway. 

We got off the flight and I received my first stamp in my passport. Wahoo! 

After getting slightly lost in the airport, we made our way down to rent a car which took longer than expected, but we got a car and headed to Reykjavik to find somewhere to eat some breakfast. We stopped at this little cafe where I ate a ham and cheese sandwich and shared this cinnamon maple/caramel doughnut goodness with Tom. 

We then made our way to the hostel we would be staying at to see if they had any recommendations on what to do for the day. We had talked about a few things to do at the airport in Denver, but nothing was finalized since the major things we knew about were too pricey. 

After receiving little help from the front desk, we settled on doing what is called "The Golden Circle." Look it up if you want detailed information, but it pretty much is a big circle around part of the country where some major sites can been seen. 

On the way to the first stop we came across this little place with all of these piles of rocks everywhere. So naturally we had to get out and take pictures. 

Then we made it to Thingvellir, the National Park. Interesting fact we found out: Iceland is closer to continental Europe than to mainland North America so the island is generally considered in Europe, but geologically the island includes parts of both continental plates. 

This is where the tectonic plates split. We walked from one continent to the other!

We then made our way to "Geysir." There was a "Litli Geysir" and a big one. 

Obviously the big one was the exciting one. I made fun of all the people standing around with their cameras out waiting for it to go off, and then I became one of those people. It was worth it though. 

We are lunch at a little cafe during this stop and it was ridiculously priced for not good food. We pretty much at a baguette  and weeds. Not our best meal choice.

The next stop was a giant waterfall called Gullfoss. It took my breath away!

Yes, that is a rainbow in the bottom left corner!

After this stop, I finally succumbed to the exhaustion and took a quick little nap in the car. When I awoke, we made it to another one of the stops but this time we had to pay to see it, so we decided to skip it. It was close to dinner time anyway by that point and we figured we should find a grocery store to save some money. The first store we found happened to be pretty much the Iceland Costco. And everything was expensive! So we made our way over to a cheaper store and settled on ingredients to make PB&J sandwiches. We stopped off in a church parking lot to eat in the car. 

We then made our way to the best part of our day in Iceland, the Blue Lagoon, a geothermal spa. 

It's pretty much one big giant hot tub! It felt great! It was chilly in Iceland, around mid 50's so it was perfect to get into this warm/hot water. They had this special mud to put on your face as well. It was a perfect little spa. We stayed in it for a little over an hour before getting out. 

We headed back to the city and decided to walk around for a bit. 

We watched the sunset and Tom and I each bought a souvenir and then we decided to get back to the hostel to shower and finally get some much needed sleep. 

That concludes day 2 of my Europe trip. So far, it has been amazing! Iceland was seriously so beautiful. I have plenty more landscape pictures on my camera which I'll have to upload later since I'm blogging on my phone and can only use pictures on my phone. 

Tomorrow: London!