Catch up with Part 1!!

I woke up pretty sore from snorkeling and caving the next day. Probably all the thrashing I did in the water to make sure I didn’t drown even though I was legit floating and it is impossible to drown….unless your snorkel fills with water and you breath it in and then die! Just saying… And of course all the squatting we had to do in the cave – quite the quad workout. Regardless, we needed to get up, drink our tea and get on the road because it was Gulfoss and Geysir day! And a brewery tour!

Once you are out of Reykjavik, there is legit 1 main road – the ring road. It takes you to literally all the places that are in any guide book that you are going to want to see. And there are signs for all of these things as well! Sorta like how airports are really well marked with stuff, so is the ring road. It is pretty awesome. The first stop of the day was Geysir. But first we just had to stop because hello, dudes, there was just this scenery that was unreal and we had to take pictures and Emily needed to jump and yeah. It was gorgeous.

We stopped two other times just because it was so pretty and we wanted to snag a shot and take it all in. I liked the picnic table. I can’t imagine ever wanting to eat outside because I can’t imagine it ever being warm in this little spot.

The last on the side of the road detour was really pretty. You can’t really tell but this is a giant crater covered in moss – so crazy! It was deep and scary to be right on the ledge.

Last stop was because I saw sheep and we needed pictures of sheep. The first sheep ran away from me. So we found more on the other side of the road.

Emily is laughing at me because I made the sheep run away.

Geysir was pretty awesome. It would have even better if there were gorgeous blue skies so you could actually see the geysir. So this geyser is technically named Strokkur and there is a little geysir, called little geysir. This is actually the very first ever described geysir and where we get the word geyser. It has been active for more than 10,000 years and every few minutes shoots boiling hot water 230 feet in the air. There is boiling hot water everywhere in the ground because of Iceland’s geological location where so many volcanoes exist.

Then we made our way to Gullfoss, even the scenery right before we turned into the parking lot for Gullfoss was beautiful.

I am posting way too many photos from this place but seriously, it was so beautiful and crazy that I was standing right there that I just can’t help myself.

Thumbs up for reals dude!

We made it back in time to go on the brewery tour. And by on time, I mean like we legit had 2 minutes to drop our crap off and leave again. We toured the Olgerdin brewery on their last tour of the day. There were probably about 25 of us on this tour. We were from the US, Finland, UK, Germany and Hungary. We had a lot of beer. Like a lot. Usually when I go on a brew tour, you get sample glasses. Here we had whole beers. And a lot of whole beers. And then BRENNIVIN! Because they have them some Brennivin! Lordy.

Emily turns gangsta once you get a beer or 3 in her. And she isn’t going to blog this part of the trip in great detail because she is a sweet girl whose parents should not read such things. Hi (my) Mom!!! I drink beer! And shots of Brennivin!! In other countries! With my snowflake sweater on! Real winner!

Fresh out of the secondary!

By the end we were all friends. The girls from Finland and Hungary and the guys from Germany adopted us as their friends even though they didn’t know each other either and we all went out to dinner and then out for drinks.  The Finnish gals were in Iceland as exchange students. Now listen, I was so pumped to go to Iceland to get away from politics. It was getting to a point that my newsfeed was getting nuts and I was starting to dislike my friends and I just was so pumped to go somewhere that no one would care or be talking about it. Enter Finnish girls. All they want to talk about is the election. OMG. AND THEY WANT TO KNOW WHY WE AREN’T TALKING ABOUT GUANTANAMO BAY??????? WHATTTTT??? Listen, I haven’t heard about Guantanamo in years. Isn’t the bad cell shut down? Yes, yes it is. So…why are we talking about it? Should we move the bad guys to Finland? Can’t we just talk about how much I loved Finland and want to go back!?!?!?!?! Or can we talk about gay marriage, because that is what the US is talking about, not Guantanamo Bay. I felt terrible for the poor exchange student they kept telling me about in their class from America. He must have a hard time with those ladies.

 The next day, we got a late start. I was functionally hungover from copious amount of beer the night before. We needed to start the 6 hour trek to the east coast of Iceland to go to the most amazing place I think I have ever been (more on that tomorrow though). We packed up our snacks and got on the way. We stopped at 2 waterfalls and then we were just waterfalled out. There are so many waterfalls because the glaciers are melting. The first one we stopped at is the one you can actually walk behind. It was called Seljalandsfoss. The rocks were really slippery and we got super wet but it was fun to say we did it. We didn’t stay long there because it started to rain and while we would love to do some long exposure shots, it wasn’t worth our cameras safety.

Then we drove another 20 minutes maybe? And this is Skogafoss. The cool thing about this waterfall was that it used to be the coastline. Now the coastline is much farther our and we get to see this by land instead. It was pretty, but it was raining and probably the windiest place ever that day. I literally thought I was going to get lifted into the air.

We managed a selfie and peaced out.

We stopped in Vik for gas….and ICE CREAM! Hannah from the day before told us that this was her faaaaaavvvv ice cream so we decided to try it. I didn’t even finish mine. It has nothing on Ben & Jerry’s. Clearly they haven’t tried that if they think this is good. Vik is a halfway point to where we end up for tomorrow’s blog post. This was a super long drive for us this day. Coming back, easy peasy. It was just so so so dark. There is literally nothing out there sometimes. You are literally the only car on the road for miles and it is very creepy. And….there are sheep. That cross the road. At random times of the night. And then you have to pray your breaks work well and hold onto your friends hand because you both went to do the soccer mom and that is what ended up happening. The good news is that no sheep were injured in the making of this blog post or in real life and we live to tell you about another fun day tomorrow!!

Don’t forget to head over to Emily’s blog to see what she has to say about Iceland part 2!