Reykjavik: Day 3

On our last day in Iceland, we left the city to head to the southern coast on an organized tour to explore volcanoes, glaciers, and black sand beaches, the “real Iceland” as the guidebooks would argue. I have a love/hate relationship with organized tours. On one hand, they’re nice because you don’t have to think about what to do for the day and can just sit back and relax. But on the other hand, they typically require interacting with and being around fellow tourists, which is the absolute worst. This particular tour was in both English and German and was led by MaryJane or MaryAnne or something like that. It seemed like every time I turned around MaryJane/Anne was telling us not to do something enjoyable:
“You can’t eat sandwiches in the bus.”
“Don’t touch the glacier!”
“Stay far away from the ocean.”
“Here’s the most beautiful town you’ve ever seen in your life – now leave in 20 minutes.”
To which my mom responded –

Despite MaryJane/Anne, Southern Iceland is gorgeous, and I finally got to fulfill my dream of seeing an Icelandic mini horse in real life. Apparently perfect waterfalls and idyllic mountains are just commonplace there. Here are some pictures of things and places that I can’t pronounce:

Starting off the day with an Icelandic specialty, “Seattle Latte”

A beautiful friendship between Icelandic mini horses

This should be a picture of the volcano Eyjafjallajökull, but fog happened

Sólheimajökull glacier

This is Vik, the most perfect little oceanfront town there ever was.

Vik’s perfection needs to be viewed from every angle.

After the volcanoes and whatnot, we went to a museum about Iceland’s history where we learned some facts that made us questions how it is even possible for Iceland to exist. Like how there are not forests, no indigenous vegetables or fruits, and the main industries are sheep (shepherding? sheepery?) and fishing. Icelanders speak an obscure language that no one else the world speaks, and the island experiences 3 – 4 earthquakes per day. There is no army, and, perhaps most shockingly, NO NETFLIX. Iceland is incredibly impractical in pretty much every way.

Now, this morning, we returned to the Ikea airport to leave for Belfast. Of course, during our very last hours, the intense fog cleared in Reykjavik, and we discovered that our apartment has a mountain view that we had never been able to see before. And the weather finally heated up to a balmy 50 degrees! I didn’t even need my mittens!

Iceland was great and I would like to return sometime in 2019 when I can rent a car and drive myself around without MaryJane/Anne breathing down my neck.

A side note on hotdogs:
Iceland is allegedly the hotdog capitol of the world, with Baejurns Besu in Reykjavik as the capitol of the capitol. However, I am pretty sure that I have spent the past three years living the hotdog capitol of the world, Chicago, and nothing will ever top the veal-prosciutto-camembert cheese dog I had at Hot Doug’s. Considering that pickled shark fin is an Icelandic delicacy, I’m going to choose to not explore the makeup of their hotdogs. The correct thing to do is to order “one with everything.” My tour guide from the other day described it as having mustard, ketchup, crispy onions, and one other indescribable sauce, which should have been a red flag if someone from Iceland can’t even describe the sauce. Needless to say, I did not finish my Icelandic hotdog, and I propose that Reykjavik’s title be revoked and that Chicago be restored to its rightful throne.