My Trip to Iceland

JULY 2023

I was inspired to travel to there by my favorite movie of all time The Secret Life of Walter Mitty which had me falling in love with the scenic views of the mountains.. (probably the most cliche reason to go travel somewhere). I grew up in one of the flattest places in the US, Illinois, so seeing any sort of land elevation does something to my brain that makes me so happy.

We landed!

The drive from the airport was the least eventful part of my trip, it was a little gloomy and flat and had my mom and brother going, "Did we land in the right country?" We visited a Bonus and picked up some groceries, before going to our AirBNB which was just outside of central Reykjavik! I passed out for a few hours and was woken up to go whale watching, very touristy I know but it was a good activity to squeeze in a day already taken up from traveling from the airport! We didn't see any whales but the views from the water were incredible. I witnessed the Midnight Sun at around 10PM, and in the darkness we could see the very distant glow of the Fagradalsfjall volcano eruption!!

streetview i found on google maps that is 10x better than my photo, look at how small the people are for scale!!

The Golden Circle

The next day we planned to drive around The Golden Circle, a route which covers a ton of scenic areas to visit. We were doing our own loose version and getting out whenever we saw something cool or took a detour here and there. I saw some geysers at the Haukadalur Valley and it was really cool! We climbed up the hill and I was so impressed by the view of the valley from so high up. Unfortunately I feel like none of my pictures do this trip justice- because that spot was probably the biggest takeaway that day!

My mom and I had the Walter Mitty soundtrack on loop whenever we drove!!

64.8057° N 23.7731° W

Spent most of the last full day driving to see Snæfellsjökull, since there was a national park near there. We stopped at a couple of places including this neat cave you could go inside that was high up on the side of the cliff! Iceland felt pretty rural in general but this whole route felt like we were truly in the middle of nowhere and it was so surreal and fun! We ended up being taken to an empty field because the GPS was being weird and we decided to call it quits and just keep exploring random spots. We stopped by this place somewhere in Hellissandur or Ólafsvík (I forgot!!) to get something to eat and then we looped back home to Reykjavík!