Monday, 11 June 2018

A Land of Ice and Fire - Day 3

After yesterday's excursion, we had a very lazy start today.  Dad was a bit ill, so it was a slow breakfast and sauntered out of the house at 11am, heading down to Reykjavik harbour.


Sunday, 10 June 2018

A Land of Ice and Fire - Day 2

It is Wodin's Day - Wednesday!  Drove out of Reykjavík to persistent light drizzle and persistent heavy wind!  There are no trees here to stop it, and large areas of flatness that the wind charges over.  It's still the tail end of winter here, but we came prepared.  Layered up and waterproofs on, we went out into the authentic Icelandic weather experience!

Our first leg was to drive past Lake Þingvallavatn to Þingvellir, the site of the alÞing. (You pronounce the 'Þ' like a 'th', by the way).  This is the original Icelandic Parliament, which recently celebrated its 1100 year anniversary.  Each year all the clans in Iceland would march across to this wide river valley to exchange news, reaffirm the law and deal with any national issues.  It's right on the edge of the National Park, so when we weren't busy trying not to be blown away by the frankly ridiculous amount of wind, the views are lovely.  You could spend a really long time just wandering the many easy paths around the valley if you wanted to.