We Interrupt Chronology for this Important Topic...

Greetings! I keep getting a lot of questions around money and the cost of things, so allow me to interrupt our chronological story to provide you the details on the expenses of our trip.

I'll share openly how much things cost and our total cost. I do so not to brag and definitely NOT to turn anyone off on the idea of visiting Iceland, but because I want to be transparent about it. I firmly believe this trip was priceless -- worth every penny we spent. I would have happily spent more, in fact. We didn't try to cut corners or make it cheap -- we could have. We spent money as we saw fit.

Some early costs -- pre-arrival in Iceland

Airfare

$346                    Rachel airfare to Milwaukee
$250.98               Dave and Rachel airfare to Toronto
$1142.54              Dave and Rachel airfare to Reykjavik and back to Toronto
$137*2 =  $ 274    Dave and Rachel airfare back to Chicago
$47*2 = 94           Dave and Rachel upgrades to business class
$89                      Rachel airfare to Dallas
$ 372                   Rachel airfare to San Jose

total airfare costs = $2568.52

Rental of extra camera gear
$1,000

Hotel reservation in Reykjavik (paid in full, in advance)
220,00 Euros = $299.17

Hotspot Wifi Device Rental (paid in full, in advance, billed in USD)
$134

Happy Campers RV Rental (billed in euros, converted)
$2300

Swimming Pools and Nature Baths
100,600 ISK = $93.14 ($70 of this was the nature baths -- the pools were cheap)

Excursion to Arctic Circle
19.320 isk = $169.77 ferry tickets
2400 isk = $21   snacks on board

Flybus from hotel to airport
5000isk = $43.93

Icelandic Wool hats and socks (3 hats- Dave, Rachel, Jason, 1 pair of socks)
 10420 ISK = $91.46

Utivists (detailed local maps)
3200isk = $28

Gas (diesel)
37938 isk = $333.37

Duty Free (coming and going)
6571 isk = $57.74

Liquor Store
2389isk = $20.99

Groceries (mainly skyr, prince polo bars, milk)
14133 isk = $124.19

Meals out at restaurants, gas stations, hot dog stands, coffee shops, pubs
116460 isk = $1023.47

Grand total (minus all the stuff I'm forgetting!)
 $8,308.75


So, 14 days in Iceland for 2 people doing whatever they want at any given time and not trying to save money cost $8300.

Could you do it for less? Of course!

I hope this doesn't turn anyone away from going to Iceland. There are package deals you can get for as little as $700 a person sometimes. Sure, that's just airfare and lodging for 3-4 days in Reykjavik -- but still...makes it possible for many whereas $8300 probably isn't.

I'll conclude this by saying -- YOU MUST GO TO ICELAND. Once you stop having a heart attack and start saving your money, all will be well. GO! Stop thinking about it being expensive. DO IT.

It's a Small World Afterall!

note -- this post was "written" with Dragon Naturally Speaking (speech to text software). Punctuation might be lacking.

We woke up still at the waterfall. Which is a good thing now that I've said it like that. It would be odd had the car moved while we were sleeping. Anyway we decided to eat breakfast and then head back to the big city and find those free showers we had seen the day before. This morning's breakfast was delicious. We still had a chunk of the bread that they make near the Myvatn area. It's a thick dense bread almost like cake but certainly not sweet; they bake it in the geothermal ovens. The butter here is also insanely delicious – sort of like European butter in general. It is always far more rich in fat and therefore more delicious than our butter. 

After breakfast, we prepped Mr. Happy for lockdown mode filled up our water tank and headed for town. Following our own rule of always taking a turnout, we followed a little sign indicating there was a point of interest and came to this gorgeous river and campground. There was absolutely no one camping there and there was no one on the water. It does seem to be the place where rich people from town build a log cabin in the country. The entire area was gorgeous and pristine.

So I think I've had some other pictures of the lupines that grow in Iceland. But I don't think I've talked about the daffodils. This is one of those very very simple moments that can allow you to rethink the entire way that you look at the world. In North America, dandelions are really the crap flower. Everybody hates them. You'd certainly never see them in a bouquet. They are but a weed. The first time I noticed them in Iceland, we had been driving for a little while and our eyes hadn't yet adjusted to the vastness of the landscape. The southeast of Iceland, in particular, is full of lava fields and lots of dark, brooding cliffs. As you're driving, your eyes are adjusting to the various levels of light and the contrast of colors and suddenly you see a sea of yellow. And you can't imagine what it would be. There's nothing else like it. There's nothing else that grows in yellow. And as you get close enough to tell, you gasp – dandelions! Thousands of them. A field of yellow. And it's beautiful. One of my favorite things to say – the great thing to keep in mind – is that everybody gets a chance to shine. Way over in Iceland, where most people will never see it-- here shines the dandelion – it gets its place to be beautiful. From that moment on, I delighted in the dandelions as I did the lupines. They are a gorgeous flower amidst a sea of nothing but green or black.

We finished the rest of the short drive back to Akureyri. We were very glad when we got to the pool that nothing had changed from the day before. Took a nice long hot shower and now we were ready for a really good lunch. We looked in the book to see what they recommended. I had really been wanting to eat some fresh, local salmon. I found an interesting place in the book that said they served local fresh fish and were located on the fifth floor with a Harborview. Couldn't sound much more perfect to me. We got there and it was delicious -- but I didn't get salmon as it wasn't on the menu that day. I had the cod and Dave had a sushi platter which looked amazing. The restaurant was a pretty nice place – and so we saw an interesting assortment of people come in. We really enjoyed this woman (see below) who stepped outside to have a smoke. It's a shame you cannot see the high heels she wore in this photo. There appeared to be multicolored felt patches all over really high heels.

At any rate, we were about ready to get out of Dodge. We decided to venture into the Vinbud store – this is the government run liquor store. Across the entire country there are Vinbud stores and it's the only place that you can buy alcohol other than the duty-free shop at the airport or in restaurants, of course. We left the car where it was and walked a short couple of blocks to the store. It was a smaller store but had pretty much everything anyone would ever need or want. We were interested in trying some more Icelandic beers. It seems that you're allowed to open packages and create your own sixpack and so that's what we did. I did think this section was particularly funny at the top you see an anchor steam beer which is from the San Francisco Bay area (where I now live) and you also see good old Budweiser from my hometown. Who would've thought you could find either of those in Iceland? Not that Budweiser it doesn't have a global presence, but it still seemed out of place.

Yesterday in the information center, we had asked about getting tickets to go into the Arctic Circle. Rather than buying the tickets there at the information center, we decided to drive up to Dalvik, the port town from where the ferry would depart, and inquire there.

Dalvik is just a small little port town. But after a few hours in the big city it seemed delightful! We're becoming small-town folks. As a side note, my brother told me that the population in the “big city” that we had been in was roughly the same as Hannibal, Missouri. About 17,000 people. I can tell you I have been in Hannibal Missouri on multiple occasions and it never appeared bustling like Akureryi did!

We went down to the harbor following signs for the company selling tickets on the ferry to go to the Arctic Circle. We found the location that looked like it should be where we would go... but the door was locked and it didn't really make much sense. We decided to go try our luck at the information center as they have never let us down. The kind lady there gave us a little bit better instruction – – we did need to be down in the harbor area but we needed to go to a different building. We headed on back down there and found it easily. After quick inquiry about the weather and the condition of the seas, we had two round-trip tickets for the next day on the ferry to the Arctic Circle. Holy smokes! That's the coolest thing ever!

So now here we were with more than 24 hours to go and we would need to be right back in the same spot. This is the first time we been locked into a particular location and it wasn't immediately obvious what we should do. There certainly wasn't anything to do in the town that would take 24 hours. Dave thought perhaps we could just continue driving the loop all the way up around this particular peninsula back down through a little town called Hofsos and all the way back around again and eventually spend the night in the Dalvik campground. Well, why not?

So we take off driving. That is to say I was driving. Going north on the highway 82 just cruising along the side of the fjord. All the sudden I see something strange coming up ahead. I said to Dave, “what's that?” He said, “oh, it's the tunnel.” Okay cool. As we get closer I see a bunch of warning signs. The interesting thing about Iceland is that everyone speaks English and everything is well marked -- except when there's a warning sign. I mean there are many warning signs but they are never in English. So, I had gotten behind a small tour bus just about the time the tunnel was to begin and I thought well, I'll just follow the bus. This is counter to one of our current rules which is never follow a bus over mountain. Immediately upon entering the tunnel, I noticed something important. The tunnel was only one lane. Not one lane in each direction, mind you, but one lane. And there was traffic coming from both directions. And the tunnel was a couple miles long. Great. I have never been so happy to be behind a tour bus going through a tunnel before in my life. I had no idea how this was supposed to work so I just stuck myself right up behind that tour bus and when he went, I went. It was a bit nerve-racking primarily because I just wasn't sure how the system worked. About halfway through we started to understand pretty well. On our side, traffic had small turnouts very frequently. So frequently in fact we wondered why they didn't just make the tunnel two lanes. The other side had no turnouts. This led us to conclude that the other side always had the right-of-way and it was our side's job to get the heck out of the way when we saw headlights coming. Okay fine. So that's what we did. It was slow going but we made it.

The Icelanders are smart. Just outside the tunnel there's a gorgeous turnout where you can pull over get out of your car and praise the Lord that you made it to the tunnel. And that's exactly what we did. The people from the tour bus did the same thing and we all delighted in the huge field of lupines right next to us. I took this picture of them posing in the lupines just like people in Texas do with the bluebonnets in the spring. And for all I know they were from Texas!

Dave was kind enough to offer to drive. And so after snapping a few photos we continued along the way until we came to a cute tiny little town and realized it was time for afternoon cake. We pulled into Kara's Kaffi and went inside to see what the cake options were for the day. The building itself was old and historical and stuffed full of character. It had these cute little old phone rooms, and lots of phones old ones, new ones, all kinds, laying around throughout the Café. It was quite cute; it also had this full floor-to-ceiling bookshelf which Dave and I both loved. When we went up to order there was a really cute girl that helped us choose our cake and poured us our coffee. As she was pouring the coffee I noticed she had a tattoo on her wrist. I asked her, “what does your tattoo say?” She turned her wrist over and with a little gleam in her eye she said, “it says freedom!” I smiled and then I turned my own wrist over and I said, “mine says freedom, too!” And in that tiny little second that was otherwise completely insignificant, I realized how connected we are to people all around the world. This cute girl pouring coffee in this tiny little town in Iceland gets the same look of optimism and wildness in her eyes thinking about freedom as I do. It was all I could do to not hug her. I told her I'd come back up and take a picture of us together – and I intended to... But just a few moments later another girl came in and it seemed she was training her to work there. I didn't want to interrupt – in retrospect, I wish I would have.

Fresh off of having some delicious cake and having a we are the world experience, we walked around the town a little bit-- taking pictures of the houses and the cute little church. I've become fascinated with the way the Icelandic people put the family name on the outside of their homes. In various cities I've taken pictures of this. For larger farmsteads out on major roads, the family name is put on what looks to be a street sign out on the road. It's fantastic for being able to identify the families who live down the road. Generally, these family name signs are in blue where street sign will be in white. We hopped back in Mr. happy again, Dave still driving, and continued on in our journey.

We stopped to visit a cute little village which was crazy busy back in the herring days -- some of the signs we read outside the cool museums said that the streets of the town got so busy that it looked like a major metropolitan city! Hard to imagine based on what it looks like today!

Before too long, we came to another tunnel. Dave said, "oh yeah this tunnel is even longer." I thought oh great – that's really going to be awesome. As we started into the tunnel, I noticed immediately something was different. It was two lanes! Hooray! That makes a long tunnel under a mountain pass so much better! We did stop to laugh that, of course, when Dave drives and we come to a tunnel it's two lanes. With the exception of that one really foggy, creepy, snowy, rainy mountain pass that he drove, generally when anything odd or bad is happening -- I'm the one driving.

We got through the tunnel just fine but before long there was another tunnel. Good grief this section of the country is all eat up with tunnels. This time the tunnel was one lane-- "ha ha!!" I said. And as he started through almost immediately I could already see the light coming from the other end of the tunnel. We drove straight through it and popped out the other side. At which time I lamented, "are you kidding me? You come up to one lane tunnel and drive straight through it and no oncoming traffic ever happens??” Dang.

Somewhere in the middle of all those tunnels, we had taken a turn out and paused to acknowledge that we were staring at the wide open Arctic Ocean. I was overjoyed! It was beautiful-- the seas were calm.

We delighted in the fact that it was warm enough that we were wearing T-shirts and sandals and were perfectly comfortable. It was not exactly what I thought would happen upon encountering the Arctic Ocean. The smooth seas were comforting though seeing as how we had a three-hour ferry ride into the Arctic Circle coming up in just a few hours.

We continued on to the little town of Hofsos. We'd read in the book that this town had built the most amazing swimming pool in Iceland. And who doesn't want to see that? We pulled into the swimming pool and we got a good laugh. Since arriving in Iceland, there have been a couple of groups of people that we see just about everywhere we go. And here at the pool were the Spaniards! We actually got to meet them in the parking lot. They were quite nice and also thought it was funny that we ran into them everyday. I told them that Dave and I had joked that even though we didn't know where we would end up in the evening we could probably ask them where they were going and then we would know where we'd end up.

We went on into the pool and found the rules were the same as the other places. Shoes come off first. Must shower and wash the important areas. Must put towel in the weird little towel rack. And then we were out. And it was a beautiful pool. It was built to look like an infinity pool where the edges of it come right up to the edge of the cliff-- it was gorgeous. The water was warm, but it was pretty chilly in that exact location because of the wind. We had to get in and move around a bit stay warm. We swam a couple of laps and then decided to get in the hot tub where a collection of locals had gathered. They were speaking Icelandic and having a really lovely time. They were in there when we arrived and they were still in there when we left. Must be what you do in Hofsos in the evenings. 

When we left the pool we continued our journey back to the ring road and ultimately back into Dalvik. We were driving hard and fast trying to outrun a massive fog which blew into the fjord. You can see it in the pics above of the swimming pool. Dave had wanted to take some pics of a cute little town -- and we did stop there for dinner and he got some pics snapped but the fog was coming in thick and we didn't want to get stuck like we did at Dettifoss.

 I had collected snow earlier in the day to chill down our beers. It was nice to be able to drink an ice cold beer once we arrived back at our campground. This campground isn't going to win any awards for being beautiful but it was easy to get to had a nice bathroom and was all we needed for the evening. One of our hot Icelandic tips is that if you roll into a camping ground after hours, which so far is pretty much after 9 PM and you get up and leave in the morning before, say, 8 AM -- you can stay for free. There is no one there to collect your money, there is no pay box, there is no way to pay unless a park ranger is there or campground worker – and they are not there after 9 PM or before 8 AM. Awesome!!

It was time to get some sleep because we had an early morning adventure waiting for us. Couldn't wait to get on that boat the next morning and head to the Arctic!

What are the chances of that??

We woke up in the campground in Myvatn. Dave was ready for action immediately upon waking – time to hike a volcano! We decided to pass up the chance to shower at the campground since we'd had the chance to shower and soak at the nature baths the day before. I made us some coffee and we threw down some skyr and Dave drove us the short way over to the volcano.When we arrived, there was one other car there-- always good to have places to ourselves. It felt pretty warm but it was windy so we got our jackets and hats and the usual assortment of snacks and water bottles and started walking up.

In the “you know you're not in N. America” moment for the day, we laughed that the book stated this hike was “easy”. Yeah. In a sense, it was. There weren't huge rocks to scramble over, nor was there a soul-crushing view straight off a cliff from the teeny tiny trail. But it was a long, steep climb upon volcanic gravel. Most people wouldn't think it was easy. Thankfully, we aren't most people. We cruised to the top. Here's what we saw.

This first pic is actually from the night before, around midnight.

We walked part of the way around – between 1/3 and 1/2, I'd say. It was cool to see some of the places we'd visited the day before from up top – I could see the smokey pools at the nature baths quite well through my binoculars.

We rolled on back down to the RV – quite a few people had arrived in the meantime and the tour buses were coming in. The tour buses are interesting. Where the heck are they coming from!?!? Some places we'd been, the tour buses were day trips out of Reykjavik. Today, our hunch was cruise ships in Akureyri (sounds like mortuary). We hadn't yet been to the second largest city in Iceland, but we were heading that way once we finished at Myvatn.

We briefly stopped into another little tourist spot – mainly to use the WC and take a peek inside the little gift shop. While browsing, I found these – another example of the fabulous sense of humor the Icelanders have. It's witty but not raunchy. I love it.

So, another interesting thing about Icelanders is that many of them (perhaps as much as 50%) believe in trolls:) I find this ridiculously endearing. We definitely have seen little caves or “houses” in the sides of mountains or hills that could be troll homes! Anyway, part of the country's folklore are the 13 yuletide lads. This little gift shop had a lot of Christmas stuff – so I spent some time looking through the books and reading up on the 13 lads. Pretty fun! Want to order this book to read at Christmastime. 

From there, we cruised over to a neat set of short hiking trails around the lake itself. Good grief was I glad we had the mosquito nets. The midges were nuts over there! Check out how awesome we look in our nets!

This is a good time to talk about how quiet Iceland is. I know I've mentioned it before in passing. As I stood overlooking Lake Myvatn, I realized there was no sound. I could hear myself inhale and exhale. Occasionally, I could hear a bird chirping in a nearby tree. It was the most exquisite, blissful quiet I think I'd ever experienced. This has been true over and over again in this country. Even in a crowded restaurant, it will be so quiet we'll feel we need to whisper. And it isn't weird nor does it feel creepy or bad – it's beautiful. People are social and friendly and kind...but quiet. There is no loud thumping music, no rambunctious cacophony blaring from TVs everywhere, no children screaming and crying everywhere we went. Seldom do we get the chance to experience the peacefulness of such intense quietness. I was reminded of these little rooms in the Bible and Business buildings on campus at ACU where I got my bachelor's degree. They were called the quiet rooms. Each one was decorated differently – even down to what furniture might be in the room. There was no talking in there. You could go and sit and just be still and escape whatever you left upon entering. Imagine a whole country of that – welcome to Iceland.

Anyway, it was getting to be time for lunch and we needed to either eat in Myvatn or wait a bit until we rolled into Akureyri. We decided to go ahead and eat. We first went to the place the book recommended. There were only 3 choices and it only recommended one:) Well, they weren't really open, per se. The waitress went and talked to someone in the kitchen who graciously offered to feed us soup and bread but they told us they were actually not open to the public until dinner. Man. We love Iceland. That just wouldn't happen in the US. We politely thanked them but declined and went across the street to try our luck there. A rather inpatient looking man with long hair slicked back into a ponytail gave us the stink eye. What's with this section of town? They allowed us to dine on the lunch buffet only – no menu. We noticed most of the tables were reserved – the tour buses were coming. We tried to eat fast so we'd be done before they arrived.

Good buffet – salad bar with lots of yummy stuff including olives, fresh sheep's milk feta, lots of veggies – even beets! Mushroom soup. Trout. Potatoes. Seafood casserole. And then a tiny section of true Icelandic fare, including the infamous putrefied shark, liver sausage, and some other less tasty sounding items.

Now we were ready to leave Myvatn and head to the big city. Since it had already been a week since we seen a big city we were pretty shocked when we got there. We hadn't seen this many people since the day we arrived nor had we any encountered stoplights. We followed the blue sign with a little i on it meaning information center until we found a really large building right on the harbor front. We parked Mr. happy and walked around trying to figure out where the information center was exactly -- good grief these big cities are complicated! Finally figured it out, went inside and there was a nice big information center and gift shop. Of course, first we went downstairs to use the WC. this is a really good example of what most of the WC's. Generally speaking if you've been to IKEA and you think about the things that they sell and that style then you'll have an understanding of how pretty much everything looks in Iceland – even the WC's:)

We went back to the information center. We wanted to ask someone about taking a day trip up to the Arctic Circle. We also wanted to find out where we could get a good cup of coffee. we looked around the shop for a moment and then it was our turn to speak to someone. The shop was pretty crowded that day – but as we parked the car looking at the harbor front, we did notice there was a huge cruise ship in port. We talked to a really nice girl who gave us the scoop on going to the Arctic Circle. She also gave us a map and talked at length about the best places in town to get a good cup of coffee. Apparently when you ask her where to get a good cup of coffee you're going to get along detailed response -- this woman knew her coffee.

So, we took off looking for one of the places she recommended. It was only a couple blocks away so we left Mr. happy parked where he was. Before long we found the hostile which had a coffee shop on the front facing the street. We went in and ordered two carrot cake slices and 2 cups of coffee. We chose a spot right by the front window so we could watch the hustle and bustle on the main street. As we were sitting there, the strangest thing happened. In all of Iceland we really knew one person -- we met him the day we arrived. He picked us up at the airport and took us to get Mr. Happy. As we sat there in a completely different town more than a week later -- he walked by. We just couldn't believe it! What are the chances? Ha! So funny!

After we finished up our afternoon cake, we walked out and decided to take the main street back the opposite way from which we came. It really was a cute street lined with shops and restaurants. We realized we didn't really know the custom for how to cross the street as a pedestrian. Some of the intersections had stoplights that would give us a walk indicator light. Sometimes, they didn't. In those instances it was very helpful when a local was also waiting there with us and we just followed them. As we got to the end of the street, all of a sudden there was Sverir again! He was everywhere!

So we went back to Mr. happy and it was time to leave town for a bit. Oh we'd be back and probably tomorrow but tonight we knew we were heading to Godafoss. We drove back along the fjord and pulled over briefly at this cute little spot just off the road. There happened to be a man there shellacking the picnic bench it was an older man was just standing there with a little bucket of shellac happily painting the bench his wife was waiting for him in the car park there nearby. Dave stepped out to take a few photos and the man struck up a conversation with. Turns out the park was created by the local Rotary club. Or was it the Lions? Whatever. He was a really nice man and he told us to take a walk back into the trees and we'd see some more waterfalls – it was just a very beautiful place to take a walk. Here's what we found.

But afterwards Dave asked the man where we might find a restroom. The man started giving us directions to the nearest restaurant so that wasn't quite helpful. We did notice that there was a swimming pool nearby so we decided to go there and check it out. The town swimming pool was in fact nearby. And it happened to be right next door to the camping ground. We pulled in and went inside to the bathroom areas and were delighted to find showers also inside. And even better the showers were free. We didn't want to take a shower right then, but we thought this is exactly where we can come back tomorrow to take one!

Dave had found a little area that he wanted to go visit and thought it would be a good spot to have dinner. We headed that way. We came across this really cute little church in these cute grass covered houses. These places were actually a little hotel but no one was there when we pulled up. We had a nice dinner. 

Now was time to head back to Godafoss. We were hoping that when we got there there wouldn't be many people there. Was just a short drive back and before long there we were. Now Godafoss is another large, popular, infamous waterfall. But as we've seen before, it was just off the road and barely marked. Just before it or after it (depending on which way you're driving) there's a gas station and a small campground. Otherwise there's nothing else around. It was another you're not in North America moment to have something this huge and amazing and have a teeny tiny little sign and really no infrastructure built up telling you that you're there. I love it.

There were quite a few people there. Including small mini campers like ours parked in the main lot. We wondered how many of them would try to stay overnight despite the no camping signs. There were no bathrooms in the main lot you had to go all the way back over near the gas station and campground-- that's another indication you're not North America! It would never be required to walk that far –haha. We decided to move the RV over by the bathrooms in the campground. Once we were all set we walked out to look at the falls for a bit. Dave of course stayed out for hours taking pictures on both sides of the falls. I came back to Mr. happy, washed up the dishes, got everything prepared for bed, and did some reading and writing for a while. The light was particularly good tonight and I figured Dave was having a fantastic time taking pictures. Before long he was back. He threw the door open and said, “Tonight I'm like Donna Summer! I was working hard for my money! Whew!” 

It was another good day of exploration in Iceland. And another good night of picture taking. As we lay down and Mr. happy to go to sleep, we felt very thankful for our sleep masks. Dave pointed out that we hadn't even named our sleep masks and that we must do so. He said, “Clearly, my velvet love mask is named Luther because he provides me the sweet comfort of silky darkness.” And I said, “Well, my sleep mask's name is Cedric.”

And so Dave, Luther, Cedric and I went to sleep.