Day 7 in Iceland: Eyjafjallajökull, Vatnajökull and other hard-to-say things

Unfortunately, my time in Iceland is winding down. I'm back in Reykjavik, which doesn't feel 'right' after that last few days going along the south coast. I didn't think that being here would resonate with me as much as it has, but so far it's been beyond words.

The morning after I wrote my last post, we had breakfast (mine consisting of about 9 hard boiled eggs and cucumbers), we left the Sudhurland Highlands to climb a mountain, a pretty damn good way to start you day! Me and Tyrfingur, my guide and new favorite person ever,  spent the morning hiking it. The hike was easy, and the view was breathtaking (as is every other view in the country), and as all good things must end, we descended the mountain. I once read that the best part of hiking a mountain is the meal afterwards, that you never forget the meal. It´s all too true.. I had a sandwich with ham, cream cheese, lettuce, mayo and tomato with a Coca-Cola. And it was the best sandwich I´ve ever had. But if I ever had this sandwich for lunch or without having hiked beforehand, I would think nothing of it...

Tyrfingur then said that there were a handful of waterfalls in the area that he wanted to show me... so we dove for about an hour to the first 3

The last one was my absolute favorite, and you had to shimmy through a few rocks to get to the inside

That night, we stayed at a guesthouse called ´Ferðaþjónustan Vellir´, which was a perfect place run by a mother, daughter and her husband. Now, one thing I thought was funny was that both the mother and daughter were wearing more rural apparel, but the husband of the daughter had on a shirt that was just... strange. It was a Kobe Bryant as a cyborg... for some reason I still chuckle about it. The food was unexpected... It was a 3 course meal starting with asparagus soup, followed by an entree of cod, salad and broiled potatoes, followed by a dessert of marbled chocolate cake with Skyr. I could´t sleep much that night since the surrounding area was so beautiful, so I walked around outside for a while... Hard to sleep when this is the view from the window:

In the background is the glacier of Eyjafjallajökull, the hardest thing to pronounce in this country.



We passed through the town of Vík and to a lagoon
at the base of Vatnajökull, the largest glacier in Iceland.
Along the way we passed the time with the music of Ásgeir 
Trausti and ´Of Monsters and Men´, 2 of the greatest Icelandic 
artists that fit flawlessly with the scenery.

The lagoon was beautiful, and seemed to have every shade of blue you could imagine. It was foggy, which gives most people reason to complain, but the fog added an unbelievable ambience to the entire area... It felt like the Titanic (minus Leonardo

DiCaprio)

Afterwards we went back en route of Vík towards the beaches that surrounded it. The weather had become very misty, so my camera´s photos became very grainy.

 

My tour with Tyrfingur was coming to an end, unfortunately. I´ll be seeing him Tuesday though! He does a dinner tour, where he takes a few people shopping for groceries around town and makes Icelandic dishes at his house...
We were 2 hours from Reykjavik, and on the way back stopped by Eyjafjallajökull again... When I come back to Iceland I´m going to hike it for a while...

One thing I´ve come to love about Iceland is the amazing quality of the rest-stops.. A strange thing to point out, but they´re all unbelievably clean, have bakeries or restaurants in them and have incredibly friendly staff. In America, rest stops are some of the sketchiest places around, and the food is only good if you have a death wish... Iceland: 1, America: 0

I was wiped out when we made it back at 10:30ish, and fell asleep until about 9 the next day (today).. And when I woke up I headed over to Kolaportið Flea Market... It´s like all flea markets, very hit-or-miss. I picked up a few out-of-circulation coins from when Iceland was under Danish rule for about $2USD... But there I saw it, my all time favorite thing about Flea Markets: knock-off merchandise.

LOOK AT IT!

LOOK AT IT!

JUST LOOK AT IT!

After pondering whether of not to actually buy the fake-teletubbies balloon (and I deeply regret not doing so), I wen´t to Iceland´s National Museum... There was no photography allowed, so of course, I took a bunch of pictures...

 
 

Now anyone who knows me can tell you I love the early 1900s, especially in respect to the progress of art and communications. So one thing about the museum I fell in love with was the huge collection of camera strips from photo booths... I spent a good 40 minutes on all of these alone... Forgetting the blister in my foot that had been hurting all day! 

So I did something unethical for a traveller: I got a pizza.

There´s a Dominoes Pizza right next to where I´m staying, so I went ahead and got a pizza they called ´The Tokyo´, because hey, I´m moving to Japan so it was an automatic bias...

Everybody in the Dominoes was extremely lively, the people where singing while preparing the pizzas and the guy taking my order made jokes... I see that a lot here, where people work what American ´culture´ (or lack thereof) considers the lowest of the low jobs. Here in Iceland all the gas station employees, fast food workers, waitstaff are very genuine and nice, which is an evident reflection of how they´re treated by their employers and society. They make good money and are treated fairly... something that people in the same line of work don´t have in America.... Moving on...

The pizza itself was good, nothing out of the ordinary... but my gripe is how it was named ´The Tokyo´... when it is the least Japanese thing I have ever seen... It had feta cheese, ham, ground beef and bacon.... You´d think it´d have at least shrimp or egg or fish... Ok, before this turns into a rant about me being a militaristic food enthusiast... I should move on

Tomorrow I´m going to the Snæfullsnes Peninsula for the day, the day after I have the food tour with Tyrfingur, and on Wednesday I´m leaving this borderline-flawless country... So until then... bye!