(no subject)
May. 18th, 2006 08:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
aprilstarchildPictures of Iceland! With lots of other information next to the pictures.
Okay, now I totally want to go. I could save up and be ready to go in a year...maybe. Getting there would be the biggest chunk of money, oy freaking vey. It's seriously about a thousand bucks round trip from Portland to Keflavik.
Things to do:
In Rekjavik, there's a ton of pretty cheap cultural stuff--museums etc. There's a kick-ass swimming pool (more on that later). There's the runtur, aka pub-crawl, but that gets expensive insanely fast, as going out to eat or drink is obscenely expensive--when my parents ate at a Pizza Hut in Rekjavik, in 1990, it cost them around $40.
Within a relatively short distance of Rekjavik (an hour's drive or so) there's Gullfoss, one of the coolest waterfalls in Iceland. There's Thingvellir, site of the first Icelandic parliament in 930 (the Althing, still the longest-running parliament on Earth) and also where the mid-Atlantic plate is splitting. It's weird to just, y'know, stand in it. There's the Blue Lagoon, aka "let's go swimming in the waste of a geothermal plant," which is a really cool place, if a tad stinky until your nose goes numb. *lol* There's a national park with geothermal stuff--the Geysir that all geysers are named after, boiling mud pots, pools of oddly-tinted water. It's far more interesting than it sounds, I swear. ;^) And they're all part of what's apparently called The Golden Circle, which is just all the most famous spots in Iceland.
After that, there's just visiting all the towns and settlements on the Ring Road. 900 miles of mostly middle-of-nowhere. Now, it's 900 miles of beautiful middle-of-nowhere, broken up by little towns and settlements. And every single place with more than four people has a swimming pool. I'm barely exaggerating--it's more like every settlement of more than a hundred people. The pool is always outdoors and well-heated, there's always at least one "hot-pot" (like a hot tub, except usually no bubbles and often far hotter!). They're not chlorinated as heavily as American pools, which means you're required to take a real shower, sans suit, with lots of soap before getting in. At the Rekjavik pool there's somebody watching you to make sure you do so!
Akureyri (second-largest "city" in Iceland, I think it's got, what, 2,000 people?) has the Northern-most botanical garden on earth. Myvatn has a place where you can walk through spectacular and freaky rock formations. There are waterfalls everywhere--I'm not kidding, they're everywhere, some don't even have names. There are sheep wandering around. There are glaciers, it can be neat to see where they meet the water.
One more note on waterfalls--they are awe-inspiring. The site I linked to with the pictures, there are some with people in them for a sense of scale. Don't get me wrong, Multnomah Falls and the others nearby are quite pretty, but after seeing so many in Iceland, it seems kinda puny.
Anyway. Yup. Maybe I'll start saving up after I get my apartment.
Okay, now I totally want to go. I could save up and be ready to go in a year...maybe. Getting there would be the biggest chunk of money, oy freaking vey. It's seriously about a thousand bucks round trip from Portland to Keflavik.
Things to do:
In Rekjavik, there's a ton of pretty cheap cultural stuff--museums etc. There's a kick-ass swimming pool (more on that later). There's the runtur, aka pub-crawl, but that gets expensive insanely fast, as going out to eat or drink is obscenely expensive--when my parents ate at a Pizza Hut in Rekjavik, in 1990, it cost them around $40.
Within a relatively short distance of Rekjavik (an hour's drive or so) there's Gullfoss, one of the coolest waterfalls in Iceland. There's Thingvellir, site of the first Icelandic parliament in 930 (the Althing, still the longest-running parliament on Earth) and also where the mid-Atlantic plate is splitting. It's weird to just, y'know, stand in it. There's the Blue Lagoon, aka "let's go swimming in the waste of a geothermal plant," which is a really cool place, if a tad stinky until your nose goes numb. *lol* There's a national park with geothermal stuff--the Geysir that all geysers are named after, boiling mud pots, pools of oddly-tinted water. It's far more interesting than it sounds, I swear. ;^) And they're all part of what's apparently called The Golden Circle, which is just all the most famous spots in Iceland.
After that, there's just visiting all the towns and settlements on the Ring Road. 900 miles of mostly middle-of-nowhere. Now, it's 900 miles of beautiful middle-of-nowhere, broken up by little towns and settlements. And every single place with more than four people has a swimming pool. I'm barely exaggerating--it's more like every settlement of more than a hundred people. The pool is always outdoors and well-heated, there's always at least one "hot-pot" (like a hot tub, except usually no bubbles and often far hotter!). They're not chlorinated as heavily as American pools, which means you're required to take a real shower, sans suit, with lots of soap before getting in. At the Rekjavik pool there's somebody watching you to make sure you do so!
Akureyri (second-largest "city" in Iceland, I think it's got, what, 2,000 people?) has the Northern-most botanical garden on earth. Myvatn has a place where you can walk through spectacular and freaky rock formations. There are waterfalls everywhere--I'm not kidding, they're everywhere, some don't even have names. There are sheep wandering around. There are glaciers, it can be neat to see where they meet the water.
One more note on waterfalls--they are awe-inspiring. The site I linked to with the pictures, there are some with people in them for a sense of scale. Don't get me wrong, Multnomah Falls and the others nearby are quite pretty, but after seeing so many in Iceland, it seems kinda puny.
Anyway. Yup. Maybe I'll start saving up after I get my apartment.
