2018 ICELAND 32 - Wrap-Up

Wow, seven days and 32 long blog entries later. I could have said much more, as Iceland is a fascinating, mysterious, natural wonder of a place. Would we go again? Absolutely YES. What would be different?

First and foremost we would check for restaurants catering more to vegetarians and pescatarians (for me) BEFORE we went. My diet was pretty much Caprese sandwiches (and they were amazingly good) and Mike ate mostly ham and cheese or roast beef and cheese sandwiches. Mike actually lost two pounds on this trip and I lost a half pound. This is unheard of for our vacations. Usually we gain about five.

Well, we've seen it in late winter and that was having the best shot of seeing the Aurora Borealis during the long winter nights. We never did see the full effect, but we got the gist and we have seen it before in Montana at full strength although for a scant moment.

Sooooo...next time we would go in summer to see the beautiful green rolling hills that we saw in the painting at Skogar. See Iceland - 14. Also in summer we could take the full Ring Road around the island. We would try to find every water foss, as it seems each is unique and beautiful in its own way. We'd try the ice cave tour again, hoping it is not flooded out.

We didn't actually walk on black sand beach, so we'd do that. We'd like to see Reykjadalur, a hot water stream gushing down the mountain range. The Kerid Crater is similar to Crater Lake in Oregon. That was beautiful, so I am sure this is, too.

We would spend more time in Reykjavik. We barely scratched the surface. There are at least eleven art, history, and other "quirky" museums. I would probably NOT check out the Icelandic Penis Museum (http://phallus.is/en/) or the Punk Rock Museum (http://thepunkmuseum.is), but I (not Mike) would go to the Icelandic Wonders Museum (http://icelandicwonders.is) to learn more about Iceland's ghosts and elves. Ghosts are often mentioned in the Saga stories and elves are everywhere.

We'd go to the tower top of the Hillgrímskirkja Lutheran church, see inside the Harpa Concert Hall, and maybe check the Höfdi House where Presidents Gorbachev and Reagan met at a summit between the USSR and the USA in 1986 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Höfði).

We'd go to the northeast cliffs where the puffin birds hang out in summer. There are whale watching boats, but Mike does not handle that well. I think a flight-seeing trip over the waterfalls and glaciers would be great though. I'm sure there is one somewhere.

Even if we had another week we probably couldn't cover all the interesting things in Iceland, but we highly recommend you spend at least a week.

Next we plan a Russian river boat cruise from Moscow to St. Petersburg in 2019.