Skál!

Skál! Or “Cheers” in Icelandic. Before we began our three months in Ireland, we took a slight detour. Lex, Nicole, Dan, Ron, and I spent 7 days and 7 nights in Reykjavik, Iceland. We booked round trip tickets from Denver to Reykjavik to Dublin through IcelandAir, an airline that offers a free stopover in Iceland for 1 to 7 days to promote tourism. Iceland doesn’t seem like the place to be in the winter (its name should be a giveaway) but we all fell in love with this rugged, geothermally active, and awe inspiringly beautiful country. If given the chance, I would move there in a heartbeat. 

While in Iceland, we rented a car and drove from place to place exploring all that Iceland had to offer. We went whale watching, drove the Golden Circle, pet Icelandic ponies, visited my first National Park outside the U.S., skated on the Kerid Crater, climbed on a glacier, snorkeled in the Silfra Fissure between two continental plates, walked on the Black Sand Beach, visited a museum, swam in the Secret Lagoon and Blue Lagoon, and saw the Northern Lights (twice!), as well as more waterfalls than I can count. 

However, we quickly found out that Iceland is expensive. To mitigate that, Nicole did a crazy amount of planning for us and booked several tours on Black Friday as well as our car and hostel. We also made a couple grocery shopping trips to buy food for breakfast and packed lunches while out and about. Dinners were our time to spend money on restaurants. Splitting up costs between 5 people also helped us save money. 

We didn’t find the language barrier to be much of an issue at all. Iceland is a Viking country and retained the majority of Old Norse in the modern Icelandic language. While Icelandic is their most common language, most people were also fluent in English. The people were so kind, including our server at Icelandic Street Food in Reykjavik. On our first day, we met a man named Alex and saw him again on our final day on our way to an ice cream shop. He jokingly told us his favorite flavors (a scoop of vanilla on top of a scoop of coconut) and we went on our merry way. While a the ice cream shop, we decided to take ice cream back to him. For only four dollars, we got the most priceless reaction and endless waffles. We couldn’t turn him down despite the fact that we had all just eaten a big dinner and our own ice cream. He had such an over the top, welcoming personality that was hard to resist. 

Our time in Iceland reminded me why I love nature so much. It’s not just about the pretty pictures or being able to say, “I’ve been there.” It reminded me of the harshness of nature. The mountains were new in geological terms and haven’t yet been smoothed out by the passage of time. They were jagged and rough against the sky. We saw time and time again how the movement of the earth below caused geisers, waterfalls, and rifts everywhere you went. On the Black Sand Beach, the scene was perfectly set. We had gotten so lucky with beautiful weather so far but this was the first day of not so great weather so the sky was foreboding and thick with rain. We stood there watching the massive waves lap up against the foreign, black sand and I was reminded again of my absolute powerlessness against nature. Nature like that can’t be tamed and it shouldn’t be tamed.