Iceland arrival and day 1

Iceland arrival and day 1

08/02/2017 2 Von andiline

Well, my flight with Icelandair from Frankfurt to Keflavik Airport was quite uneventful. The plane was mostly empty so I could switch to a seat with nobody sitting next to me. When we landed the sun was shining and I thought that this was a nice Welcome to Iceland. After getting my luggage I waited for the plane from Switzerland that was bringing in my travel companions. When they arrived we went to get the rental car and then we tried to put all our luggage in it… 😀 But somehow we managed. We went to our lodging then and it was a rather cheap hotel that had the charm of a caserne. But it didn’t matter since we were only staying one night anyway and intended to leave early this morning.

We then drove into Keflavik to get some provisions at a small supermarket and then we had dinner at a restaurant that Susanne and Stefan knew from a prior trip. It was REALLY good but really expensive as well. When we got back we mostly went to sleep immediately because we were all tired.
This morning we intended to leave at 8 but Stefan heard at the reception that a huge storm was there and we were advised to check for road closures. So we discussed what to do because staying another night at this lodging was not really something any of us wanted to do. After checking out a few options we decided to try and turn around if it didn’t work out. For the first hour we drove in the dark until the sun came up. Our first stop was at a beach church and it was difficult to take pics because it was nearly impossible to keep the camera without moving. We had difficulties walking around….
Next stop was at a mouth of a river to the sea. You don’t really see on the pic that it is a river because there were a lot of waves on it (the ones of the sea were much higher though). Then we came through Selfoss which Lonely Planet described as a very ugly city. We went to a caffee though and had REALLY good cake.
Shortly behind Selfoss and stopped because we saw two waterfalls where there were no falls anymore because the water was flying away immediately. While we were standing there it suddenly started to hail and then lightning and we were in the middle of a big thunderstorm. All while the storm was still blowing very strong.
We visited the black beaches close to Vik but didn’t go close. Not only because it was still raining hard but as well because these beaches are dangerous even without strong winds. We stopped a few more times, the last stop was a lagoon where ice from a glacier is swimming into the sea. By then it was nearly dark so that most of the pics we took there are blurry. After that we finally arrived at hour hotel for the next 3 nights (took us nearly 10 hours for a 400 km) and this one is really nice. I have never seen a hotel room with so many plugs for electronic devices…
Aurora hunting tonight will probably be non existing again as the clouds won’t go away till tomorrow but the weather forecast for tomorrow has considerably improved so we hope to have a better day tomorrow. Although today was not a bad day as we think we saw some pretty unique things… 🙂