Month: August 2026

Tomorrow we’ll head home from Iceland, so today is our last full day here. We awoke to a gray, socked-in cloudy day in Borgarnes and packed to get ready to leave. After breakfast in the hotel, we took off eastward, back to Reykjavik once again. It only took about one hour of driving, once again descending in a long tunnel to cross under some water.

First we stopped at the camera lens rental place so Nathan could return his rented lens. Then we drove to a museum called Perlan that’s on a hill overlooking the city. Cathy, Denise and I wanted to see this modern museum “experience”, while Nathan wanted to explore the city a bit. So we three bought tickets online using our phones, 7090 kroner or about $58 per ticket. We spent the next three and a half hours enjoying several immersive exhibits inside the museum. They included an man-made ice cave, an IMAX-type movie that immersed us in a live volcano, combining real video of the outside of an erupting volcano with computer-generated imagery of being inside the magma chamber. Also a Northern Lights show, and several exhibits showing the bird breeding cliffs, Iceland’s glaciers, the geology leading to the volcanic activity, a 2021 eruption very close to Reykjavik, and the sea life around Iceland. We also stopped at the Perlan coffee shop in the morning for a snack and their ice cream shop a little later for ice cream cones. It was a very informative and entertaining experience.

Nathan picked us up after we exited Perlan and took us to a casual restaurant for lunch that offered Mexican food that he had discovered while exploring.

After lunch, we were lucky to be able to check into the Hotel Klettur in Reykjavik earlier than their usual 3 p.m. check-in time. It remained cloudy but didn’t rain and had warmed up to about 60 degrees. After settling our luggage into our rooms, Denise, Cathy and I walked down to the tourist shopping area downtown and looked around at souvenir stores. We also stopped at a bakery where they bought pastries and I had a lovely Icelandic brand of green tea with thyme.

For dinner, we walked a couple blocks to a food hall where there are several restaurants in one building. Nathan and I enjoyed Indian curry dishes while Cathy ate some Chinese bao buns and Denise had French onion soup. Then we returned to the hotel to pack for our flights tomorrow. I’m the only one returning home. Nathan is flying to Oslo then Dublin and Cathy and Denise will be spending some time in Bergen, Norway. I’ll be glad to be home with my Sonny kitty again.

We designated today to be a rest day with very little time on the road. The weather was thickly overcast and drizzly when we woke up in Borgarnes. It was nice to be able to sleep in a little since we didn’t have to drive anywhere. Although Nathan’s original plan for today was to drive far west to see the best view of the eclipse, he and all of us reconsidered after driving west yesterday. There’s just one highway west and we knew traffic would be really congested from all the other eclipse viewers and we really didn’t want to fight that and spend hours on the road. The eclipse would be almost the same totality time here at the hotel and since there would be overcast skies and /or rain at eclipse time, the pain of driving west wouldn’t be worth it.

So we enjoyed a leisurely 8 a.m. breakfast in the hotel. Nathan went for a soak in the outdoor hot tub shortly after breakfast. Then at 10 a.m. we drove into town to go to the Settlement Museum. It told the story, through headsets with recorded audio and visual displays, of the first Viking settlers in Iceland. It also told a small part of one of the Sagas, part history and part legend of early Iceland. The history was especially interesting, with historians estimating that in the 800s after Viking ship design improved, it probably only took 72 hours for them to sail between Norway and Iceland in open boats. After going through the museum, we enjoyed some tea and hot chocolate at the cafe upstairs.

Upon our return to the hotel, Denise, Cathy and I soaked in the hot tub. It was very nice, looking at the surrounding mountains and cloudy skies while soaking in hot water. Most, if not all, hot water in Iceland is supplied by geothermal activity, so hot tubs, spas, municipal pools, and geothermal lagoons are very common.

The golf course adjacent to the hotel has a little automated mower that silently rolls around, apparently mowing the edges of the fairway and maybe around, but not on, the greens. They probably have more than one, but we’ve seen only one at a time on various holes. It’s amusing but doesn’t seem like it accomplishes much.

We spent the afternoon around the hotel, resting, not doing much, waiting for the eclipse which would be at totality at 5:48 p.m. A little before that time, there was a small gap in the clouds that allowed us to see a crescent of the sun through the clouds. When we put on our special eclipse glasses, we couldn’t see anything; it was just black. And the cloud gap soon closed, leaving just a thick cloud cover. But just before 5:48 it quickly darkened and became quite dark at totality. Then it quickly got light again. I wanted to take a photo during totality but my camera adjusted for the lack of light and didn’t show the darkness like it really was. So I have no photos of the eclipse to show you.

After the eclipse, we went to the hotel dining room for dinner where I ate a small entree of fish and chips plus lemonade that cost about $40. Meal prices here have been equally expensive during the entire trip.

This morning, Tuesday, after breakfast in our hotel in Reykjavik, we drove west toward the Snæfellsnes area where we will view the solar eclipse on Wednesday. Along the route, we descended into a long tunnel that took us underneath a fjord. It continued downward for quite a long time and then we finally started upward again and emerged from the tunnel pretty quickly. Then we made a series of stops while driving toward the western most tip of the peninsula. We stopped at a beach known for being a seal hangout, and saw several seals lounging on rocks quite a ways from the shore. Out second stop was at the Búdakirkja church shown below, which was picturesque from the outside but not enterable.

Another stop was at a narrow crack in a lava cliff which hid a small cave and was associated with a troll legend. Nathan walked in the cave, but the rest of us stayed near the parking lot, thinking it was not worth the walk and crowded conditions. Next we stopped at a beach where there were the remains of a shipwreck, evidently a steel ship by the looks of the pieces. (I didn’t take a picture of the ship pieces.)

After reaching the end of the peninsula , which was very crowded due to the eclipse and a Bjork concert taking place the next day, we stopped at a little convenience store and restaurant where we ate a very late and unhealthy lunch of fried chicken nuggets or fried hot dogs. The we headed back to the small city of Borgarnes to go to our hotel. The Hamar Hotel is located on a golf course. It’s not a large hotel but has a restaurant, geothermal hot tubs outside and a sauna. It’s quite nice. We had a nice dinner in the hotel restaurant that overlooked the golf course.

Sorry for the hiatus in postings. I’ve had a cold the last few days and didn’t have energy enough to write for the last two. I’m better now.

On Saturday, we had booked a “Super Jeep” tour into Thorsmork Park, which started at 10 a.m. We left the hotel early to stop at another waterfall site before the tour. We stopped at the waterfall Skógafoss, which is a wide waterfall. At the site, the Icelanders were getting ready to start a 24-kilometer running race that stated up the hill next to the falls. We would also see the finish line later in the day.

The starting point for our tour into Thorsmork Park was not too far away. The “Super Jeep” was actually a huge Mercedes Benz van that could seat about 12 people, was 4-wheel drive, had dynamic inflatable/deflatable tires and an air snorkel for the engine which allowed it to drive through rivers. And our driver guide drove us through many. We chose this tour at Denise’s (one of our Aussie travel companions) request to see a site where her favorite band had shot a music video. It was a spectacular canyon, and after our driver had forded several rivers, she parked the van and we walked up the canyon.

The tour lasted 6 hours and we also visited a glacier, another canyon, and had lunch at a small restaurant that’s probably open only in the summer. The end of the 24-kilometer running race was at that restaurant and we watched a few of the runners finish.

On Sunday, we drove 2 hours east from Vik to a place called Diamond Beachin English. It has that name because a glacier at the head of an inlet there calves into icebergs that float out to meet the surf of the Atlantic Ocean, where they melt or break into small pieces. Those pieces then are washed up onto a black sand (lava) beach, where they sparkle like diamonds.

After spending time at the beach, we drove 3+ hours west again, back to the town of Selfoss where we spent Sunday night at Hotel South Coast again.

Monday (today), we continued driving west toward Reykjavik, stopping a few times along the way. We were driving through an area that is more volcanically active. We stopped at some boiling mud pots, viewed some lava that had flowed with the last few years, and stopped in the city of Grindavik, which had nearly been hit by a lava flow in 2025. The government built a berm to protect the town, but now many of the houses are abandoned due to the close call and remaining risk of another eruption. We ate lunch in Grindavik.

Monday afternoon we returned to Hotel Klettur in Reykjavik for one night. Cathy and a Denise wanted to experience a geothermal spa, so after dinner we dropped them off at Sky Lagoon for a luxurious soak in hot pools on the shore on the edge of Reykjavik. I chose not to go to the lagoon because of the coughing from my cold, and I wasn’t too keen to soak anyway. But they enjoyed the experience.

After another interrupted night of sleep for me due to jet lag, we met in our Selfoss hotel’s breakfast room for a 7 a.m. breakfast. This buffet was less crowded than our hotel breakfast had been in Reykjavik, thankfully. After the meal, we hit the road before 8 a.m., off to the site of a few waterfalls. It was another very rainy day, so we had donned our rain gear again, which had dried overnight. We beat the tourist buses to Seljalandsfoss, a waterfall that we could walk behind. The spray and rain combined to make it a very wet walk.

At the same site was another waterfall that’s partially hidden. It’s called Gljúfrabúl and it sometimes has a long line of tourists waiting to wade through a shallow river to see it. We were early enough to avoid any line and both Denise and Nathan walked on stones in the river to go in to view it up close. I didn’t want to chance getting my feet wet, since that was about the only remaining dry part of me, so I didn’t go any closer.

We walked on an alternate path back to the parking lot that passed through a field with sheep. During that part of the walk, regretfully, my feet got wet too.

Our next stop was to see the foot of a glacier that’s located on Eyjafjallajökull, the volcano that erupted in 2010 and disrupted flights all over Europe. We couldn’t see the top of the volcanic mountain due to the low-hanging clouds and rain, but we did walk up to see the glacier.

It was blowing, cold, and rainy as we viewed the glacier and we were tired of being wet. But we did make one more sightseeing stop before reaching the town of Vik, where our hotel is. And that was to see the Atlantic Puffins that nest on the cliffs outside of Vik. They’re in a nature reserve and a trail leads up to one of their nesting cliffs. We could get quite close, within maybe 15 feet of some of them, which surprised me. They weren’t afraid of people and just sat on the grassy cliff and flew to and from the ocean where they were evidently eating fish. Since I saw none of them carrying fish in their beaks back to the cliffs, I believe their chicks had already fledged and were hunting on their own. They were all very cute! Denise and Cathy got some good photos and videos of them, as did Nathan with very long camera lens he had rented in Reykjavik. My photo wasn’t that good, but here it is.

After seeing the puffins, it was time for lunch. We drove into Vik and found a pub, where we enjoyed a leisurely lunch of burgers, stew or soup. By that time it was 3 p.m. and we could check into our hotel, named Hotel Kria, where we’ll be for two nights.

Around 5:30, Cathy, Denise and I walked across the street from the hotel to a gift shop and then a grocery store to buy things for dinner. Nathan had previously bought some food for himself. I bought a sandwich and some drinkable skyr, the Icelandic yogurt. We had looked at the hotel’s restaurant menu online and decided it was more formal and expensive than we wanted that night, so the grocery store food was a good alternative. We returned to our rooms and called it a day.