8 Days of Icelandic Madness: Day Six

The twisted metal is leftover wreckage from a volcano eruption (flood waters did that damage), and of course some more beautiful sights ~ and me!

Today, day 6, is Wednesday, for those of you who’ve lost track ~ gosh knows we had by this point, Lol… But we pushed past the exhaustion, got going, and this morning headed out to see glaciers and icebergs!

Our first stop today was a photo op, for yet another waterfall – yeah there are a lot of them in this country – and we see yet another one tomorrow!

I don’t know that this waterfall had a name. If it did, we will never know it, alas!

We then headed to The Vatnajökull National Park, which covers about 12,000 square kilometres, and is the largest National Park in Europe (Yes, Iceland is considered part of Europe-gosh!). Here we found Iceland’s highest mountains ~ which are like lil’ baby bumps compared to where I live (shout out Colorado!). I mean at home I work at 8,400 feet while the highest mountain in Iceland is only 6,950 feet. But what it lacks in size, it makes up for with its impressive name: Hvannadalshnukur, which is pronounced kvanːatalsˌn̥ʲuːkʏr ~ I know, really helpful right?! 😉
Also located in the alpine environment that is this National Park is Europe’s largest glacier, which the park is named after.
In the first picture, the sign says Svinafellsjökull, which is a glacier that makes up a glacier tongue of Vatnajökull ~ I know, clear as mud, right? Haha!

After leaving the park, we stopped to grab some photos of a tiny turf church in the town of Hof. ~Tots adorbs!

We left Hof, headed to our actual destination, which was a black sand beach where some icebergs had gotten stranded ::gasp:: poor icebergs! But oh-so pretty picture opportunities! Click to make big!

Insufferably gorgeous, right? Imagine if you’d been there and seen if for yourself. We did!

Next, we got back on the bus and drove across the street – long haul – to visit Jökulsárlón glacial lagoon, which is a lagoon, I mean obviously, but one filled with floating icebergs, ooooh-aaaaah! While there I snagged a bunch of pictures (possibly not all of them were of ice, but I would thank you to kindly mind your own beeswax about that! 😉 ), grabbed a sandwich, and bid adieu to the people who had paid extra to go crawl into a glacier. We decided against doing the extra glacier crawl thingy back on day one or two when they offered it to us, but really by the time we got to day 6, I was glad I hadn’t signed up for it, as I hadn’t the energy left for such endevours. We still got to see lots of ice though, so no worries about us…♥

It was really peaceful here, the ice and snow, just stupid beautiful…

We did a lot today, so it was decided to head back to the hotel. We stayed again at the Hotel Laki, the really nice hotel with the rooftop viewing. And tonight – we caught probably the most amazing Northern Lights show we’d seen so far – stunning guys, just stunning!

These lights are so wonderful, they really have to be experienced in person. They flicker different colors, sometimes just a pale misty white, sometimes vibrant green with moments of pink. And they dance, literally dance, across the night sky leaving shimmering trails that fade away as quickly as they appeared…it’s something to behold.

Here are Ms W’s pictures, she got some amazing pics!!!