Reykjavik rewind

Hello!

So I decided a blog is much easier for all involved. I don't need to bother creating a family email group and you can ignore my posts if you like without needing to set up a "send to junk mail" rule. Anyway, I am including some pix from the last couple days (highlights) to catch up and will write more about Ireland later when I have more to tell!

So rewind a couple days... Iceland!


After getting 3ish hours of sleep (on the airplane, so not really sure if that counts) we arrived in Reykjavik at 6:30am... wonderful, because we then had to try and stay awake all day in order to fight the jet lag. So we decided to go to the blue lagoon, geothermal hot springs (that may be redundant) so we could relax all day in the pools.  Picture right: the bar in the middle of the hot springs

The water is blue because of algae (some of which is only found in the pools in iceland), minerals and bacteria (60% of which are new species). The water in the pools is replaced every 40 hours. You can see all the minerals dried on the side of the pool (picture  left).

Iceland is run off of the hot spring and geothermal power plants... hot water is piped to houses from the hot spring and the energy is harvested all over, so hot water and energy are super cheap (the water smells like sulfur) and everything else is expensive.

We spent all day at the blue lagoon, checked into our hostel, ate dinner and crashed!

The next day we went whale watching. We saw minke whales, harbour porpoises and white beaked dolphins.    Sadly, we missed puffin season by 8 days so we didnt get to go to puffin island.

We wandered around at night, attempted to read the icelandic menu to get some ice cream... decided to go with snickers and smarties (like m&ms) because we could figure out what they meant.

left side: north american tectonic plate
 right side:  rock of law , where vikings had their parliament

Our last day in Iceland we did the Golden Circle tour - a 190 mile trip around Southern Iceland to see some of the highlights like gullfoss, the golden waterfall (left), Pingvellir national park where the rift valley between the Eurasian and North American tectonic plates can be seen and the original geysir, the only icelandic word that is used universally.



I am now in the Park Lodge hotel, near Spiddal which is near Galway. All unpacked and loving the little cottage!

so long for now!

michelle