One More Day

Today is our last day in Iceland. We had dinner with a friend last night; I was too tired to write when we got back to the hotel, so here's the recap of Saturday.

We thought about taking a six-hour drive to a national park on a western peninsula, and decided that was too much, so we headed for Reykjavik and figured we'd find something to do on the way or in town after we arrived. We got a late-ish start after hunting down breakfast -we spent Friday night in a cozy cabin, not a hotel - and headed toward Reykjavik, planning a stop at (of course) a waterfall along the way. It was actually above 0 C!

David pulled off to look at something geological and I stayed in the car - until he pointed out a waterfall I hadn't noticed. Frozen waterfalls are still gorgeous.

Frozen in mid-waterfall

Iceland has a lot of signs at viewpoints along the road that tell you what you're looking at and what else is in the vicinity. David spotted a cinder cone and a marker, so we pulled off, and realized there was a hiking trail up the cone. We put on our hats and gloves and headed up.

There were stairs most of the way up. This is at the crater.

We climbed the larger cone and looked down at the smaller one.

Iceland: Where the views don't suck.

It was a bit slippery going down, because there was snow and ice between the sets of stairs. We made it safely to the bottom and back to the car. Next stop: a waterfall!

Hraunfossar is different from the other waterfalls we've seen. It flows out of lava rocks rather than over them. 

The color of the water- just gorgeous.

I also love the sound of a waterfall.

Barnafoss is just up the trail. I thought it was going to be smaller, since"Barnafoss" means "Children's Waterfall." Nope.  

There's a gruesome story about drowning that account for the name.

We ate lunch at the café near the falls and drove on to Reykjavik, where we checked in to the hotel, took a soak in the hot tub, and put our feet up for a bit before heading out to dinner with friends who happened to be in Iceland at the same time. 

Now it's Sunday morning. I'm going horseback riding and David will explore the city, and then we'll have to face the fact that it's time to go home. We have a whole list of things to do on our next trip to Iceland - sometime in the summer (not this summer. Some other year). I guess if I wanted to go home, it would mean the trip was too long, so this one must be just right. I hate to see it end.