5 days in Iceland during winter - Day 4...

if you are new... scroll down and read day 0 & 1 first...

In the morning, we opened the curtain and... we saw this:

indeed... while we arrived without snow... even not when we went to bed... there was snow now... and we wanted to find out how bad it was! But first breakfast. The landlady prepared a large table for us... mmm... then packing and... a BIG hug from the landlady... and of we were...

It was still snowing and, we were at the sea, so in the country it could be worse... thoughts enter your mind at such times... what if it was really bad? and we had to catch our flight tomorrow morning? but we get stuck here somewhere... thoughts... are they ever right? :-)

 it was not that bad... yet...
As you can see on the map below (yellow line), we had to cross the country only for a short distance. There was a lot of snow, but nothing to worry about, and quickly we reached the other side of the peninsula. There was a lot less snow here, still some wind and the snow, dancing on the road...

Our plan was this: we wanted to do what they call the golden triangle. Some well known touristic places in iceland (for a change) But we had to leave the west coast for this and head towards the country, east of reykjavik.

We had to drive for a few hours to get there... First destination would be Þingvellir...

I was driving... good asphalt road... Two lanes... more traffic then we were used to (one car each quarter of an hour), when suddenly... driving about 120km an hour - I know!! maximum speed is 90km/h, but it was a straith road, and I was alone, and cruise control is so easy... and...
I started to turn left, and right and left and right, I hit the dissable cruise control button immediately and was able to get control of the car, without spinning or rolling over... (Milow in mind) It started to rain and it was -4°... so I was suddenly driving on PURE ice... my speed went down... to about 70km/h... did I tell you today I love this car?

especially the tires with nails...
anyway... we survived... again... others had less luck, indeed we saw some accidents a little bit further in a small village.

As fast as the glazed frost arrived, it dissapeared... indeed, only few kilometers further we had a temperature of +4°. No more danger, and I could set my cruise control back on and take a nap ;-) just before lunch we arrived at Þingvellir.
It's a very important historic place for iceland... we didn't stay long...

we stopped at a touristcenter for lunch... we were the only one... and the lady told us, that this time of the year (winter), they did not provide lunch... haha, what was she doing there? Selling postcards? to tourists that weren't coming? lol
Some things you don't have to try to understand!

We would find something else... the usual hamburger at a fuel station... tasted better then the Quick, Macdo or even the Burgerking.
the landscape started to change a lot. Again there was a road closed and we had to make a deviation direction coast. I was not that bad, we saw lots of things...

Snow disspeared for a while...
And I was telling you about the houses yesterday, well this region looked like the holliday park for reyjavik... guess alls people in reykjavik have e holliday house in this region, close by the lake, and come here during summertime...

the houses and especially the roofs have all sorts of colors...

big ones and small ones...

this one was almost covered by ice.

the main attraction was a big (frozen) lake.

we stopped, as usual, several times to take pictures and look arround. In iceland, you simply stop... the road lays a bit higher, so you might need a 4X4 to get back onto the road... but since there so little traffic... it was never a problem to stop.

finally I even stopped to shoot the horses! Although, I must confess... I didn't get out of the car... :-)

We had a quick lunch at a fuel station and arrived at geysir. The second touristic point... For the first time we were among tourists!

the geysers are really impressive! every 10 minutes the geyser explodes...
starting with a blue shine, but quickly exploding in the air.

they are not my best pictures, I know... it's not easy to shoot a white geyser against a white sky... but you get the impression...

Our next destination was Gullfoss. Quite massive... Biggest waterfall of europe...
some pictures:

Time to go back... back were we started... we set for reykjavik first and then finish in the blue lagoon...
Though we had to drive at least 200km to get in reykjavik, we never got bored driving in iceland... I'll show you why:

We arrived, just in time in reykjavik and headed for the shops we saw the first night when we arrived. The day we arrived, we had diner and walked through the main shopping road and discovered some interesting designer shops... Things you simply don't see here...

Well the first one, wasn't really interesting... we went in... and out... quickly...
But the second one... was different... Geertje started to try dresses, and designer
was opening the shop herself and she asked me "where are you from?" "Belgium..." "Oh! where in belgium?" I was already surprised to get this question... "leuven!" "I lived in belgium for a year, in liege, looong time ago" she said... well to make a long story short, we got out of the store at 6.30 (closes at 6), and the price was higher then the rent of the car! But!!!! I got the promise I can use the dress and the necklace for a shoot... Who's voluteering? :-)

Plan for tonight was have a swim first in the blue lagoon and then come back, final diner, packing, to bed, to get up very early! at 5, we had to be at the airport at 6, plane departing 7.50.

So Blue lagoon first, about a 40km from reykjavik... Well I'll show you some pictures...

mmm... the blue lagoon is always wooooooow.... so relaxing... we stayed for an hour and then back to reykjavik, dinertime...
Well my dear friends... the adventure is almost finished, yes we got our flight and we had troubles coming home again with the train... (never again) but one thing is sure! WE ARE COMING BACK!!