Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Iceland in April is Beautiful!

We just got back from a week-long vacation in Iceland. What can I say? It's such a beautiful country, I don't even know what to compare it to.

I was unsure just what Iceland looks like in spring - in April. I heard that in summer it's green, with sheep grazing everywhere, and field flowers colouring the landscape, but April? Was it going to be all bare earth, gray and brown? Was there going to be snow? Dirty snow? Last year's grass? Evergreen moss?

As it turns out, the right answer was "all of the above".

Iceland is a remarkable country - it has mountains, volcanoes, glaciers, ocean, hot springs, lakes, geysers, agriculture fields, waterfalls, lava fields, mountain rivers... Forest is the only thing, perhaps, that it lacks.

So the mountains are covered with ice caps, the glaciers are blue and white and gray, the lava fields are either black or green with moss (depending on how old the fields are), the geyser areas are red with iron and blue with minerals, and there are endless golden yellow fields of grass. 

The sightseeing is amazing. 
But there are also many things to do, like walking on a glacier, with crampons!





The nature all feels... prehistoric. You won't see any civilization around those sights, nothing like Clifron Hill in Niagara Falls. A roped off path at best (and scary as hell).

No one seems to know for sure the origin of this crater lake, but it is blue and red and green and gray...
 
A barley farm that icelanders are so proud of...


The two-tiered Gullfoss waterfalls, still framed with snow...
 
The geyser area is simply magnificent...


The surreal blue lagoon, its bottom white with minerals, it's water milky turquoise...

As for the weather... They have a saying there: "don't like the weather? Wait 5 minutes". And this is so true, you can experience all 4 seasons in one day when in Iceland! We experienced sun, rain, fog, snow, hale, rainbows, downpours, extreme winds... sometimes all of these within one day!




But it all feels part of the experience. Iceland won't be Iceland without its queer weather.

I'll share more stories, more pictures. Slowly. There is so much to tell!

5 comments:

  1. Wow!
    Did you say hello to Björk?

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  2. Awesome! I could smell the fog!!!! :)

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  3. Sooooo amazing!!! wanna go there :)

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  4. karikaturka: haven't met Bjork... or Sigur Ros, for that matter (these two are the only ones known internationally)

    Maria: and you should, it's so worth it!

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  5. greeny-world: it took me a while to realize that you're smelling a fog, and not a frog :)))
    I'm blind!

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