Days 3 and 4 - Fly Over Iceland and Glacial Lake 10 & 11 September 2023

Day 3 was an easy chill day.

I got up at 6am and listened to the Knights scrape a win against the Raiders in Golden Point by a penalty… talk about heart in mouth stuff. Off to NZ next week to play the Warriors in the semi. Go Knights.

We then walked up the street, grabbed a coffee and hired scooters for the ride home. They were pretty fun and Jen-Jen was a natural!

In the afternoon we drove to the harbour and booked in to do something called “Fly Over Iceland” that I had seen advertised in a brochure on the Skybus. We bought our tickets and went in with a group of about 40 people.

The first room was a recreation of a Viking longhouse and the narrator told us a story about life in the old days.

The next room was a multi-screened presentation about the geographical and sociological history of the country. Very cool.

The final room was the winner though. You were strapped into a chair for a 4D multi-sensory “flight” over Iceland.

This thing was incredible.

For nearly 9 minutes we “flew” over Iceland. A 180-degree screen, stirring majestic music, water sprays, flower scents and moving chairs all combined to give a sense that you were a bird flying over all of the geographical wonders of this country. We were in AWE. I’m not kidding. We were like little kids watching fireworks for the first time. It was awe-inspiring. It was so good that we bought a return flight - to be used anytime in the next year, but we will probably use it before we go to Norway.

We then went to a restaurant called “Lamb” and had something called the Black Sheep wrap. This homemade wrap was filled with thin lamb, hummus, cacik (a sauce like tzatziki with the tasty inclusions of dill and garlic) with mint and cucumber, greens and roast turmeric spuds, beetroot and carrot slaw. This was all combined with a date sauce. Delish.

An early night ensued as we had a HUGE 16 hour day booked tomorrow as we were off to see a Glacial Lake and several waterfalls.

We were up at 6.30 and on the coach by 7.30am.

Our first stop was Skogafoss - a sick waterfall that contained so much water and was super loud. Man, Iceland does a waterfall well.

The next four hours were spent driving next to a massive mountain with a glacier behind it. It was literally on our left side the whole day, but unfortunately, we were sitting on the right-hand side of the bus and didn’t get any proper footage.

We packed our lunch and dinner for today in an effort to avoid ye olde fiscal fisting - so we dined on apples, popcorn and meat and salad rolls all day.

We finally made it to Jokulsarlon Lake and spent half an hour on a boat cruising through the icebergs that had melted off the glacier behind. It was pretty cool but also a bit fucked as the glacier is melting at 300 metres per year due to ye olde global warming.

We then strolled over to a black sand beach called Diamond Beach. It gets its name because the tiny chunks of ice are polished by the ocean and wash up on the beach and look like diamonds. It’s pretty cool in theory, but there wasn’t many there today.

I also had a bite of a 1000-year-old ice chunk. Not bad, but because the water’s brackish, the salt content was a wee bit high.

We then headed back, stopped at another waterfall at dusk and I got a cracking photo from behind the waterfall looking out.

We got back at 10.30, drove back to Siggy’s and passed out. Big epic day.

No one can say we aren’t giving it a red hot crack!