The following pictures were taken from a side-trip we took to Reykjavik on the way back (mostly) from a conference trip in Europe, in October 2013.

This represented one of the most complex set of travel arrangements we've ever taken, primarily because it involved a 3-legged trip to get to Europe, via Halifax, then Reykjavik, in order to be able to stop in Reykjavik on the way back (at least, in order to do so cheaply).

Icelandair is a no-frills airline, which mainly means no free food. They did give water though, in fancy Iceland-y bottles.
And some nice wool blankets too.

When we were exiting the plane I noticed one of other passengers taking advantage of the opportunity to own a nice wool blanket, by surreptitiously stuffing it into their carry-on bag.
Finally, here we are after arriving and passing through customs. We also, oddly enough, had to go through another round of security, who made me throw away the water they gave us on the plane. Because they don't want water in the airport I guess.

Anyway at 5am the Reykjavik airport is kind of quiet. Nice airport though, and oddly for a country with almost no trees, hardwood floors!
The bulk of a week later, we met in the CDG airport and were transported back to Reykjavik for the actual side-trip. One thing we were both interested in was the legendary thermal spa, "Blue Lagoon." Conveniently enough, there are buses that will take you from the airport directly to the spa, store your luggage and let you do whatever, and then take you the rest of the way to your hotel in Reykjavik once you're done. So that's what we did.

Leaving the Reykjavik airport, we noticed a weird, bent tower.
Taking pictures from the bus is not usually worthwhile...blurry and full of reflections. The landscape, however, was amazingly different enough that we tried anyway. Here's a shot as we approached the spa.
Once we arrived we got our first real view of Iceland outside of the bus. This is the little path that leads from the parking lot to the spa.
And then there it is. Yes, the water is just as blue as the advertisements suggest. You can wander around the outside of the spa and poke at it if you like.
Here's a larger view, looking away from the spa building. The white film on the the rocks near the waterline is due to the mineral build-up from the water, and the steam in the distance is from a power-plant taking advantage of the geothermal heat.

The spa was absolutely awesome. No pictures though---taking pictures in the spa itself is possible, but is best with a camera that can withstand some moisture, and maybe some salty minerals too, and we didn't want to risk it. Maybe next time.
Anyway, we arrived in the evening, after dark. Not quite at the right address unfortunately, likely due to a phonetic confusion in communicating with the bus driver. The people at Guesthouse Galtafell, however, were extremely nice, and after declining their offer to call the bus company they gave us directions to our hotel, which was actually only a few blocks away, so we just walked to Castle House.

We immediately went out to seek out dinner (and to secure breakfast ingredients for the next day), and found ourselves at the Laundromat Cafe, where we enjoyed a veggie burger and a beer each for a mere $40-$50. Yes, it's true, Iceland is damn expensive, especially at restaurants.
The apartment/hotel room we rented was very nice, clean and comfortable. It even had some...art.
The next morning, we had a chance to finally see our hotel clearly from the outside.
And to discover where all those damn bird noises were coming from.
But today was also the first of our amazing adventure tours, so we didn't look around the city, and instead were picked up to head off to the stables. Yes, we went horse-riding. On the notoriously small Icelandic horses, which are certainly not ponies.

This is me (Clark) with Fraendi.
And Carrol with Febrúar.
Yes, we actually did ride them too, not just lead them around.
After a lovely, slow ride through the lava fields, we were picked up by bus and spend the rest of the afternoon touring around the "Golden Circle".

Again, we couldn't resist taking some bus pictures of the amazing countryside. The abundance of mountains and moss-covered lava rocks make everything look extra bizarre.
A stunning landscape, reflections or no.
Our first stop was the geysirs. This was an amazing landscape. Steam rising from everywhere made it look very surreal.
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Here's a larger view.
And a larger view yet
Look, our feet in a geothermal wasteland in Iceland!
Each of the misty spots originated from some deep hole in the ground.
The surrounding mountainscape was pretty cool too.
More mossy lava field.
About every 8-10 minutes, with a huge variance mind you, one of the geysers erupted. This was pretty shocking the first time, sending an enormous plume of steam into the air.
We were smart enough to stand upwind, but you can get close enough to it to get soaked if you want.
There were also little geysers, that didn't explode but did bubble continuously.
The next stop was the Gulfoss waterfall. This extremely impressive waterfall (and yes, we've seen Niagara Falls) was (apocryphally) preserved in its natural state by one Sigríður Tómasdótti, and there is a monument to her as you approach the falls.

From the picture, it seems she was angry.
The falls, an overview
And a bit closer up
The falls themselves proceed in two stages, first a relatively short drop, then a longer one. This is the final, long drop.
The mist around this area, incidentally, gathered on the tiny bits of vegetation to make an interesting ice-landscape. Here's a close-up.
We also liked this picture.
Handing off the camera sometimes resulted in pictures that were less interesting though. This was accidental.
This one was even more accidental. Sky maybe?
Packed back into the bus, we next headed for þingvellir, aka Everyman's Fissure, the dividing line between the Eurasian and North-American continental plates. This was also an important political location, where Christianity was first imposed upon an unsuspecting populace, and where the Lawspeaker historically reiterating laws from a famous rock nearby. Sadly, geographic upheaval swallowed this famous rock some years ago, and now only a thin vertical pedestal marks the location of these events.

The tour guide promised our bus would slow so we could take pictures. I suppose it did slow some, but obviously not enough for us to take any decent pictures.
We did come to a stop on the top of the ridge, and were given 20 minutes to check it out. Here's a neat stone wall, covered in moss along the route to the ridge itself.
At the top there was a neat topographic map, showing the local area.
And the view from the top was pretty impressive.
But it was the rockiness we were most fascinated by.
Which had lots of smaller fissures themselves.
Don't drop anything!
There was also a path down to a bit lower in the fissure.
Where you could better appreciate the scale of the cliff.
And check out the troll-hole.
20 minutes though is not much time, and we had to rush back.
Once we got back, we wandered around a bit, eventually deciding on the Caruso restaurant for dinner. We had a lovely table by the windows, and both had the trout, along with a local Icelandic brew. We think the beer was a local India Red Lager. Like everything in Iceland, this was not a cheap meal, but it was delicious.

On a side note, apparently the restaurant offers "live music on weekends by guitarist who goes between the tables and plays southern and magical tones for visitors". That's very sweet in concept, but I'm so glad it was a weekday!
Apparently, that was the end of summer though. The next day we woke up to winter.
But, with some time to spare today, we decided to walk around and check out Reykjavik in winter.
This is some famous, old school house (still in use).
And the lovely, colourful view just up the street from us.
Did you know that in Reykjavik they demarcate parking spaces not just by lines, but by physical bumps? Us neither, but now we do.
We found a few demonic places of worship, which were unfortunately closed this early in the morning.
So, continuing on our way we winded our way up the street, and found a tall and quite striking church.
This place was guarded by a muscular and axe-wielding fellow, his prowess only diminished by clinging to a religious symbol.
Yes, fine, evidence of us all too close to this place of worship, just before we burst into flame. First me.
Then Carrol.
After putting out the infernal fire, we approached the church. Nice doors. Oh, and hello to whoever we caught just coming out.
Inside was some quite spectacular architecture.
And along the sides too.
And an impressive organ.
Although there were also impressive organs all over the city, used as traffic barriers.
Wandering back, we found an interesting inner garden. Here a maiden clutches a fish, while pigs mill about in the background. Erotic.
We also got several shots of the local architecture. Here's a building.
And a stone one, apparently of some security concern.
And another, cuter stone structure, now a clothing store.
Ack, all that was just in the morning. Early afternoon we went on a caving expedition. Ok, maybe not quite an expedition, but it was into a cave.

First step, getting there. Turns out the cave entrance was kind of in the middle of nowhere.
But it was surrounded by some truly beautiful scenery, what with the fresh layer of white snow on everything.
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Ok, enough vacant staring. Look down, there's the hole we're aiming for.

This cave was actually a former lava-tube, although one of the larger ones that at several points you can stand up in.
And in we go! One of the group we were with didn't want to go in, so she went to go wait back in the car. I suppose we all spend our money and time as we wish, but it did seem kind of silly to book a caving tour when you have claustrophobia to the point where you won't even give it a try.
Inside sure was dark.
But the mineral colours were pretty cool.
And there was even sometimes some phosphorescent fungus of some form on the walls. It didn't provide much light, but it did shine like silver in our headlamps.
Lots of cool lava rocks!
And lots of places to twist an ankle, for the unwary.
One of the more striking features in this cave was a huge, drippy-looking rock formation descending from the roof. This picture doesn't really do it justice.
At various points there were also rock oozes, made apparently by lava being squeezed out of small holes, and then cooling mid-flow.
In some cases these had been destroyed, but the original cave explorer made diagrams, and then monuments to the missing formations.

You really got to love caving to spend a weekend doing that though.
Deep in the cave we came upon the bones of a former cave explorer.

Apparently it was actually a lost sheep, and not even that old. Still, sucky way to die.
Look, our feet in an underground lava tube in Iceland!
And here's Carrol, deep underground.

(No symmetric picture of me here; I don't show up in the dark.)
All around us was amazing rock textures and colours (if a bit dark). This is a typical ceiling shot.
Finally, and after getting a couple ghost stories in the pitch dark from our guide Ingvar as well, we reached the entrance again.
Well, that was fun. We got back and wandered around a little, checking out some of the local neighbourhood. Here's an onion-dome house not far from our hotel.
Another large house.
And a structure with some interesting, but also kind of ugly artwork on the exterior.
All this made us thirsty, so we checked out a local bar, Ölsmiðjan, promising some of the cheapest beer prices we'd seen in Reykjavik.
Inside was surprisingly small (although we never did look upstairs). This is the bar you are immediately confronted with. Notice the spinning wheel on the back wall, behind the taps, which allowed the especially indecisive to gamble on receiving much more (or less) alcohol than they pay for.
It was actually a very comfortable place. Ok, maybe not if you chose this seat, which seems to have seen better days.
As the first, and for some time the only, customers, the bartender had time to talk to us. Kolbeinn was very nice, and helped us while away several hours. Here he posed in his wools.
He even had an awesome, custom drink, a "Northern Lights", made from Sambuca and a mixture of blue and green liqueurs. I thought it tasted great.
Following one of his dinner recommendations, we staggered off to the docks area, and found the famous lobster-soup restaurant, Sægreifinn.

We weren't sure initially that we'd found the right place. As we stared at it from outside, the owner walked by, and ushered us in.

It's a remarkable homey, comfortable and unassuming place.
After ordering, we sat at one of the long, thin tables and waited for our food to arrive. The soup was indeed great, and with the bread (and beer!) could easily be a meal in itself.
The owner didn't speak much English, but was very nice. In the back section, there was even a wax effigy, allowing him to be in both rooms at the same time. Here he posed for us with his twin.
The next day was our final major excursion, a hike onto a glacier, which turned out to involve over a 2hr drive outside of town.

We stopped after 1.5hrs at the last rest stop before we got there. There were sheep nearby.
And then we continued on. Here's some more bus pictures, some of which seemed ok.
After a while some nicely snow-capped peaks became visible
We arrived and parked in a small lot near the glacier. Around here the ground was all small dark rocks---the remnants of a retreating glacier.
On either side of the parking lot were some large rocks---the "pee" rocks, or last semi-private place to evacuate. Interestingly, these locations were the only places amongst the scree where plant-life flourished.
The glacier itself was an odd mix of black, fine volcanic gravel, and ice, sometimes with pools of greenish water at the base.
Our feet on a glacier!
Here we had gone a significant way up the glacier, and could get a better look back and overall view.
Our guides pointed out that the ice under the dark gravel was often the oldest ice, dense and relatively clear. Viewed from just the right angle you could get some minor prismatic effects, although that was difficult to capture by camera.
A nice view of a fairly level section of the glacier.
And a more general view showing the many crevices and moulins. That's Kiddi on the left, our more talkative guide.
Not all the water was greenish. In fact some beautifully clear streams ran through the glacier, with water that was supposedly extremely pure and very drinkable. We did try some, and didn't die or anything.
All right, all right. Here's a picture of us in our glacier hiking gear. First me.
And then Carrol.
Part of the trip involved doing some ice-wall climbing. For this they anchored some ropes, so we would be less likely to die if we fell, and we used some ice-climbing axes (along with the crampons on our feet) to scale up a very vertical wall of ice, and then rappel down.

Carrol was one of the first up.
And then down.
Yes, I did it too, scary and stressful as it was.
And here's Carrol relaxing by the stream after.
After everyone had a try we continued trekking around the glacier.
The sights were pretty awesome.
More great scenery.
At one point, and despite the curious lack of any other evidence of wildlife, I spotted some small bits of poo in a puddle.
There were many deep moulins---pits in the ice carved by rocks on the surface that slowly etched their way down. This one was especially deep.
There were also many natural caves.
This one too.
More lovely, clear ice.
And continuing stunning scenery.
Eventually we started back again.
The rocky scree we walked on toward the parking lot was not widely varied, but there were a few large, surprisingly smooth stones in amongst the gravel.
A quick side-trip on the way back gave opportunity to urinate, and check out another very pretty waterfall. In our case the low sunlight resulted in a nice rainbow as well.
A closer view.
It's here where Carrol found a nice rock. We still have this rock. It's nice.
And nearby there were more sheep. Up close sheep are larger, and even woolier than you might think.
Arriving back in town, we had a few beer at our new favourite bar before heading off to dinner.
Dinner was at the most expensive restaurant in town. Well, maybe not, but it sure seemed that way.
We did get a lovely table, and the service was excellent.
We began with an appetizer sample. Left to right, we have puffin, dried arctic char, and minke whale.

Yes, we're normally vegetarian, but since that was never going to work out well in a country that didn't grow fruit or vegetables, we decided to be carnivorous on this trip. And hey, if you're going to eat meat, you might as well eat the exotic meats.
The main draw of the appetizer selection though was to try out the rotting shark. This has a reputation of smelling awful, and being at best an "acquired taste". We only got a few small cubes of it, ominously served in a sealed jar.

There certainly was an extremely pungent ammonia odour. However, while not an appetizing scent it wasn't an especially repulsive, rotting odour either, and the shark itself didn't taste of much, just kind of a chewy cube of meat. We concluded, and the waiter concurred, that fearful descriptions of it were greatly overblown.
As a main course, Carrol had the minke whale.
And I had the horse. We traded some of our dishes. Both were quite yummy, and extremely well prepared too.
We finished off the meal with bright red cocktail, and a plate of ice cream, chocolate, and fruit.

Despite the cost, the food was excellent throughout, and it was an overall lovely experience.
The next day, our last day, we wandered around town in the morning taking pictures. This is the island full of fowl, again.
Parliament.
City hall.
An embassy.
The opera house.
A view of the downtown core.
And a view of the shipyards. Iceland doesn't have a navy, so we weren't quite sure what that destroyer (gray thing partly hidden) was doing in there.
Those last two pictures were taken at the top of a hill, on which stood yet another statue of Leif Ericson.
After another trip to the Blue Lagoon, again picture-less, but wonderful, we arrived back at the airport. On arrival we noticed the large statue of a bird erupting from an egg. Here it's viewed a little too head-on to really get the right profile, but we only had so many options for picture taking, in the rain with our luggage.