Iceland day 2 - Golden Circle to Hrauneyjar
Added: June 28, 2008
Sunday 15th June 2008 is our first all-Iceland day. Our plan is to see Golden Circle, a few waterfalls and get to highlands. It is cloudy and forecast predicts rain.
Saturday 14th June 2008 started rather soon for Zuzka and me. We got up before 3am and went to bus to London at 4am (Peter came to Stansted day before).
Just a moment ago I received 'Thank you' email from Expedia for booking flight tickets to Keflavik with them. Nice touch, but those who have read my last post know that flight was cancelled and refunded in March.
So their service is not terrible only because they forgot to send me mail about cancelation (they had only "there are problems with you booking - call NNNNNN (so you can pay us for asking for refund ;-) )" statement on web page that I found only thanks to pure luck, but they also forgot that they refunded it!
Now I am kicking myself. If I knew that before the "flight" I could ask for another refund :-D Or maybe my paranoid self should start to be worried ;-)
BTW photos are slowly coming, stay tuned.
We have returned from our vacation in Iceland yesterday. We spent there 9 days (I do not count last morning at the airport). It was really great! But short.
We started to talk about Iceland in July last year, just to think that it would be cool to go there. Everything was clear in October when we bought flight tickets and started to google nice places that we want to visit. But then everything started to complicate:
- British Airways cancelled all flights to Iceland and it did not bother to inform us (the same approach was choosen by Expedia that we used to book flight). It cost me a lot just to call them several times, "listen to nice music" then wait for 3 months followed with another call just to get refund. Customer satisfaction ZERO.
- I have decided to change job (and country) thus I was not sure at the beginning of April whether we are going or not. Fortunatelly I found nice job where it was not problem to let me go to holiday even before probation period is over. Employee satisfaction 100% :-) Thus we booked another flight in the same term with Iceland Express (unfortunatelly it costs twice as much to get some service for your money).
- Strong earthquake happened in Iceland 2 weeks before our trip, enriching my fantasies about cancelled trip for a few days
You would not believe it, but you need to beg one travel organization in Iceland to get your money - they do not have problem to promise you accommodation, but you cannot be sure until it is paid for. And they just did not respond to mails or their response just repeated that accommodation is booked and I need to pay. I just wonder if it was only coincidence that they charged my card a few hours after that earthquake, but it looks like that it helped me :-)
Highlights
I mentioned several problems that happened before our trip. I have to say they were well worth because we had very good time there with following highlights (not necessary it this order):- waterfalls (Glymur, Goðafoss, Gullfoss, Dettifoss, Selfoss, Foss á Síðu, ...)
- Svínafellsjökull glacier
- boat trip at Jökulsárlón
- 2 hours hike to Svartifoss starting at 21:05 (9pm) and having daylight after return
- Moon and Mars landscapes
- 4WD "hikes"
- a lot of violet flowers
- hike to Glymur
- colorful mountains
- deep canyons
- Blue lagoon
- Slovaks working in restaurant at Vík
- Mountain ranger that never met anyone from Slovakia and was keen to show us Landmannalaugar and to teach us how to cross rivers properly
- 3000+ photos (some of them might be even good ;-) )
- geysir(s)
- hot mudpots
- snowing in geothermal field
- twisted lava fields
- trees :-)
Due to huge amount of photos I am not able to publish them immediatelly. It will take some time, but the first days should be published soon. So stay tuned!
Two fantastic days in Highlands are behind us. The third day of our traveling is starting right now. Weather is still sunny, even forecasts from Friday said it will be raining today.
You can review our complete trip in Scotland here 3 sunny days with Lochs, Glens and Bens. Link to tour is here http://www.timberbush-tours.co.uk/glasgow_tours/one_day/loch_lomond.html.
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