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.
Eilean Donan, Loch Ness & The North West Highlands - Day 2
Added: May 31, 2008
This is about Day 2 of our 2-day tour around Scotland. You can see details of first day here Eilean Donan, Loch Ness & The North West Highlands - Day 1. We will get back to the Glasgow at the end of day and then we go to another tour on Monday.
Eilean Donan, Loch Ness & The North West Highlands - Day 1
Added: May 30, 2008
As was mentioned in previous post 3 sunny days with Lochs, Glens and Bens we booked 3 days of sitting in the coach rambling around Scotland. This post is dedicated to Day 1 of 2-day tour Eilean Donan, Loch Ness & The North West Highlands.
For those wondering what title of previous post means, here is short explanation: loch - lake, glen - valley, ben - mountain, sun - scarce resource in Scotland :-)
If you did not read previous post, I will try shortly to summarize it: All three days were fantastic!
Sometime in the middle of April Zuzka and me started to think how to spend Spring Bank Holiday weekend (23th - 26th of May). We checked where we can get from Cardiff (or Bristol) airport and for what price, of course. Flight to Glasgow was at reasonable price (with added feel of urgency by: 'only 4 seats left' or some similar trick). So we booked flight there on Friday evening and back on Monday evening.
But what are we going to do in Glasgow for 3 days? Zuzka has been there before and I am not atracted to cities a lot. Fortunatelly, there is a box in Zuzka's possesion that hides a lot of traveling ideas and dreams :-) She always just reaches in and manifests some nice place. On that day she pulled out leaflet of Timberbush Tours she got last time in Glasgow (or Edinburgh?). After short study we selected two candidates. 2-days tour and preferably 3-days one. Unfortunatelly, we were not able to attend 3-days one due to returning time and going through Edinburgh. We would miss our flight back to Cardiff. So finally we decided to go to Eilean Donan, Loch Ness & The North West Highlands and Loch Lomond, The Trossachs & Stirling Castle for Monday.
I was not sure about these. They seemed fine, but 3 days in a bus... and there is also weather in Scotland :-) Fortunatelly, we did not think about renting a car or planning our own route (as I am really busy with planning our vacation in the middle of June). We would not manage better ourselves. It was great!!!! Very very very very good (to paraphrase our fantastic guide and driver on Eilean Donan tour Gary :-) ). Who would believe we will have 3 sunny days, sometimes without any cloud, fantastic guide on perfectly planned tour! I took 350 photos during 1st day! We have learned a lot about country, its history, hiking hints and movies created there. Monday's tour with Patrick was also fine, but we have seen less moutains and lochs, and it was already our third day, thus we were not so impressed as with the Eilean Donan tour. Being it our first one, we would be completely happy with it too.
I can only RECOMMEND these tours to everybody who likes beauty of nature and speaks English. Timberbush knows what they do and they are very helpful (e.g. to solve problem when I mistakenly booked 2 rooms instead of one and found it only on Friday afternoon before tour). It was my best spent 240 GBP since I came to UK (includes price of tours, entry fees, accomodation and traveling costs).
There are only 2 small things that made it satisfying for me only to 99.5%: There were not enough stops for photography (but I understand that we would not get anywhere if we stopped every time I wanted to press shutter) and 2nd is that we were not able to take picture of Scottish hairy cow (we have seen them though, but we were afraid to ask for stopping ;-) ).
Aha, you came here to see pictures... and now you are starting to be suspicious there are none here... well, yes, it will take some time for me to process them, assign names to at least some of them from pool of thousands of names we heard in bus. I could make them up, but I prefer original (and correct) ones :-) So be patient, I promise they will be here (in following posts) before middle of June.
Update: I have decided to show some panoramas from day 1.
I changed ordering of posts to more natural way - the newest post is at top (when I had only 3 posts, it was OK to go down a bit for newest one, but it is not so any more).
Tags are added to make searching easier (still needs some work).
Early May Bank Holiday
Added: May 17, 2008
Finally I got enough time to process and sort photos from previous trip to London, Brighton, Seven Sisters, Norwich, Ely and Cambridge.
We had wonderful time there, nice weather, a lot of to see and enjoy. Very good way to spend 3 free days (I hope following Bank Holiday will be even better. Location has really potential, so stay tuned for photos from folowing weekend).
I have to skip one 3 days trip, because I am not able to process all photos fast enough. And this short trip came out of blue after realizing Sunday is going to be hot. We decided to go to beach somewhere near Swansea. Frantic looking for places, buses, trains, cooking lunch.
3 hours of traveling (1 hour waiting for next bus in Swansea is counted), then only 2 hours to spend in Gower (and still 1km to go to Three Cliffs Bay).
Very nice place, beautiful and surprising weather for UK and May, but water is quite cold. Unfortunatelly I acclimatized to its coldness only during our walk back to bus. It is pity that last bus leaves to Swansea at 17:54 on Sunday :-(
We left with very good feeling and resolution to get here sooner next time.
Note: I experienced some problems with color management and I am not sure about it, thus these pictures might look differently than I intended them.
We spent 3 of 4 free days provided by Easter in Cornwall and partially also in Devon (but also in Somerset).
All was organized and planned quite fast, so it was not ideal (places to visit vs. places to sleep at). Also weather did not seem promising.
Completely we did about 1080km.
Again one post without pictures. This time, I'd like to inform you about presence of RSS feed you can subscribe to. Just use the link RSS feed
It might not be perfect yet, but I am going to tune it up if problem occurs. Sorry for any inconvenience caused.
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