Starting our Driving Tour around Iceland

I don't think we could have asked for a better day to introduce ourselves to Iceland than today.

We slept like the dead after the Blue Lagoon, and when we finally dragged ourselves out of bed we got started on our tour of the Golden Circle and some other common stops near Reykjavik. We had a beautiful, sunny morning to start, and it lasted most of the day (with the occasional interruption of a 3 minute rain cloud, because it IS Iceland).

The drive was stunning. There's no good way to capture Iceland in a photo - the mountains dwarfing you, the wide open fields, the brilliant plant colors in a stark, wide open landscape. The ground really is this amazing spring green color, and we saw rainbows galore throughout the day.

The first waterfall we were planning on seeing, Bruarfoss, is on private property and the owners no longer allow access. That meant that when we came to our next stop, Geysir, we had time to do a bit more of a hike rather than just running to see the geyser explode. (We DID see the geyser explode a few times, though!) The whole area is a bit surreal - black and red dirt surrounded by brilliant green moss, smoking orange and turquoise pools and the occasional pool that is continually bubbling like a witch's cauldron. It was very cool!

From there, we started the tour of waterfalls. There are a LOT of waterfalls to see here, and we could have stopped at far more of them than we did. Today we stuck to the most famous (and touristy) ones, and every one was incredible. We also only made it to our hotel 10 minutes before the end of check in time, so we couldn't have fit much more in!

In the middle of our waterfall tour, we took a quick break to visit a natural hot springs in the mountains that, decades ago, someone built into a swimming pool. It's in an incredible location, surrounded by mountains and waterfalls, but it's been a bit overrun by tourists and has gotten a little gross. It was still an interesting experience and absolutely worth at least the hike in to see the beautiful scenery - but I can't recommend the pool as the peaceful, pure oasis that people raved about.

Finally, we got to see a sunset in Iceland, which isn't something we expected to see a lot of - and we just came in from a wonderful viewing of the northern lights. For a first full day in Iceland, I don't think you could beat today!

Off to Iceland!

We said goodbye to Ireland today (Tuesday), in what started out as a beautiful day but was raining again before we took off! No time to do anything this morning (except an early morning trip to the hotel hot tub for Patrick, who wakes up uncomfortably early), but we made it through car return, security, the VAT tax refund line and to our gate before boarding, so that was a successful morning. We had to bid a fond farewell to Bedsprings, and also to send Dani off to her next travels.

We got off in Iceland to a lovely 45 degrees and sun...although we learned that sun and rain can alternate every 10 minute easily here. We checked into our Viking-themed hotel, which I believe is a bit cheesy and Patrick absolutely adores, before heading off to tour Iceland's first and only whiskey distillery, Eimverk Distillery. (Iceland has now been producing whiskey, as they tell is, for a full 9 months!) The tour was a lot of fun, with a co-founder leading the tour and tasting. He obviously loved his job and loved talking to people, and we learned everything from the history of his distillery to why Iceland traditionally burns sheep poo. From there we ate a quick dinner at the also Viking themed restaurant at our hotel (which Patrick also loved) and headed off to the Blue Lagoon.

If the Viking bar and restaurant was Patrick's  happy place for the day, the Blue Lagoon was mine. It is an entire facility devoted to a hot tub through size of a small lake - what's not to like? The water was warm and beautiful and brilliant blue, and absolutely relaxing. I haven't downloaded the photos from the waterproof camera yet, but the huge billows of steam right below are definitely the Blue Lagoon, and you can see them from miles away!

We were there for about 3 hours, floating, enjoying and trying through mud masks. The Blue Lagoon is not a natural geothermic pool, as I used to believe - the water is heated due to a factory. The lagoon itself, though, is still considered a mineral baths and is warm, relaxing and left my skin soft and refreshed! We barely kept our eyes open for the drive home (there was terrible singing to keep ourselves awake) and we fell asleep before we even managed to dig our toothbrushes out of the bags. It was a great welcome to Iceland!

Driving Northern Ireland - Bushmills and Belfast

Today (although as I'm hitting the button to post this, Monday was a couple days ago) was our last full day in Ireland, and we had the day relatively free! Most of the things we had planned we either did the day before (Giant's Causeway, stopping by Dunlace Castle) or they were weather dependent (hiking Hare's Gap), and we had another day of steady rain. We took that as an excuse for a long, lazy morning - first finding breakfast in a little cafe and then heading to the Bushmills Old Distillery. We hadn't planned on the time for the Distillery, but it was fun to visit the oldest Irish distillery and enjoy a few tastings. All in all, though, we were more impressed with our tastes at the Jameson tour.

We followed that up by driving to Belfast, where we took a black cab tour (although our cab was maroon, not black). The tour took us through the divided parts of Belfast, including driving along the walls separating the Catholic and Protestant areas, and gave us a history lesson. While I wouldn't say it was enjoyable - it's a lot of very dark and tragic history - we learned a lot. The city center of Belfast is beautiful, well maintained and gives no hint of all the political issues - it's a very strange city to go through. Below is a section of the wall that still exists (and is locked nightly) between the Catholic and Protestant sides of the city - this section is called the peace wall and is dedicated to murals and messages to the city.

We ended the night a little less excitingly as we finished packing everything back up to hop our plane to Iceland tomorrow - on to the next leg!

Driving and Hiking - Slieve League and Giant's Causeway

Today was a day of moving! We woke up on our B&B to a bit of rain and fog, with the sun breaking through - that was pretty much the way that weather went the whole day. We took the extra drive to Slieve League, a hike and set of cliffs much less famous than the Cliffs of Moher, but twice as tall (600+ meters). It was a long hike and Bedsprings the car deserved the rest he got by the time we made it there - the last bits of road were rocky, pothole-filled, steep and not exactly the roads you would normally take a just-above-Smartcar rental car on. When we reached the end of the driving road we jumped out (next to a wildflower-surrounded waterfall) and continued on for our hour-long hike up. The hike was not necessarily easy, but beautiful the whole way. It's apparently a pilgrimage route for part of the year, where you are not supposed to wear shoes, to follow in the footsteps of St. Patrick.

We definitely wore shoes, and jackets, and stumbled up through the wind and rocks and sunshine to an incredible view. It's not nearly as sheer and straight down as the Cliffs of Moher, but just as impressive. Since I didn't get to post the photo of the Cliffs here's what we saw there...

And here's what we saw at Slieve League! I imagine you can see by the state of our faces, hair, jackets, etc. that there was also quite a difference in the wind strength. Luckily the very strong and gusty wind was blowing in from the ocean and so blew us inland rather than towards the cliff edge, but it was astonishly strong! 

Slieve League was a beautiful hike that we're very glad we did - it was a challenge, but one that was conquerable, with nice views on the way up and an incredible view in all directions at the top.

After we finished our hike, we continued with the long drive up towards northern Ireland. We had a quick stop in Londenderry/Derry for a break, which is a city with some cute things but not focused at all on tourists or things you can do in an hour on a Sunday. From there we continued on, arriving just in time for the sun setting at Giant's Causeway. While we didn't get the spectacular sunset we were hoping for, being there right as dark fell meant that almost no one else was there. We walked down to the site - without having to go through all the troubles of parking, etc. - and got to take our time and enjoy the great views with only a couple of other photographers in the area.

Tomorrow is our last full day in Ireland! We've already changed up our schedule quite a bit - we'll see what happens!

A Few Fast Days - Cliffs of Moher, Galway and Castles

It's been a busy few days! Patrick got a cold/flu, which certainly slowed us down a bit, but we still got to see some great things. We started out yesterday morning in Doolin, a little tiny town (even tinier than many of the other ones we've stayed in) right by the Cliffs of Moher. After a slow breakfast, we headed off for the cliffs.

We originally intended to do the full 2-3 hour hike from Doolin to the Cliffs, but between the rain and Patrick being sick, we drove to the visitor center and did a very slow hike a mile or so along each side. They are beautiful! The rain held off while we were there, and in spite of the clouds we got to enjoy some incredible, dramatic scenery.

After we finished the Cliffs, we took a quick jaunt over to Doolin Cave. While we were stuck on the road on our way to the B&B the day before (waiting for the poor other guest to have his rental car hauled up out of the ditch), we met a local who worked in the cave and recommended that we stop by. The cave itself is pretty small, but it houses one of the largest stalactites in the world (the third largest, if I remember correctly). The stalactite was massive and very impressive!

After the cave, we continued on to Galway, one of the largest cities in Ireland, where Patrick's cousin Dani lives. We spent the evening relaxing with dinner and a visit to a beer gardens in a pub, which had décor that seemed to cross Harry Potter with a German beer garden. The hot whiskeys that our morning B&B host had recommended seemed to help quite a bit, because Patrick woke up this morning feeling quite a bit better!

We went on another very quick tour of Galway, visiting the market, the harbor, and the beautiful cathedral in the morning, after an amazing breakfast. (In Galway we stayed in a beautiful tea house, which had some great old furniture, the most comfortable bed I've slept in in years, and amazing tea, coffee, scones and other breakfast items. I wish we had stayed another day or so, just for the B&B!)

We then started on our next driving tour, which unfortunately turned out to be more of a bust than most of our days so far. We drove to the first castle, which we'd been informed was a hotel but allowed people to walk around the grounds, see the outside and potentially see the inside if you went into the pub or restaurant. We parked in the nearby town and walked over in the pouring rain (our rain luck has definitely run out up here), to find a guard at the gate collecting $10 a person to enter the gate, who was very specific that we were under no circumstances to approach the front door or attempt to get into a restaurant, but was not terribly interested in telling us who we should give the money to if we wanted to even tour the grounds. We waited for him for around 10 minutes before we gave up and wandered back to the car for our next destination. The next castle (Also currently a hotel) was happy to invite us into their pub and let us dry out our clothes by their fireplaces, so we enjoyed a snack and a drink before taking some photos - but unfortunately it is a castle-like hotel and not really a castle. Finally, since the rain was continuing to pour, we skipped hiking in Connemara National Park and instead just drove the long way to our next B&B. The scenery was beautiful -  we even saw the end of the rainbow landing squarely on one guy's house!

No photos today, unfortunately - our B&B's wifi is not strong enough to upload any. We'll share when we get back!

Driving - Dingle and Doolin

Since we skipped our drive through the Ring of Kerry, today was our first really serious day of driving where we spent almost the whole day driving. We drove through the Slea Head drive in Dingle Penninsula, another one of the most beautiful drives of Ireland (or so we hear).

It certainly was beautiful, although it was also our first day of continual clouds and drizzle, which makes it difficult to judge against other areas we've already been. Dingle Penninsula is also a lot of where Star Wars: The Last Jedi was filmed, so the entire area is filled with signs in Star Wars font saying things like "The Last Beehive Huts" or "Star Wars: Dunmore Head." We also found some Star Wars figurines standing around in various towns.

We planned to do several hikes, including one potentially up the very tall Brandon Mountain, but ended up cancelling most of them. All the mountain hikes seemed a bit pointless when the cloud line was so low, since we wouldn't have seen anything, and we spent so much time on our first few stops that we ran out of time.

The drive itself was beautiful, with rugged rocky coastline and lots of the stereotypical green fields. And sheep. The photos really don't do it justice - either the beauty of the coastline or the ominous feeling of the mist and drizzle. We stopped at some "beehive huts" - traditional Irish homesteads from 1200 and earlier, with huts shaped like beehives made of rocks - but I didn't take a great picture of them.

This was one of the more nerve wracking drives we've taken so far, so I'm glad we were getting used to Ireland roads by today. Take a look at how much of the road one bus takes up - I'm glad we never had to try to pass one! (Yes - in Ireland that is considered a two-way road.)

We also hiked up Dunmore Head, the westernmost point in Europe. The views were beautiful, but it was WINDY! I tried to take a beautiful panoramic photo - but the wind blew my hand each time I moved the phone to give me a very interesting abstract bit of art. This one shows things a little better!

Finally, we cut our Slea Head drive a bit short so we could spend some more time driving up the Wild Atlantic Way, the longer drive bordering the coast, on our way to Doolin and our next evening.

We went first through Conor Pass, which is supposed to be one of the most beautiful and terrifying drives in Ireland, through the highest mountain pass they have. It was a bit harrowing, as we couldn't see 10 feet in front of us on the one land road, but we missed the beauty (and the extra terror of seeing the ground drop off just next to us, thankfully). We made it, although I feel like I can't quite claim the accolades people seem to think you should get when I have no idea what I was supposed to experience except for fog.

We also took a car ferry over the bay to cut out a bit of time, which was a nice break to stretch out legs.

We finally made it to our B&B after a bit over 8 hours of driving, although we had to hike in to check in because a car had tried to move over on the road a bit too much and had tipped off into the ditch - not a nice shallow ditch like home, but one that took of his door and mirror and required a tow truck driver to spend some time hauling him out and driving his car back. I'm glad we haven't run into a similar situation - here's hoping we keep up the track record!

Instead of the Ring of Kerry Drive

I'm pretty sure we committed travel sacrilege today.

Today, we were scheduled to drive the Ring of Kerry, which from everyone I've talked to, it one of the quintessential Irish vacation experiences.

We skipped it.

Rather than driving through and seeing lots of pretty views, we decided to start the morning south a bit on the Beara Penninsula and hike our way through a bit of Gleninchaquin Park. (Don't ask me how to say it....I've resorted to "Glen Chicken," but I know that isn't the way the B&B hosts said it. Gaelic is difficult.)

We took a tour hour hike through a whole different set of views, cutting hours out of our potential drive and seeing views that I think were just as perfect.

We got to experience the fun of meeting a big car on a single lane Irish road, and enjoy one of the only great things about our rental car - the fact that it's tiny. (We've named our car Bedsprings, because at least it lets us laugh at the noises it makes every time we try to do something like turn, put it into park, go over a bump or sit down in the seats.)

After Gleninchaquin, we did our tiny section of the Ring of Kerry that was directly on the path to Dingle, and drove up through Killarney National Park. Our drive definitely took us an extra few hours, as we stopped off at a few waypoints for photos.

We also took a stop at a waterfall that was a very short hike off the road.

And finally, we swung by and walked around a manor house and castle in the National Park, although we chose not to spend the time for the tours that are the only way to see the inside of either.

As we left Killarney, we got our first real rain in Ireland (somehow) on the way to Dingle, so we went straight to check in to our B&B and then back to Dingle for a delicious dinner and some great Irish music and whiskey.