I've been a little quieter than usual lately, at first for slightly unfortunate reasons - I went down with an unpleasant stomach bug - and then for very good ones; I've been having adventures in Iceland with my dad! My mum found Iceland an unappealing prospect, so Dad asked if I wanted to go with him instead.
I wrote this entry while repeatedly listening to 'Þú ert stormur' by Una Torfa, an Icelandic song I heard on the radio during our holiday.
Iceland is a land of strange contrasts. I've seen landscapes there so beautiful they didn't seem real; I've seen some of the most offputting scenery I've ever come across. It's like being on another planet sometimes, when there's nothing but flat black sand or strange bulbous stone shapes all the way to the horizon. We were driving for forty minutes from the airport before we first saw a tree.
It's weird when it never gets dark, too; it never entirely feels like a new day has started. You go to bed when it's light; you get up when it's light; it's light if you wake up at one in the morning. The sun did technically set (11.30 in the evening) and rise (3.30 in the morning), but it never went far enough for true darkness. When I glanced out of our hotel window at half past midnight, the scene was cast in a half-hearted twilight, like someone had just thrown a light blue filter over the world. I'd occasionally find myself thinking 'what if we have to find our way back to the hotel in the dark?' and then remembering that that just wasn't a concern.
But I saw such cool things in Iceland! I'd never seen geysers before, or glacial lakes, or ice-strewn beaches with black sand, or a waterfall on the scale of Gullfoss Falls; I'd never relaxed in a hot spring. On the drive back to the airport, we caught tiny glimpses of distant erupting lava out of the car window.
We passed through the perpetually foggy Vik, which apparently boasted a lava show. The website gave the alarming description 'LAVA SHOW recreates a volcanic eruption by superheating real lava up to 1100°C (2000°F) and then pouring it into a showroom full of people.' We decided not to attend the lava show.
There's so much about Iceland that you can't really capture in a photograph. I can take a picture of some big rocks, but I can't convey the sense of looking up at these boulders and knowing that they are so big and you are so, so small. But here are some photographs nonetheless!
( A handful of photographs from Iceland! )
( Talking about the birds I saw in Iceland. )
In conclusion, Iceland is a really interesting place! I'm glad I went. It's good to come back to the things I previously took for granted, though, like 'trees' and 'getting dark at night' and 'summer temperatures of over 10°C'.
I wrote this entry while repeatedly listening to 'Þú ert stormur' by Una Torfa, an Icelandic song I heard on the radio during our holiday.
Iceland is a land of strange contrasts. I've seen landscapes there so beautiful they didn't seem real; I've seen some of the most offputting scenery I've ever come across. It's like being on another planet sometimes, when there's nothing but flat black sand or strange bulbous stone shapes all the way to the horizon. We were driving for forty minutes from the airport before we first saw a tree.
It's weird when it never gets dark, too; it never entirely feels like a new day has started. You go to bed when it's light; you get up when it's light; it's light if you wake up at one in the morning. The sun did technically set (11.30 in the evening) and rise (3.30 in the morning), but it never went far enough for true darkness. When I glanced out of our hotel window at half past midnight, the scene was cast in a half-hearted twilight, like someone had just thrown a light blue filter over the world. I'd occasionally find myself thinking 'what if we have to find our way back to the hotel in the dark?' and then remembering that that just wasn't a concern.
But I saw such cool things in Iceland! I'd never seen geysers before, or glacial lakes, or ice-strewn beaches with black sand, or a waterfall on the scale of Gullfoss Falls; I'd never relaxed in a hot spring. On the drive back to the airport, we caught tiny glimpses of distant erupting lava out of the car window.
We passed through the perpetually foggy Vik, which apparently boasted a lava show. The website gave the alarming description 'LAVA SHOW recreates a volcanic eruption by superheating real lava up to 1100°C (2000°F) and then pouring it into a showroom full of people.' We decided not to attend the lava show.
There's so much about Iceland that you can't really capture in a photograph. I can take a picture of some big rocks, but I can't convey the sense of looking up at these boulders and knowing that they are so big and you are so, so small. But here are some photographs nonetheless!
( A handful of photographs from Iceland! )
( Talking about the birds I saw in Iceland. )
In conclusion, Iceland is a really interesting place! I'm glad I went. It's good to come back to the things I previously took for granted, though, like 'trees' and 'getting dark at night' and 'summer temperatures of over 10°C'.
