On this road trip I found out you can’t just go to Reykjavík and leave it at that. The real beauty of Iceland is in the countryside, and it’s a big place, so you’ve got to do a lot of driving. Luckily, I like driving. Keep in mind, I decided to take these two days off from work, so you’re not gonna see any commit metrics.

The Route

Here’s the route, roughly. We ran into a few things and ended up just winging it a bit (and couldn’t end up going all the way up north), but overall stayed pretty true to this map:

Obviously, that’s not all in one day – we planned to stay in Laugarás, where our Airbnb was, and then hit Gullfoss -> Reykjavík the next day.

The Car

Thanks to SADcars, Nikki and I picked up this little econo-box and got registered as drivers because we’re the only ones that can drive a standard shift and met the 21+ age requirements… Do I need to say more? Lots of people reccommend you get a 4×4, but why do that when you can get this cute little thing?

I’ve grown to love “Spud/Stud” – this little one got us through a lot, and was honestly a blast to drive.

Once we got the car back to the hostel, we headed out promptly! Only thing was, we had met someone last night, Mawai, who had rented a nice SUV and wanted to tag along… so Max joined her for that part of the trip while Nikki, Connor and I took Spud. At this point it was still dark, and we were running a bit late, but the weather wasn’t too bad…

The Most Beautiful Sunrise

After going through what felt like the longest tunnel possible (but is actually Iceland’s 6th longest tunnel(!!)), Hvalfjörður, we realized the sun was coming up and the sky was turning some crazy colors. It’s amazing how it just illuminated the entire countryside… Then we got out of our cars to stop at a gas station in Borgarnes, grab some snacks, and an AUX cord for spud, and we turned around and saw this (doesn’t even do it close to justice):

That would set the precedent for the rest of the trip.

Some More Photos

I’m not going to write about everything cause I’ve gotta get work done so here are some nice pictures:

Shipwrecked

So there’s this black pearl beach with these HUGE black “sand” pebbles. An english boat shipwrecked on the beach and it’s just been sitting there rusting. Also the waves are totally craaazzyyyyyy!

The House

We hit a few more places but it was too dark for a camera, so we stopped looking at our screens and just headed towards the house, basically past all of the Golden Circle so that we could double-back and see it all on the way back to Reykjavík. Somewhere in the middle we broke off with Mawai so she could head back to KEX and Max jumped in our car with us. We also picked up some food to make dinner and grabbed some beers.

This place was absolutely beautiful. The owner also owned a greenhouse where they grew herbs and vegetables for themselves and the locals:

We hung out, made some dinner, played some cards, and then it was time to crack open Iceland’s selection of craft beers. Then we hit the hot tub (natural spring water powered).

Beer

All the beers were really clean. It’s probably the water? We shared them so we could compare tasting notes and so that I didn’t have to drink 8 beers by myself haha. At first they were like “oh this guy is a pretentious shitbag” but then they totally were drinking the cool aid by the end. Me: “This White Ale is made with coriander like lots of Witbiers.” and they’re like “wait they have coriander?!”. 😉  Believe it or not I think my favorites were the Organic Pilsner, and the Icelandic Stout. That thing was insane.

Metrics:

• Miles Walked: 7 (crazy considering I was in the car all day)
• Beers Drank: 8 (but not all to myself)
• Git Commits: 0 (I can have a day off right?