Aurora

Table of contents

Introduction

Route

We went to Iceland, this time it's not a very long holiday and getting there takes a lot of time. The plane to Iceland left from London Stansted airport and I decided to take the Flix bus including a ferry across the canal, because booking a flight with the right timing was impossible. Turned out that the bus was not the most convenient option either, because delays are a common thing as well as missing the ferry because of it. Luckily all went well and with a short stop in London I managed to get to Reykjavik within 24 hours.

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Reykjavik

Finally in Reykjavik we found a nice hostel which was quite big. We had a lot of daylight, Iceland is not quite in the arctic circle, but still the sun almost didn't set, so that gave us a lot of time to do stuff during the day. Two must-do's were to swim in a lagoon and to climb a volcano, so we booked 2 guided tours. The first tour included a trip to acaldera which now is a lake. We went to Geysir, which is where the word geyser actually originates from. It erupted every couple of minutes to a height of around 50 metres. It was recommended by the locals to visit Secret Lagoon instead of Blue Lagoon, this was included in the trip so we went for a dip. The sulfuric water is proven to be very healthy, the temperature of the pool was between 30 and 40 degrees, depending on where you were. It became hotter in the proximity of the geysers.

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On the second tour we went for a hike around the Eyjafjallajökull volcano and we could actually say "the floor is lava". It was very black and very visible that the rock had been liquid. I managed to bring home a sample of lava stone. The other thing we visited on this tour was the bridge between the Eurasian and American continental plates. Iceland has a lot of geothermal activity because these plates are drifting apart. This is why there is a volcanic eruption every once in a while, but it also serves the citizens, because they can use it to generate electricity and heat. Every house has a connection to the geothermal heating system of which you see a lot of pipes along the roads. This is why every citizen has to pay only 10 euro's a month for energy, which is more like a service fee, because the energy itself is free. Short story, loads of pictures.

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