Back from Iceland

And boy was it great!  Everything that Togo isn't so it made for a perfect vacation from my point of view.  Gorgeous weather everyday except for a brief period of rain one afternoon when we were driving (with only one windshield wiper as a bird actually hit the windshield in the dark and broke the wiper somehow - I didn't think it was possible to hit a bird but it is).  I got to actually wear sweatshirts for the first time in 7 1/2 months.  Hardly any people.  Very tranquil and restful even with all the driving.  Good roads even when they weren't paved.   Delicious food once we got over the sticker shock.  It's expensive (which Togo is not) but you get what you pay for and sometimes in Togo you can't get it no matter what you're willing to pay.  I did get a really bad sunburn on my nose because it was light out 20 hours/day and I've avoided that the whole time in Togo.  So Iceland is a beautiful and remote place.  We drove around the Ring Road counterclockwise so that we ended up in the most touristy part at the end of the trip.

This is a glacier (part of the biggest glacier in Europe) and the tiny black dots are people walking on it.  We didn't do that ourselves but the sight of it was amazing.  We had been to Glacier National Park a few years ago which was very beautiful but the glaciers there are like icecubes compared to this baby.

The landscape in Iceland goes from looking like the moon (barren as can be) to being emerald green like this photo.  That's a tiny cottage dwarfed by the cliffs above.  The rock formations are endlessly amazing.  And there are so many waterfalls (big long ones from the cliffs above) that you get jaded after a while.

Here they all are.  We traveled around in a large minivan and did quite a bit of driving which is typical for a vacation for us.  Everyone handled it pretty well.  The kids played B for Botticelli for most of the letters of the alphabet and watched old Seinfeld episodes and slept.  This is a picture of a glacial lake that has icebergs in it.

This is me at a geothermal field.  The gases are sulphurous, hence, the face.  Iceland's energy is also entirely geothermal.

We took a walk/hike (depending on your viewpoint) above this little village in the Westfjords area.

Near Humavik in mid northern Iceland.

Walking around an crater made by a volcano near Myvatin.

A thermal pool near Myvatin.  We loved these thermal pools - warm in the cool air.

A puffin.  They are adorable when they take off to fly with their orange feet dragging behind.  They're more graceful in the water, I hear. 

A basalt mountain - the columns are like ones we saw in Northern Ireland.  Puffins nest in the grass above.

The Blue Lagoon early on Sunday morning before anyone was in the pool yet.

This is a picture from the more north western part of Iceland which is mostly fjords.  Just spectacular.

So visit Iceland by all means.  We intend to go back and spend more time sometime not too far in the future.

Now I'm back in Togo and it's kind of like I never left but it was great to have a break that really seemed like a break.