Iceland

Why Iceland? In my childhood years, when I traveled to faraway places by pointing my index finger on a map and let my imagination run wild what the place might look like, I found Iceland with its large big bluish spots marking glaciers, and volcanoes with alien sounding names fascinating. A lot of time had passed since then and ever since I got freedom to travel, thanks to both a regime change and reaching adulthood, going there did not really cross my mind until a friend of mine visited. At that time, I had a one year old and a move to California to worry about, and let the thought of the icy place lapse again. That was until more than ten years later when my wife scheduled a trip there to a conference. It would be just one week, but this time the northern stars were in my future.

I was preoccupied with planning a repeat of my adventure in the eastern Sierra from a year earlier, a mountaineering trip on which I eventually wimped out (or did I just prefer wine tasting with my father-in-law?), that I did not finish planning the trip to Iceland until I got on the plane from San Francisco to NYC. In this age of instant access to information, reviews, and visuals of any place on the planet from anywhere, I still appreciate not overplanning trips and leaving a bit to improvisation and to whatever strikes my fancy at the time. Lonely Planet, like many times, was my friend and along with it a few links I grabbed online. By the time we boarded the plane for the second leg of our trip to Reykjavik at JFK in New York, I had pretty much decided on the itinerary. You are welcome to come along for the ride.

Reykjavik	Snaefellsnes Penninsula	Latrabjarg	Westfjords
Golden Circuit and Blue Lagoon	Trip south	Jokulsarlon	Return from the south