I’m back from Iceland!
Well technically I’ve been back for almost a week now, but I’ve realized it’s taking me longer and longer to recover from trips as I age (says the 27-year-old millennial).
This trip has everything you can want: a GRAND romantic gesture, beautiful scenery, a pool party, and hot dogs. Settle in children….
We begin our story with me waking up the day of our trip with a SERIOUS cold. I rarely get sick so this came as quite a shock. Our flight didn’t leave until the evening so I had scheduled myself to go into work that day. I struggled through my day annoying several people in my immediate area with my excessive use of Thieves essential oil (not sure how people don’t enjoy the smell of fall or their air purified, I AM HEALING EVERYONE). My sniffles and coughs alert those around me that the apocalypse has started to happen since Savannah is Sick. I am met with pitying looks, but behind those eyes I see joy since a sick person will be leaving the office for an extended amount of time. This was actually the worst possible time for me to be going on a trip because work was about to get EXTRA busy, but I booked this trip back in February and I will be dammed if I miss Iceland!
I left work a little early, scooted home to change, and met my mom who was going to take me to the airport. I made it to the airport with enough time to grab several free glasses of OJ (sans vodka and champagne) from the AA lounge (that’s American Airlines lounge not Alcoholics Anonymous). I met up with my friends at another restaurant in the airport while we waited for our flight and had a nice time chatting. We boarded our flight and much to my and Victoria’s surprise we get a three seat row for just us two! We make ourselves at home and apply our face masks. We are met with shade from one of the flight attendants about this, but continue to enjoy ourselves.
Day 1:
As soon as the plane starts to make it’s descent I realize what I’m sure people who have been congested while traveling already know, but I had not yet experienced: the HORRIBLE pain that happens when your ears won’t pop on a flight. I have fortunately never had that happen to me (bless my usually impeccable immune system), but started to have a full on panic attack when I realized my ears wouldn’t pop. It’s so horrible that I would seriously consider skipping a flight in the future if I was sick, no joke. We landed and my ears, while no longer causing me pain, have not yet popped. We gather our rental cars and head to the air bnb.
I proceeded to take a very long nap and am then awoken by the reminder that we are to be going horseback riding today, per my previous suggestion. Oh right. That’s today. *sigh*…..
I am feeling better from my nap so I pop my contacts in and head out to the stables to meet my horse. His name was in Icelandic and it would be really cool if I could have remembered it, but like I said, it’s in Icelandic….
We all are assigned our horses based on our previous riding experience. Having grown up with multiple horses and having taken riding lessons for several years when I was younger I felt more than confident saying that I was experienced. I did have a sinking feeling my 15+ years off a horse would come back to bite me, but I shook off the feeling just like I do whenever I use my credit card for unnecessary purchases. I am the only one from my friend group in the experienced group, but for the first half of the ride we are all together and everything is going great.
Icelandic horses are numerous and beautifully multi-colored. They are slightly smaller than most other horses, furrier, and walk more like camels. They are apparently also slightly clumsy as they told us while we guided our horses over large volcanic rocks. “Assuring” I thought to myself. Another fun observation I had is that because we are in Europe, they of course ride English saddles, not Western. It had not occurred to me before this trip because I had always associated trail-riding with Western saddles. I had had a little experience with English saddles since we owned one and I had to learn to jump horses with one, but I’m mainly more comfortable with Western.
1.) they are easier to sit in for long periods of time aka Trail Riding.
2.) They are sturdier and
3.) There is a handy horn to hang on to in case your horse is going too fast or rears up.
Nevertheless, we carried on.
At the half-way mark we were told to get off of our horses and hang out for a bit. Some horses enjoyed a snack and I tried to bond with mine even though I had already forgotten his name. After the quick break we re-mounted our horses and split off into our respective groups. I waved a confident goodbye to my friends as I trotted off at the end of the fast group. The girl in front of me was in a similar experience mind-frame as me and after going fairly fast, we asked to not go any faster. I was also quickly reminded that I did not prepare correctly with the right undergarments and prayed that the ride would be over soon for the sake of many of my body parts.
We were nearing the end of our ride when we suddenly passed by a small farm on the way back to the stable. Suddenly a rooster crowed and my horse decided to FREAK OUT. He rared up and I proceeded to fall off onto my left hip. My horse raced off taking one of my shoes with him, but fortunately not stepping on me. His freak out started a chain of events with the other horses in the group, two others of which also bucked off their riders and headed back to the stables. I just sat on the ground for a moment in disbelief assessing my damage. In total: one bruised hip/back and one skinned elbow. I gingerly got up and not too long after that the slower group came wandering into the clearing where we were and asking where our horses went. We re-told the story and fairly soon the owners of the horses came to get us in a truck. I had to fill out an incident report, but that was about the end of it. They gave me some free tea, but no refund for the ride. We all went home and I took a very long, hot bath and promptly fell asleep into my cereal at 7pm.
Day 2:
I awoke from my very comfy bed to find that today we were hiking.
Let’s recap:
1.) I can’t hear anything because my ears haven’t popped
2.) My back/everything hurts from being thrown off a horse
3.) I am fully still sick.
Hiking it is.
We readied and drove to Þingvellir (Thingvellir) National Park. Fortunately, the trip really started to pick up for me. I felt much better, my ears finally popped, and the weather was on our side! I definitely wasn’t the fastest in the group, but I managed to keep up despite my challenges (one of which being I had not been training to hike long distances – do your stairs people!). The views were amazing and it was actually nice enough to not have to wear our heavier jackets. Carly and Becca had made my lunch that morning since I was moving a tad slower than normal so we all decided to sit in the middle of a field and eat our picnic lunch. After lunch, we finished our hike there and moved onto the next site.
We had 8 people in our group and ended up needing two cars. I was in a car with Rachael and Ben the whole week so I got to be the Dj (my fav). Our car ended up getting to the next site first and we decided to make the executive decision to stop for some soup.
Let me note: food in Iceland is VERY expensive. Most things have to be grown in a green house or imported for the 350,000 inhabitants so for most of the week we cooked at home. The soup came with an included second bowl so everyone in the group ended up with at least a little bit of soup.
Once we were finished with our snacks we headed out to see the original Geysir. All other geysers in the world are named after this one and for good reason: it is more reliable than Old Faithful and goes off every 4 minutes rather than every 15. Very cool, very sulfury-smelling. There were also several other smaller and inactive geysers around Strokker (the main one).
Even though they were inactive, they were still just as hot. Warning signs everywhere let us know that the water could get as high as 100 degrees Celsius!
Once the geysers were over we made our final stop at this massive waterfall , Gullfoss. As much as I didn’t want to do any more walking/climbing/moving I made my way with the rest of the group down to the lookout point to see the waterfall. It was AMAZING and totally worth it. A great way to end the day. 🙂
Stay tuned for the rest of the trip!
-Savvy
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