February 24, 2025 - Reykjavik, Iceland to Fort Collins, Colorado

After breakfast at the hotel, we checked out and "secured" our bags in the luggage room before taking our final exploration of Reykjavik. (Any room key opens the door, so we hoped that people were honest!)

We headed toward Tjornin Lake to see the statue of the Unknown Bureaucrat. As we got to the lake, the first thing we noticed were the swans and beautiful houses along the lake.

Folks were feeding the swans, so that was an added bonus for us to watch.

The phrase "faceless bureaucrat" is generally not meant as a compliment. But in Reykjavik, these seemingly anonymous workers are immortalized in art. Next to the lake, stands a statue of a man wielding a briefcase, walking toward city hall. It’s a common everyday sight; a depiction of the everyday “faceless” city officials on their way to work. This official is a bit different from its living inspirations, as it is literally faceless. A large slab of Icelandic volcanic basalt sits where you would expect to see a torso and head. The statue was sculpted by Magnús Tómasson in 1994. Monuments to an unknown soldier are common around the globe, but Iceland has no standing army so maybe it is a tribute to the civilians who serve their country is the next best thing.

We walked over to City Hall and looked around at some of the exhibits. There were several tour groups that went through while we were there, so we figured they must be on the Reykjavik City Tour we missed!

Heading back to the hotel to retrieve our luggage before heading to the airport, we stopped to see the statue of Ingólfur Arnarson which honors him as the first permanent Norse settler in Iceland in 874AD. Legend has it that Ingólfur left Norway due to a blood feud he was involved in. Upon seeing land from his ship he asked the gods where he should make his home, throwing his high seat pillars overboard with the intent to settle wherever they washed ashore and they landed here in Reykjavik.

We stopped in a few shops and an art gallery and I met one of the local polar bears.

I loved the ornamental cabbage plants we passed on the way.

Another one of the murals on the buildings in the city caught our eye.

We got back to the hotel and gathered our bags and waited for our shuttle. We chatted with the women who were on our tour yesterday. They were on the Northern Lights tour Friday night that we were supposed to be on and they were lucky to see the lights for almost two hours. Their pictures were amazing. URGH ... we may have to go back!

We had blue skies as we headed to the airport. It was chillier today, and windy, but the sunshine was a nice way to end our trip.

This view is from the plane - over Hudson Bay, Canada, as we made our way home.

Our flight left Reykjavik at 4:55pm and we landed in Denver at 6:30pm - not bad! The nonstop flight is actually 7-1/2 hours. After clearing customs, picking up the car, and grabbing some fast food, we were back in Fort Collins about 8pm to drop Wendy off. While we didn't see the northern lights or the Snæfellsnes Peninsula, we had a good trip.

February 23, 2025 - Reykjavik -- Golden Circle Tour, Iceland

Today's tour took us to the Golden Circle which has some of Iceland's most popular tourist attractions. We were in a small group - six other women and the three of us, along with our driver/guide. We left the hotel about 8:45 and headed off to our first stop, the Frioheimar Greenhouse. It was pretty cloudy and we passed by some of the hills covered in snow.

We saw a geothermal plant. Over 70% of all of Iceland's enery is produced from hydroelectric sources and 30% is geothermal. Over 90% of all the homes in Iceland are heated from geothermal energy.
We beat the big tour busses to the greenhouse. We visited there in 2019, but didn't get the background information at that time - we just had lunch. The greenhouse started in 1995 and they have about 27,000 tomato plants. Everything is organic and they do not use any pesticides. They harvest 2000 pounds of tomatoes a day!

It is all hydroponic and they serve tomato soup, as well as a tomato beer. No, we didn't try any!

They had some Icelandic horses we went out to see, too.
We continued on to the Geysir geothermal area. The wind was crazy but we did hike up to the top of the yellow trail on the map!

The pool looked a little like Morning Glory Pool in Yellowstone, but it was definitey not as vibrant because of the cloud cover.
Stokkur Hot Springs is not nearly as impressive as Old Faithful, but it does erupt about every five minutes.
Litle Geysir

Our next stop was Gullfoss, which means gold waterfall. It was WINDY - and the SLEET was pelting us in the face! Needless to say, we look pretty funny in our jackets with jackets over them!


Here is a video of the falls. If you have the sound on, you can hear the wind!
Gullfoss Video: https://youtu.be/ydB8jONYUac?si=mTnDo5orZmxtAPLm

We didn't spend too long outside before heading back to the bus! After the falls, our guide stopped for us to see and feed some of the Icelandic horses.

Our last stop of the tour was at Pingvellir National Park. We did not visit here when we were in Iceland in 2019, so this was new to us.

Established in 1928, Pingvellir is Iceland's first national park and is now listed as a UNESCO world heritage site. "Pingvellir" means "Assembly Plains," and is the place of Iceland's first parliament which was founded in 930, making it the oldest operating parliament globally. The parliament continued to convene at the fields of the River Oxara for 868 years (until 1798). Icelanders consider it the nation's birthplace.
Pingvellir has a unique geographical setting of a rift valley in the divide between the North-American and Eurasian continental plates. The lava fields are torn apart by tectonic forces, leaving gorges and fissures.
We followed the hiking path through the enourmous cleft to the "law rock" and Oxara River, which are enveloped by walls of basalt rocks.

There were signs explaining the punishments handed out by the parliament in this area between 930 and 1262. Several punishments included drowning in the lake!

Yes, the sun was out for a while and we had beautiful blue skies!

Back to the bus and we were on our way back to Reykjavik.
And then the clouds rolled back in ...

We walked to Reykjavik Kitchen for dinner tonight, then a stroll by the waterfront. No sign of the Northern Lights, so we headed back to the hotel and said goodnight to Wendy. About 9:30, Tobey and I decided to walk back down to the harbor in hopes of sighting those elusive lights, but no luck.

Tomorrow is our last day in Reykjavik, so it has been a very short visit!

February 21-22, 2025 - Denver, CO to Reykjavik, Iceland

Well, it has been a LONG day!

We took the hotel shuttle at 8:00am on Friday for the airport to catch our 10:15 am flight. It snowed overnight in Denver and the airport was packed! By the time we checked our bags and went through security (TSA pre-check) we only had about 20 minutes before they were boarding our flight to Washington Dulles airport. Crazy!

The flight to DC was SOOOOO COLD that I wore my ski jacket the entire time and was still shivering! With the time change, it was after 3:30 when we landed. We had almost four hours before our flight to Reykjavik, so we checked into the Priority Pass lounge and had some lunch/dinner because IcelandAir does not serve anything. We were hoping we could sleep on the overnight flight, however, none of us were able to sleep much more than an hour! We arrived in Iceland about 6:30 this morning, cleared customs and caught our shuttle to the hotel arriving here about 8:30. It was raining as we landed and has rained off and on all day.

After checking in we had breakfast (since our room was reserved starting on Friday!). We were supposed to have a city tour and Northern Lights tour on Friday, but they were not able to rebook us so we did our own walking tour today.

We headed out toward the waterfront and downtown area. These are some of the sights.

Colorful buildings

We went by the Harpa Concert Hall but my daytime picture didn't turn out, but the nighttime one did. They had a light show going and it was pretty cool to see.

Inside the concert hall this morning we enjoyed seeing the interesting glass designs.

The Sun Voyager Sculpture was created by Jon Gunnar Arnason and is supposed to resemble a Viking long-ship.

We had some nice views along the waterfront - and yes, we had a brief moment of sun!


On our way to Hallgrimskirkja we traveled on the rainbow sidewalk. We stopped and looked at some of the shops along the way.

Hallgrímskirkja is a Lutheran parish church in Reykjavík, Iceland. At 74.5 metres tall, it is the largest church in Iceland and among the tallest structures in the country. We visited it when we were here in 2019 but stopped in again today. It was raining when we were her in 2019, too!

We meandered back to our hotel for a rest before heading out this afternoon to see the Perlan Museum. WOW! It was pretty awesome. They have an ice cave we were able to go in, a great video about the aurora borealis, a lava video, and exhibits about the flora and fauna in Iceland. We spent almost 3 hours looking around.

Isn't this a great shot of the Northern Lights?

I wish I could say that we saw them, but we didn't! This picture was in the video at the museum. Tobey and I went up to the observation deck and had some nice views out over the city while Wendy looked at some of the other exhibits.


For dinner we took a taxi to the Sea Barron Tavern. It was $20 for about a 2 mile ride! The food was pretty good, but the portions were fairly small. Tobey and I shared a shrimp kabob, veggie kabob and lobster soup with bread. The lobster soup was the best.

After dinner we walked back to the hotel along the waterfront most of the way. Fortunately, the rain had stopped and we were able to enjoy the walk better than earlier in the day. 

Like the sailors in the statue, we stopped and looked out at the water hoping to see the northern lights, but did not have any luck. Maybe tomorrow ...