Iceland, Day 2

Up and ready! Since Iceland is 2 hours behind Italy, and only 5 hours ahead of the Midwest, it seemed like I got to sleep in when having to get up at 0620 in the morning. I showered (my hair needed it more than the rest of me) and got changed. We quickly ate the hot breakfast that was out (I made a sandwich to go as well) before hitting the road. We drove 40ish minutes to our meeting point for our day trip around South Iceland, which includes waterfalls, glaciers, and volcanoes. We caught our bus and a couple hours later (after a brief stop for everyone to get food), we made our way to our first stop: Eyjafjallajökull, where the famous 2010 eruption grounded flights for 7ish days. After that, we made our way to Skógafoss waterfall. We did not climb the 400+ steps, partly because there was not enough time to do so after I got the pictures I wanted from down below. We filled our water bottles straight from the river that was flowing (pure Icelandic water as the locals say) and then got back onto the bus to go to our third stop: the Mýrdalsjökull glacier in Sólheimajökull. The glacier is massive, much bigger than one could imagine from a simple picture. Our next stop was to grab some lunch. We stopped near a beach, but didn’t have much time to go there since we ate some food and did a small bit more of shopping (found a few select items that would be amazing gifts). Once we got on our way again, we finally made it to Black Sand Beach. It was very interesting to see the black sand (which is all volcanic rock/ash ran smooth from the ocean) up against the relentless sea. After spending a bit of time there, we headed towards another waterfall: Seljalandsfoss. This one had a small path (mostly consisted of climbing over jagged rocks) to see behind the waterfall and we were fortunate enough to even spot a full rainbow on our way around. That was our final stop for the day, so once everyone got back onto the bus, we headed back to our pick up point. After getting to the car, we stopped at Hard Rock to grab our shirt and pin that we normally do before finally getting back to the hotel where we made miracles happen by fitting everything into the bags we have. Tomorrow we fly into Dublin and then take the bus to Belfast. Here’s to the home stretch!