So I spent much of the last two weeks in Denmark, Sweden, and Iceland for my partner's fortieth birthday. It wasn't meant to be a photo trip, but I had hopes of getting a few. Unfortunately the weather didn't really cooperate; it was dismal and overcast the entire time in Copenhagen, and mostly drizzling, but I didn't find Copenhagen all that appealing anyway.
Iceland was supposed to be better, and for most of it that didn't turn out. We did a lot of driving around in the rain to see the historical spots that Marissa was primarily interested in, which for me served mostly as location scouting for if I happen to be there sometime when it isn't raining. The Allthing and Gullfoss are nice places but not really useful to me in the rain.
But on our last day we drove to Snæfellsjökull National Park, on the west-central coast, and as we got there the weather finally cleared up a little bit.
Our first stop was Rauðfeldsgjá ravine, a spot where you can walk up a long hill alongside a falling stream and walk straight into the cliff. It was pretty full of tourists, and I did a lot of waiting around to get photos without them in it. Most of them had come unprepared for wading in the stream and clambering over rocks, so much hilarity ensues as they tried to get into the narrow entrance of the ravine, where a few rocks in the middle of the stream are the only way to stay dry. I had waterproof boots and the stream is not very deep, so I had no trouble. Inside the ravine might reward more diligent photographic effort, but most of what I was able to get this time around was lens flare, so I'll spare you those photos. I didn't get very far up before finding snow.
We declined to go to the glacier, as I wasn't totally comfortable with doing that in the rental car, but instead continued along the coast to Londrangar, a very dramatic volcanic formation.
I tried to talk my family into hanging around there so I could take some sunset photos, but since that would have been another six hours they weren't really into the idea.
These were two of the most tourist-centric sites; we didn't really look at a map before going there, just decided to drive around and see what we could find, and it turned out that what we could find was mostly full of other people. Which is fine, we didn't have a whole lot of time to explore, and I expect to get a chance to go back and spend some quality time there. Snæfellsjökull reminds me a lot of Pt. Reyes in California, in that it's full of places to explore that will reward repeated visits.
We did get to one place off the map, and I mean literally I can't find it on the map, even though I know where it was. Waterfalls are so common in Iceland that this one doesn't get a map entry, or as far as I can tell even a name. The sign to it just said "Foss," which is Icelandic for waterfall.
One problem with having Iceland at the end of the trip was that I was already exhausted from being hauled around Copenhagen for a week, and the extra flights, and I just physically wasn't capable of doing a lot of the things that I would otherwise have liked to, like hiking up to the top of this waterfall. Not to complain about the Icelandair stopovers, they're great, but next time I go to Iceland I'm just going to Iceland so I can spend my energy there. One nice thing about this trip is we figured out a bunch of methods for visiting more economically, so hopefully it won't be too long before that happens.