Iceland - A Dream Come True

10:04 pm


Hi everyone, sorry for the long hiatus. I guess life just gets in the way (or life called procrastination). I have already been back in Singapore for a good 4.5 months and recently completed yet another semester of my university life. But anyway, I have finally edited more photos that were taken while I was on my exchange. I went on a trip to Iceland with my friends from 30th Oct to 3rd Nov 2015. It was truly a dream come true to be able to travel to Iceland. How can anyone not dream of going to such a beautiful place on earth? They must have it somewhere on their 'to-do-list' or 'bucket list' or whatever they called it nowadays. To tell you how much I dreamt of going to Iceland, I actually embarrassingly shed a few tears while the plane was landing. You know the feeling when you really want to go somewhere and you set your mind and all to plan for it and you momentarily forget about the fact that you are on your way there until you reach that ...somewhere? Yeah, you get what I mean.
þingvellir national park
So, my friends and I went for the Grayline Iceland Tours. Our first stop was þingvellir national park, a UNESCO world heritage site, where the tectonic plates of North America and Eurasia move apart. Since all four of us are geography students, we naturally got all geeky over the geological features we saw. 


The place is just so breathtaking. Next, we traveled to visit the famous Gullfoss waterfall and spotted a rainbow across it (!!!). We also visited the Geysir hot spring area which consists of many bubbling mud pools and hissing steam vents. The main highlight was none other than the Strokkur hot spring, which blasts out a column of hot water that reaches the height of 20m every few minutes! 
Gullfoss waterfall
Geysir hot spring area
Bubbling away...
Ta-da! Oh, look at those tiny humans.
On another day, we traveled to the south of Iceland to visit some iconic landmarks such as the Seljalandsfoss and Skogafoss waterfalls as well as the famous Reynisfjara volcanic beach. We were supposed to see the famous Eyjafjallajokull volcano that erupted in 2010 which caused major disruption to international flight schedules. But the weather was horrible that we couldn't see a thing and hence a lack of photo. Trust me, I was mad excited about seeing the volcano in real life after using this example 10000 times in my essay but I guess I just have to come back again. Anyway, the bonus was when they brought us to the massive Solheimajokull glacier. Definitely my first time seeing a glacier in real life!
Skogafoss waterfall
Reynisfjara volcanic beach (yes, black basalt sand!)
Sea stacks called Reynisdrangar
Basalt columns
Basalt columns resembling a rocky step pyramid called Gardar
Don't go too near to the waves as many have lost their lives there..
Solheimajokull glacier (lots of it has melted away)
Seljalandsfoss waterfall (you can actually go behind it!)
Besides all the sight-seeing, we also went to see the Northern Light (or aurora borealis which I certainly did google the spelling) and spent some time soaking in the famous Blue Lagoon geothermal spa. Also, not forgetting the Reykjavik town centre which offers beautiful modern architectures such as the Harpa Concert Hall and Conference Centre and Hallgrimskirkja Cathedral. We had some good fish and chips around the area too! 

Harpa Concert Hall and Conference Centre
We didn't cover the whole of Iceland and there are many places yet to be explored. Lastly, I wanna thank my friends for making this trip so memorable! I will never forget the smell of the water at our hostel, us walking around in the cold either trying to look for money changer or food and the free-flow lamb stew was so good that we refilled 4 times :)

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3 comments

  1. Your photos are honestly amazing XY!!! It's hard to make landscapes come alive but you did. And I really admire how much work you have to put into each posts here, know what to write and arranging the sequence of everything must have taken time (even tho in between you really take v long breaks :'D) NEVER STOP POSTING!!! I am a big fan:')

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  2. Wonderful post, beautiful photos! Makes me wanna go to Iceland!!

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