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Our Icelandic Honeymoon Part 1 May 21, 2010

Filed under: Iceland — Kelocity @ 9:00 pm
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With all the talk lately about the volcano in Iceland, I thought I would share some of my honeymoon pictures! We spent five amazing days in Iceland right after our wedding last July. It was so exciting, romantic and beautiful.

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Iceland is the perfect getaway, especially from the East Coast. It was only a 4.5 hour flight, and would really make the perfect layover on the way to Europe, we highly recommend it!

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Our first stop was the Blue Lagoon!

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We stayed in The Clinic, which is the only hotel on the grounds of the Blue Lagoon.
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It sounds really strange, but it was GORGEOUS.
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When we checked in, we even got a gift since it was our honeymoon!
Which of course became a photo opportunity for our new rings!

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Our hotel was just a short walk to the biggest part of the Lagoon.
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Along the way we took tons of pictures.
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Basically, the Blue Lagoon is a big lava field. And the lava gets covered in Moss!
We saw this sign:
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So naturally… we did this:
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Don’t tell!

The  Lagoon was GORGEOUS!

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There are all these bridges that connect the little waterways and “islands” in the lagoon.

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So like I said before, this area is a giant lava field. And then there are all these thermal vents around the area. Nearly all of the electricity Iceland uses is generated from these heat vents. So they started harvesting the steam. The “byproduct” of steam is… hot water! So they decided to flood the lava fields to create the Blue Lagoon. It’s like a giant hot tub!

The reason the waters are so amazing blue is from the high concentrate of Silica Mud that naturally occurs in the area. More on that later!

Since we went in the summer, the sun barely sets at all! There is 22 hours of daylight! It was so weird to look at our watches at 10 o’clock at night and see the sun was still out!
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Prime photography light!
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THE NEXT DAY…
Here’s the deal… anyone can go to the Blue Lagoon. But if you stay at the Clinic, you get to go for FREE!
Not only that… the Clinic has it’s own private Blue Lagoon, just for people who stay there.
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The days we were there, we had it all to ourselves!!

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We spent the whole day in the water, floating around and relaxing. We also enjoyed scooping up the silica mud and putting it on our faces. It’s supposed to be really good for your skin.

You can either use a little bit of mud…
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Or a lot!

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It felt like playdoh or something. But when it gets wet, it dissolves into the water.

LATER…

We headed over to spend the day at the Bigger Blue Lagoon. It is a short walk… but it was really hard to roll our suitcases over the lava fields! I was NOT happy!
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But it was WELL worth the trek. The bigger lagoon was so cool! We lounged in the lagoon, went into the saunas, swam under the waterfalls, put more mud on our faces, and even got a massage while we FLOATED in the water!!!! That was pretty incredible.

They also have a swim up bar! We ordered the “Blue Lagoon” drink.
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Cheers!
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To my new husband!
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PS.. those blue bracelets were our keys to our lockers. They also sync with your credit card, and when you order from the bar, you just scan your bracelet and pay on your way out. High Tech, right?

It was so romantic!
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The day was incredible.
We highly recommend the land of lava for your honeymoon.
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Part two will be coming soon!

 

Our Icelandic Honeymoon Part 2

Filed under: Iceland — Kelocity @ 8:55 pm
Tags: , ,

After a wonderful couple of days by the Lagoon, we headed into Reykjavik for the rest of the trip. It had the beauty of Hawaii with the charm of Europe. It was lovely.

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A statue of Leif Erikson! Remember him? History circa 3rd grade or something?

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We climbed up to the top of the Hallgrimskirkja Church.

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And from the top, there were amazing views!
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We even spotted our hotel!
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The interior of the church was really pretty as well!
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The land of Vikings!
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Their language is so hard to understand!
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They eat whales and puffins!

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I wore the flowers from my wedding day in my hair almost the whole time. HAHA

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I’m obsessed with the Olympics, so of course we had to visit the Iceland Olympic Training Center!
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This is the Hofdi House that Reagan met with Russia’s Gorbachev where they discussed ending the cold war in 1986!
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Then we headed out towards the ocean. The colors were breathtaking.
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Along the bay, there is a famous hotdog stand…I know, that sounds really funny, right?
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But if Bill Clinton likes their hotdogs…we figured we should try them!
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They were pretty good.

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These statues were made famous in the movie “101 Reykjavik”. If you look at it from the right angle, it looks like the guy farther away is putting the constitution up the other guy’s butt. lol
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Of course, hilarity ensued. We’re so mature.
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LOVE!
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We took these pictures while waiting for a bus to take us to “The Pearl”!
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Iceland is so genius. Basically, this building houses four huge water tanks. But in the middle, they built a museum. Brilliant! They had an audio tour and they told you the history of the Vikings.
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The whole thing was animatronics. lol (remember the witch museum in Salem, MA? It’s kind of like that).
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And then Irving and I pretended to be Vikings!
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I’m telling you! Best honeymoon EVER!
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Just a short walk from the pearl was one of their beaches.  Right on the beach is a thermal vent… so they built a container around it to contain the near boiling water…. then it feeds into the ocean. So you can swim at the beach and the water is WARM! Where do they come up with this stuff?
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Wish I’d thought of that!
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A shot of our Hotel Lobby:

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It’s funny, we actually were supposed to stay in the Hilton, but when we got there, they told us they were overbooked and had placed us in the Grand Hotel instead. It really didn’t matter, because this hotel was really pretty anyways. But for our “troubles” (i.e. having to lug our suitcases down the street to the new hotel), they offered us a free 7 course meal at the nicest restaurant in the Hilton.

The dinner took nearly four hours to eat! It was so nice!

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On our last day, we had some extra Icelandic Dollars and stopped by a casino to spend them. We were just trying to get rid of them, it wasn’t worth that much. But Irving WON in the slot machine. LOL Now we had lots of Icelandic Dollars.

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hahaha

I guess we are lucky in love!

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Stay tuned for part 3!

 

Our Icelandic Honeymoon Part 3

Filed under: Iceland — Kelocity @ 8:50 pm
Tags: , , , ,

One of days in Iceland, we did a coach bus tour of some of the highlights outside of the city.
The entire country of Iceland has about 500,000 people, nearly all of them live in Reykjavik. So the vast majority of the country is uninhabited.

On the tour, we stopped at one of the Geothermic plants. They showed us how they harvest the steam into electricity. They even had a slideshow so we could understand it….
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We were confused. lol

We were also lucky to see some of the infamous Icelandic Horses! They have the purest breed of horse in the world. They’ve never been mated with any other species, and it’s illegal to bring other kinds of horses into the country. They were really pretty. (But I kept my distance because I don’t like horses.)

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Next up, was Gullfoss. It was a beautiful waterfall in a canyon in the countryside.
The green sides were so lush, adn the water just looked like a mirror in the middle. It was HUGE, you can see the walking path on the left hand side.

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They filmed the Music Video for Live’s Heaven at Gullfoss:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_nImUzRv0w

They also had buttercups growing on the side. I held it under my chin to see if I was sweet. lol
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There is something about the rawness of Iceland that I just loved.
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Next up, was a visit to the Geysirs! And not just any geysir! The ORIGINAL Geysir. The one that all the other geysirs in the world are named after!

 

This was just a little one nearby.
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It was a whole park full of these thermal vents.
You can see how deep into the earth they go!
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Yes, it’s boiling water… but I wanted to touch it anyways. lol
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Here’s is Geysir ready to go!
You can see the boiling water bubbling up….

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Hot water spewing everywhere, with nothing more than a rope stopping people from getting hit by it.
SOOOOOOOOO COOL!

Then we headed to Thingvellir National Park. This is where the Vikings used to meet back in those days.

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If you look in the distance, see how the mountains have a line under them? That is where the North American and Eurasian plates meet! That is a rift in the plates.

Iceland was formed when the two plates collided with each other. It really is new earth that has been created by tectonic movement and volcanoes. SO COOL!

So this vast plain is where the vikings used to make laws and such.
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It used to look like this:
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This is me pretending I’m making important Viking decisions:
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And this is me pretending to jump over the rifts:Iceland - 2009 (490)

The trip to Iceland is over… but the honeymoon continues on and on…

Our new rings!
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Goodbye Iceland, you were fantastic!

These were some glaciers over Greenland on our flight home:

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