Astounding ICELAND, the country of contrasts,

Hello there stemians,

How is your weekend? Mine is great, I slept good, recovering from a full of activities holiday and everything is wonderful back home, got to meet with my family, dog and friends.

Today’s post gonna be about my Icelandic experience, which was one of a kind for sure. I flew from Bucharest to London, stayed there three days and then flew to Reykjavik and stayed almost four days, not enough of course, but for sure I will be visiting this amazing country on summer days.

Here are some pictures of me promoting this wonderful community, I will be promoting STEEMIT every place I will visit from now on, because it's such a shame that people do not know about it.

Iceland is defined by contrasts because fire and ice are both present, there are dark winters versus summer’s sun all night. In 2015 Iceland had a population of 329 100 inhabitants, like a big neighborhood from Bucharest, with median age of 36.5 years old.

We arrived on evening around 18:00 and we went directly to the accommodation, but it was such a shame not to explore the city center, so we went out.

Soon I realized that everything is so expensive here, I was naive when I thought Sweden or United Kingdom are posh and expensive, but you must visit this country at least once in a lifetime.

We stayed too little in this country, but we booked three awesome trips to taste icelandic landscape and history.

In the first night when we arrived, we discovered beautiful Reykjavik, the northernmost capital in the world. You may think it’s extremely cold here, but in fact the average temperature is approximately the same as in New York for January.

Here is a picture of Hallgrímskirkja a Lutheran church. It has a height of 74.5 meters and, it is the on of the tallest buildings in this country.

Sun Voyager, a sculpture made by Jón Gunnar Árnason and represents a dreamboat, or an ode to the sun.

Harpa Concert Hall and Conference Centre is definitely a landmark of the capital. It is a cultural and social centre and from there you can see the mountains the North Atlantic Ocean.It was opened in 2011 and was visited by 7 million guests until now.

In the following morning we went to Blue Lagoon, which was so wow and relaxing, you would have stayed there more.

The Blue Lagoon is a geothermal spa, a main attraction in Iceland. It is located in a lava field in Grindavík on the Reykjanes Peninsula. The lava surrounding is almost 800 years old.

Before entering in this amazing place, you need to shower with their local natural spring water ans wash with their Blue Lagoon Shower gel provided at each shower. Moreover, you need to apply conditioner on your hair because silica may harm your hair and will stop getting frizzy.

The lagoon contains 9 million liters of geothermal seawater and it renews itself every 40 hours. The distinctive color owes to the way that silica reflects sunlight.

The average temperature is 100F/38 Celsius degree. According to National Geographic. It is one of 25 modern wonders of the world.

09:00 am

10:31 am

In that night we had book a tour for discovering the Northern Lights (Aurora Borealis) which got canceled because it was a cloudy night, and the chance to see Aurora Borealis were so low apropximately 0.6 from 9 kp.
An aurora is a natural light display in the Earth's sky. Auroras are produced when the magnetosphere is sufficiently disturbed by the solar wind that the trajectories of charged particles in both solar wind and magnetospheric plasma, mainly in the form of electrons and protons, precipitate them into the upper atmosphere due to Earth's magnetic field, where their energy is lost.

Don’t worry, we were lucky enough to stay another night, and had another chance to see it, actually this was the main reason of our visit here. So we went home to get some rest because we woke up really early that morning.

On our last last day we visit the Golden circle , a popular day trip among visitors. The route covers many beautiful landmarks in a short period of time, so I visited Geysir geothermal area, the waterfall Gullfoss, and the UNESCO site Þingvellir National Park.

Geysir geothermal area is named after the biggest, and now mostly dormant, geyser Geysir and all geysers in the world owe their name to it.

The biggest attraction today is the active Strokkur, which shoots up a column of water up to 30 meters into the air every 5-7 minutes. We saw four shows and the last one was spectacular.

Gullfoss is one of the most famous waterfalls in this country.

The UNESCO site Þingvellir National Park is geologically and historically significant. Apart from being the location of the oldest parliament in the world, Alþingi, it is also a place where you can see the Mid-Atlantic ridge above ground. The Eurasian and North-American tectonic plates pull the country apart by a couple of centimetres per year. A lot of scenes from Game of Thrones, season four were filmed here.

As a bonus we met some adorable icelandic horses.
The Icelandic horse is a unique breed of horse developed in Iceland. They resemble a pony because of the size, but they are actually horses, they are super friendly and love to eat horse candy.

The driver told us about history and the mind set of this little but valueble nation. He told us some of the following facts:

• A lot of peope here still believe in elves.
• They are thrilled when a volcano is erupting, and this happens every 4 years on average.
• You can’t find forests here.
• More than 60% of the population lives in the capital.
• Mosquitoes do not exist here

On our last night we saw the majestic Aurora Borealis, and even though it was super cold, it was an awesome experince, and now after several days if I close my eyes I can see it again.

From year to year, there are more tourists visiting this amazing country, in 2013 Iceland had only 700 000 visitors and now for 2017 there is an estimate number of 2 300 00 people visiting this country.
So if you are planning a trip here, go for it, but please don’t forget to have a travel insurance! You should always protect yourself from possible injuries.

The problem with driving around Iceland is that you’re basically confronted by a new soul-enriching, breath-taking, life-affirming natural sight every five goddamn minutes. It’s totally exhausting.
― Stephen Markley

Hope you enjoyed my post, if so please upvote and resteem it.
For more, stay tuned and follow me!
Until next time,
Xo A

Source:

• Wikipedia
• Blue Lagoon Spa
• www.re.is

All of the pictures are made with my Iphone SE.