Iceland -- Land of the Vikings and Midnight Sun!!

Jonathan: wow Iceland, a place we wanted to visit but thought we'd never get there.  We unfortunately only had one week, but to fully appreciate Iceland, a month and a rental car would be great.  Reykjavik is a very cool city, although we couldn't get used to it being light as day at 11:30pm!  Sorry to all you animal lovers, but we ate both whale and shark meat while we were there.  Whale meat, delicious, very tender, similar to beef.  Iceland's national delicacy: Rotten (fermented) shark meat.  Quite possible the most disgusting, horrible tasting thing on earth.  The flesh of this particular shark is toxic, so they press out some of the ammonia, smoke and ferment the meat, to make it ... cough--choke ... edible.

But the best feature of Iceland is the incredible natural scenery that graces the landscape.  Formed by volcanic eruptions, Iceland is a giant lava Island, where North America and Europe's continental plates meet.  So technically a part of both continents :).

Our whirlwind tour took us to the amazing National Park of Thingvellir (Tingvektler -- Icelandic is a very difficult language!!)  Here there is a giant rift valley formed by the separating of the European and North American continental plates, and also the site of the world's oldest parliament, so they say.  We also had the opportunity to snorke between the continental plates, incredible!  The clarity of the water was up to 100m visibility, though the 2 degree temperature was quite literally mind numbing.  But you could definitely drink it :).  Cool and refreshing!  We also jumped into the "toilet bowl" about a 20 foot drop into a little tidal pool whose swirling current could "flush" you through a little rock cave into the area where we went snorkelling.  I liked it so much, I jumped in 4 times :).

We also had a visit to the south eastern part of iceland, and visited the area where that troublesome little volcano caused a few hiccups earlier this year.  It is funny that people would refer to it as The Volcano, as though Iceland only has one.  Heh, Iceland has a lot of volcanoes, and in relative terms this one was a little baby.  Ayahfyetlayokult is about the closest I can come to phonetically spelling the word.  I was determined to know one word in Icelandic before leaving, and I decided on the name of that volcano :).  E-15 is the designation many gave to it.  But to see the damage it caused in Iceland was almost surreal.  When monster glaciers are melted by volcanic activity, and they cause a river to swell to more than 10 times its normal size, and the government was forced to destroy some sections of the highway to channel the floodwater to try and save the bridges.  Everything was an eerie sort of gray/black and white color covered in ash, and ash clouds so thick that you couldn't see in front of your face, but fortunately our driver had been driving these roads for 20 years.

So Iceland was an amazing experience, and if you get the opportunity to see it, I highly recommend visiting, you will not be disappointed!