I've been back from my Icelandic sojourn for a few days. Needed a few to decompress. We landed at 4:45 on Thursday, but sat on the plane on the tarmac for four and a half more hours due to the storm. Then, after we were disembarked, the public transport at the airport was such a mess we didn't get to our car until midnight and didn't walk in our front door until 1am. Thankfully, I was able to work from home Friday, and the weekend was a mess just trying to pull all the pieces back together (get the dog, go to a birthday, etc.). The old saying that you need a vacation from the vacation doesn't usually apply to me, but definitely did this time.
I think the best place to start, though, would be with the Snaefellsness Peninsula. Our first day was spent up in this northeastern section, as I mentioned a week ago. This is a section of Iceland which is overlooked by guide books. The two we utilized had no more than two pages about it. I think it deserves more coverage. It's true you only need a day to see it, you can drive around it in about 4 hours if you don't stop too much. But you may want to stop, and in fact I say you should especially if you love volcanoes (dormant/extinct), lava fields, waterfalls, hiking and general wilderness. My pictures will never do any of the Icelandic regions justice, but I'll share them so you can all get a feel for the place.
The one thing I found intriguing was, at 6am as we drove north from the airport to our first destination, how incredibly dark it was. Without many inhabited districts, most of the roads are extremely dark, and the cloud cover (which prevented us from seeing the Aurora) was thick. As you drive north, with the Greenland Sea on your left, even with the darkness it doesn't take long to realize there are mountains all along on the right. Most probably aren't more than 1,500 feet high, but all are snowcapped due to how far north we are, which makes them seem positively gigantic. I was told most can be hiked in a few hours.
