Today is a pretty short day. We started the day with an unscheduled visit to a glacier, at this point, they are all starting to become a single blur of melting ice. From the glacier we went to Diamond Beach which incidentally the most photographed location in Iceland. Let’s work through the process. There is a large glacier (which is the foot of the largest ice cap in Europe). The glacier calves into a fairly large lake, the ice drifts down the lake until it hits a sandbar which holds it till it breaks into small enough pieces to float over the sand bar into the sea, but there is another sandbar near the beach which hold the ice pieces until they wash up on shore where wave action reduces them to small pieces of polished ice, which are fascinating to look at.
That held our attention until lunch which we ate at Museum Restaurant. All lunch stops so far have offered lamb stew or asparagus soup. Today I switched to the soup and Deb went with a salad. Not wanting to arrive at the hotel too early, we robbed our next adventure from tomorrow and drive a beach with a view of a mountain, there was also a whale swimming off shore.
Of interest, all signs are in Icelandic and English. Most interpretive signs also have German. However the really important signs such as “Detour” or “Warning” or “Danger” are only written in Icelandic. The Icelandic for “detour” is “hjáleið” Which you need to know because the big sign across the road says “lokað.” Tomorrow is a long driving day with a strenuous hike at the end.
