Iceland, Paris, and No Sleep

Steve and I didn't sleep for probably two days and we still haven't really adjusted yet. What a great feeling it is to finally be in Paris with no flights to catch for the foreseeable future, though. Airplanes, am I right? Maybe I'll finally stop yelling at Steve for daring to speak to me at a cranky moment. He calls me "Snappy the crocodile" now. It doesn't help matters.

After an uneventful 7 hour flight from Seattle, we had an 18 hour layover in Iceland, where I rented a car for the first time. It went mostly well, except for the times that I took the wrong exit at one of the 80000 roundabouts. I also was getting close to falling asleep at some point, so we decided to take a nap in the car at the Geysir parking lot. I awoke to the person parked next to us standing next to the window, probably admiring my record-breaking drool production.

Thingvellir National Park

I visited Iceland the last time I went backpacking in Europe (2011), but somehow didn't do the Golden Circle tour or go to the Blue Lagoon. Oh man, did I ever make up for it this time....

We picked up the car at the airport and drove in to Reykjavik for breakfast (coffee and pizza, duh). Luckily, Reykjavik isn't very big so it didn't take us too long to have a walk around, although Steve and I are experts at wasting time (only when we really shouldn't be, though). 

Reykjavik

Next, I drove us to Thingvellir National Park, which was the Parliament site of the original Icelandic settlers and is where two tectonic plates meet. It was very scenic, and I especially liked looking at this one fissure full of clear water.

After that, we drove off to Geysir and Gullfoss waterfall, which are very close to one another. Geysir is a delightful steamy hellscape (in smell--sulfur!) where a rather large geyser erupts every few minutes. Gullfoss is a huge, spectacular waterfall. I was very glad to have waterproof-ish coat.

Near the geyser

We were planning to go to a crater lake as well, but we didn't have time, since we wanted to get the Blue Lagoon, famous thermal spa, before it closed.  Steve loves crap like that, and it was obviously great, especially since there weren't very many people there. We didn't get any pictures though, so you're just going to have to trust me that the water was light blue.

Gullfoss

Our flight to Paris didn't leave until one in the morning and we were starting to go a little crazy from lack of sleep by then. We would learn that our hostel takes check-in time very seriously, and therefore we had some very long hours to kill before we could finally sleep.

Montmartre

We had a croissant and an espresso, went to Sacre Coeur, and walked around Montmartre before going to Montmartre Cemetery. It was one of the most beautiful cemeteries I have ever been to. Then we were finally able to check in to our hostel, where we promptly passed out for several hours.