Iceland and first TAW stop – a quick recap
About Iceland:
We loved:
* the scenery. Jaw dropping gorgeous. And that’s considering we’re already super spoiled with what we get around Geneva.
* the solitude. It’s high tourist season and we never met any crowds. Anywhere. Just beautiful nature, fog, rocks, sunshine, moss à gogo, lava, more rocks, and lots of rivers, lakes and seaside. Often all of that within an hour.
* the water. How cool is it that you can stop just about anywhere on the roadside and find a sparkling clean creek to fill up your thermos? Also, no one orders mineral water in restaurants, it s all carafes with fresh mountain water. 100 % free, 100% ecological and super tasty. How great would it be if we could have that attitude all across Europe, fancy and not fancy restaurants, where we should have access to great quality drinking water off the tap? Besides solving an ecological challenge, I’m sure people would order less junk drinks, too.
* the design. Lots of cool interior design as we kind of expected. Especially in Reykjavík, where “gemütliche” cafés – non-chains!- are on every street corner, the designs are bright, warm and inviting from the furniture to the lighting.
What Icelanders could seriously do better: cheese. I was dreaming of some nice sheep milk cheeses but instead I’ve only ever gotten cheese as bad as here in Germany. Or Holland. Bland, yellow and soft. They have so many sheep, but when we asked why they didn’t milk them they looked at us as if we were weirdos. What an idea!
Considering that’s pretty much our only “complaint”, we deem this new discovery a roaring success!
Now for us as a family:
– less commutes, less sight seeing. The hundreds of km were scenic for us but understandably dull for the kids who entertained themselves with lots of fights, physical and verbal 🥳 Arriving at the spouting geyser after 2.5 hours of drive, Vyas just said: “But we already saw something like this!!!” Great. 2.5 hours back.
– less unpacking, repacking.
– more “presence”. Time just flies by so fast with all there is to see and do and all the logistics involved in making it happen. At the same rate, the year will pass in a giant frenzy. So: less moving around, more sticking around and enjoying the moment.
👍🏻💕