^{Jökulsárlón, Iceland}

Our second day in Iceland was full of ice… literally! We started out with a glacier hike and a visit to an ice cave, then headed to the infamous Jökulsárlón glacier lagoon and to the other side of the bridge where you can find Diamond Beach aka Ice Beach.

If you haven’t heard yet, Iceland is currently booming with tourists, and that there are not enough hotels and accommodations to lodge everyone visiting. When we got to our hotel in Vik, the small hotel lobby was full of tourists looking for a room or asking about restaurants in the area. What the concierge told us was that there were only three places to eat in this town. Yes. Three. One was a gas station diner, one in a fancy hotel, and one next door. We drove around to check our luck and ended up back to where we started. It took around 40 mins until we got our table and another 20 until we got our food. Lesson of the day: research places to eat in the town where you’re staying. Also, don’t wait til the last minute, or the only restaurant where you can eat might close before you get there.

As with the ice caving adventure, we wanted and expected a crystal blue ice cave that is huge like those we saw in pictures. However, booking only three weeks ahead, all the crystal ice cave tours were already sold out. So we chose a hike and a visit to an ice cave which was a little letdown from what we expected. Nevertheless, it was a fun hike (the guide made it fun, I would say, not the hike itself).

Our next stop was the glacier lagoon. I saw this everywhere on Instagram, on every person’s profile after visiting Iceland. Truthfully, the pictures didn’t impress me. However, seeing it in person was unreal! Also, across the bridge was also one of my favorite stops, ice beach. We couldn’t get closer because the strong waves coming towards us. The big blocks of ice really looked like diamonds on dark sand.

Ice was everywhere: The mountains, lagoon, cave, beach… No wonder they call it Iceland. (Crappy line. Sorry, couldn’t resist  ).