Midnight Sun

Our plane was about an hour late for take off.

We get on board & im sitting next to this middle aged couple... perfect right? WRONG. Since we are be up until 4pm, I needed to get as much sleep as possible. This women on my left and the guy across the isle on the right kept their reading light on THE WHOLE TIME. Not only did she keep her light on, but she was taking up the whole arm rest and would hit me every couple of minutes. I got a total of 30 minutes of broken sleep. Thank god I'm used to working night shift. Oh and don't worry, Kaylee slept like a baby. Every time I turned around she looked sound asleep. (She was sitting behind me).

Update: We're about 30 minutes out from Iceland now. We made up for some time in the air AND MOST IMPORTANTLY, SHE FINALLY TURNED OFF HER READING LIGHT... (I may be writing this while I'm still mad about it, forgive me if I sound like a grump. That's what 3 weeks of traveling, sickness & no sleep will do to you)

We landed in Iceland only 20 Minutes after we departed (hehe time change). It's now 12:30am. We went to go pick up our rental car & if our parents taught us anything, it's to beat the line up at the rental car lines haha. We got this tiny Ford Fiesta, grabbed a map and that was it, we were off to find food & do the golden circle. Apparently the only thing iceland likes to eat after 11pm is subway. We had a sandwich at 2am and coffee was essential. It was hard staying up for that long but the midnight sun made it SO much easier. It looked like it was 8am when really it was 2am.

And this is where our adventure began. Our first stop was the Thingvellir National Park, the location of Iceland’s first Parliament, started back in 930 AD. At the Lögberg people could step forward and give speeches about important matters. An assembly of 48 chieftains gathered here to discuss laws & engage in court proceedings on behalf of the country’s citizens.
This is also where the North American & Eurasian tectonic plates are slowly splitting apart from each other, creating deep fissures in the ground. One of these, called Silfra, is full of icy glacier water where some people go snorkeling or scuba diving. Dad actually just posted a video of this a couple days ago, therefore it was my mission to find it and get some go pro footage. They weren't kidding when they said it is the clearest water in the world. Just standing, looking down, you can see almost to the bottom. This was before the sun was shinning on it so I can't even imagine it then. I really wanted to jump in just to say I've been in, but it was approx. 2-3 degrees Celsius. My hand had to do this time.

Next stop was Gysir, which is known as Iceland's blow hole. Doing the golden circle definitely has its peaks because we were completely alone!... but you also sometimes have no idea where things are. We had to do some gate hoping but we got to see it up close and personal. The blow holes are caused by the shift in tectonic plates. The water was anywhere from 80-100 degrees and obviously smelt like sulfur.

We wanted to go further down the road to Gullfoss waterfalls but the road was under construction and marked as a F road which means you need 4 wheel drive to go on it.... lol which you know our little ford fiesta didn't have.

At this point it was already 5am, so we finished the circle and went towards the blue lagoon. Kaylee got really tired so we pulled over and she took a 20 minute power nap. We drove past the craters and along the ocean highway. Icelands terrain is SO strange. You actually feel like you're on a different planet. 2 hours of driving on no sleep & the same 5 songs (Iceland loves coldplay), we made it.

I was told not have high expectations for the blue lagoon so I tired to keep my expectations low so I wouldn't be disappointed.. and trust me, I was not disappointed what so ever. It was so beautiful and such a great way to end the vacation. We spent all day hanging out in the pools, in the sauna and steam baths. So relaxing and so happy I got to do it.

As we were leaving, I realized it was time at home to register for McGill. I really didn't want a shitty schedule so I logged in and tried to get a few courses that I knew if I didn't get, my first semester would be hell. Turns out, I got all of the ones I wanted & that Alex, Emily and I all have the same schedule 🎉🎉

So back to the airport to drop off the rental and finally tell mom that we got a car (we knew she'd be on the next flight out to Iceland to make sure that we had all the right insurance and that we were driving safe, so we kept it hush hush hahah)

Checked in at the airport, hit up the duty free, got some food & went to our terminal. I was actually so tired that I felt like my whole body was going to shut down any minute. I had never felt like that ever before. So note to self, don't stay up for 36 hours straight haha.Read more