After landing in Iceland’s Keflavík International Airport and meeting up with everyone, our spring break trip began with our guide, Ólöf, taking us to the bus, where we soon started driving to Perlan, a natural history museum. Along the way, she described each thing we drove past, explaining the development and impact of the lava fields, the industrial buildings along the rode, and more.
Once we reached Perlan, we all hurried inside, as Iceland tends to change its weather whenever it feels like it and had just sent a blizzard our way. Our first stop was to grab some food at the rotating restaurant up there. It was quite the interesting place, because, after not looking out the windowed dome for a while, you’d see an entire new cityscape as the entire seating area turned.
After munching, we went down to the open-air 360 observation deck a floor below. Iceland’s random weather helped us this time, as the blizzard was completely gone by the time we went outside allowing us to go all the way around and get a great view of the surrounding area. We got to see exhibits on the Northern Lights, Iceland’s Volcanoes (which had this one domed video that made you feel like you were actually going into the volcano), and glaciers, with the last of those starting in a man-made ice cave and leading to an exhibit on the state of glaciers both in the past and future.
We ended our day with a dinner at the hotel (where two others on the trip joined the Vikings) and shopping at a nearby grocery store, where they had really fun signs on each of the aisles. Overall, it was great first day!
Swanson School of Engineering 