After a European breakfast in a cave at the Viking Hotel, we drove through the highlands of Iceland to our first destination of the day, þingvellir. It was snowing extremely hard, and after twenty minutes or so of driving, the world outside the bus was completely white. When we arrived at the park, we hiked along the edge of the North American tectonic plate, a giant wall of basalt covered in snow, and found the site of the alþingi, the medieval Icelandic Parliament, marked with the Icelandic flag.
We then travelled to the family-run geothermal bakery Laugarvatn Fontana, which was located at the edge of a frozen lake. Our tour guide led us to the steaming black sand shoreline and had us stand around two mounds of dirt marked with stones. He dug into one of the mounds and pulled out a bread pot, and in the hole where it had been the mud started to bubble up. We watched him dunk the pot in the lake to cool it down before bringing it into the bakery and shaking it out onto a cutting board. According to him, the bakery uses a family recipe for the bread that only includes flour, rye flour, sugar, baking power, salt, and milk. We all got to sample of the bread (which was still warm) with Icelandic butter and smoked trout on top.
From Laugarvatn Fontana we visited a rural farm for Icelandic ice cream and got to see the cows that provided the milk. Then, finally, the sun came out, and we made a surprise visit to the Kerid Crater! It looked so different from all the photos I’d seen on the internet. Apparently Iceland is extremely different in the winter than in the summer. The lake was entirely covered in snow, but when we got to the top of the ridge we could see for miles – plains and pine forests, with mountains in the distance. Truly a winter wonderland!
Swanson School of Engineering 