Scenic Road Trip to Höfn// Paris & Iceland, Day 7

Saturday, October 7, 2017
Since we had access to a kitchen, we made some oatmeal and instant coffee for breakfast.

Today was our biggest driving day yet, but first we drove back through the snowy landscape to go to Dettifoss.

Unsurprisingly, the scenery was breaktaking.

Dettifoss is a waterfall in Vatnajökull National Park in Northeast Iceland, and it is reputed to be the most powerful waterfall in Europe.

Jökulsárgljúfur canyon

These falls are huge and powerful, so it was difficult to get a great picture from our vantage point.

Back on the road, we made a beeline for a restaurant called Havarí where we'd read you could get vegetarian bulsur sausages.

Gas stop - whoo, our car got filthy!

We still needed to take a lunch break for our "Icelander sandwiches" along the way.  Can't complain when your picnic view looks like this.

And apparently, we'd picked up the most popular bread in Iceland.

While this was primarily a driving day, the scenery we drove by was stupendous.

Trying fresh flowing water straight from the source

We had planned to hit a couple of waterfalls during our drive, but we double-checked the hours for Havarí and realized we'd need to make better time. When we finally arrived there, we had to face the reality that we were either in the wrong place or they were just closed. Checking their current website, it seems like they're only open May - September (we were there in October), but something tells me that is not the impression we had when we made the plan to go there!

Either way, this turned out to be one of Francisco's favorite days in the country just from the lush valley scenery we drove through. At one point, we sat overlooking the ocean and it felt like we were on the edge of the world.

Whooper Swans

Despite my objections, Francisco had emailed our Airbnb hosts at our next place to inform them that our anticipated arrival time was projected to be 8 PM. Since we'd skipped the falls and Havarí turned out to be closed, we were in town by 5:30 PM.  Consequently, no one was home when we showed up, so we drove around the small town of Höfn. We again thought about finding a restaurant, but we ended up running into a grocery store called Nettó and indulged in yet another picnic.

This time, we ate our sandwiches at a picnic table overlooking the water and glaciers.  It was the coldest picnic ever lol!

Around 7 PM, we went back to our Airbnb to see if anyone was home yet. The door was opened by the other guests that were staying there and they went to fetch the owner. Our room was cute, and it wasn't too noisy even with the neighboring guests. The hallway noise did seep in when the group of Chinese girls were going to the bathroom across the hall from our rooms.  The bathroom was nice and spacious. Here is a link to the place we stayed: link.

The owner of this Airbnb had actually contacted us a week or so before our trip to let us know about the road conditions that could impact our travels.  Definitely much appreciation to her for going above and beyond to keep us informed - thankfully, we weren't impacted by the heavy rains that had shut down part of the main road shortly before we came to the country! 

Use this link to save $40 toward your first Airbnb trip: www.airbnb.com/c/flopez157.