Xtn's blog: Summer holiday in Iceland and Austria

Last July, I decided to take a week and a half off of work to go on a summer holiday in Europe. My destinations: Iceland and Austria

I’ve always wanted to visit Austria because I've heard such great things about it from so many different people who have been there, including my mom. But why Iceland? (Or well, I guess not a lot of people know enough about Iceland – and prior to 2007, neither did I – so folks would keep asking me this question when I would tell them that I went there.)

Before I left for Sweden, I decided to buy a travel book about Scandinavia. I have all different types of travel books – Lonely Planet, Rough Guides, Let’s Go, Fodor’s – and to me they are all equally good. So while looking around in Powerbooks, I find a Fodor’s book on Scandinavia that had a photo of a magnificent waterfall on the cover. I know you’re not supposed to judge a book by its cover but since I don’t have a personal preference for any particular travel book and they are all good, I decided to buy based on the cover photography.

Once I got to Sweden, I told myself that some time during the year, I would visit those falls. But I didn’t know which one it was. I tried figuring out what that waterfall was by going through my book. It was only after about a week that I managed to find the (small) text inside the book that indicated that the photo on the cover was of Dettifoss waterfalls in Iceland. But what was really interesting was that there was no other mention of Dettifoss anywhere else in the book. Strange... Anyways, here's a photo:

I never really thought about visiting Iceland prior to my arrival in Europe; my main interest was to go around Sweden and visit Norway and Denmark which were the closest countries to Sweden. But now that I figured out where this magnificent waterfall was, I started reading up more on Iceland, and I discovered that this country had so many amazing points of interest. I discussed Iceland with my colleagues. Most of them had never been there before, but they knew people who had and they also told me that everyone they knew who had been there was not disappointed. That essentially decided it for me.

My initial plan was really to spend four days in Iceland and three days in Vienna (in Austria). But this changed quite significantly. As I kept on reading, I started learning more things that I wanted to experience while I was there. Also, I also started reading up on Salzburg, only a three hour train ride from Vienna, and I thought that it would be fantastic if I got to visit that city as well. So after much deliberation (and some serious number-crunching to make sure I had enough money and credit to take these trips), I decided on the following itinerary:

Day 1 (Saturday)
Early morning flight from Copenhagen to Reykjavik (the capital of Iceland) and arrive shortly before lunch. Go around Reykjavik and visit the Blue Lagoon.

Day 2 (Sunday)
South Coast & Jökulsárlón Glacial Lagoon tour (whole day)

Day 3 (Monday)
Snæfellsnes, Whale and Bird Watching tour (whole day)

Day 4 (July 10)
Golden Circle Classic tour from 830am to about 6pm. Then take the last flight out (8:45 to 930pm) from Reykjavik to Akureyri, a city in the northern part of Iceland.

Day 5 (Wednesday)
Jewels of the North tour (this is the tour that would take me to Dettifoss) from 8:10am to 9:10pm.

Day 6 (Thursday)
Take the 945am flight back to Reykjavik, spend the entire day there shopping for souvenirs and seeing some of the other sights I missed. Then I head to the international airport at the end of the day.

Day 7 (Friday)
Take the Reykjavik-Copenhagen flight at 1am (arriving in Copenhagen at 6am). Then take the Copenhagen-Vienna flight from 9:05-10:45am. Arrive in Vienna around lunchtime then tour the city.

Day 8 (Saturday)
Take the half-day City Tour of Vienna and spend the rest of the day checking out the sights.
Day 9 (Sunday)
See more of the sights in Vienna then take the 530-830pm train from Vienna to Salzburg.

Day 10 (Monday)
See some of the sights of Salzburg in the morning, and take the Sound of Music tour in the afternoon.

Day 11 (Tuesday)
See more of the sights of Salzburg.

Day 12 (Wednesday)
Take the 11:10am-2:30pm train from Salzburg to Vienna, then take the 6-8pm flight from Vienna to Copenhagen then take the train back to Lund.

Needless to say, after these 12 incredibly full and hectic days, I was wiped out. But it was all worth it. I will of course be writing about this fantastic trip in more detail and share some pictures over the next few days/weeks. In the meantime, here a few more photos I took in Iceland and in Austria:

Beautiful scenery taken from Þingvellir in Iceland: