Our second day in Iceland was definitely the most memorable.  We had booked a tour with a British guy that lives in Iceland and is part of the photography circle there (Nick found him via the photography community online) and it was the best thing we did on our whole trip.  While expensive, it made up for it threefold, as it was a pretty incredible day.  He picked us up from our hotel at 8:30 and we headed out into Iceland in the pitch dark before the sun rose and didn’t drop us back off until 5pm that night.

We saw so many sights that day, many of which I’ve documented below with my own photos (Nick is still editing his and I’ll do a post for them on their own later).  The landscape in Iceland is truly extraordinary and its natural beauty and uniqueness are truly incredible.  I was blown away so many times that day by how rugged the land is, how you can be driving on totally flat land and next to you a mountain springs up out of nowhere, how it can be snowing, raining and whipping cold all at once, and how in some of the harshest conditions I’ve ever been in, I was still so overtaken by the beauty of the land.  For once in my life, the bitter cold didn’t take anything away from my experience in Iceland.

Iceland for me was so different than any trip I’ve ever taken and I reveled in the beauty of the land that was before me.  There were so many moments standing up on mountains, or above waterfalls, or on the rocky lava strewn coast covered in olive green moss with no one else for miles, that I was simply just stunned at what was before me.  So many times I really needed a moment to gather myself after we left places and I found myself totally overwhelmed by the rugged and stark beauty of Iceland.

It was a place that really is hard to explain, a place that is very hard to detail to other people who haven’t been there.  It’s a country and a land with a very long history and a place that touched me in a very different way than anywhere else I’ve been.