Goodbye, Iceland! We left our Airbnb at 5am this morning and got ourselves all the way to Copenhagen. We even found the energy for a long walk to a playground. All the big kids accumulated about 13,000 steps. Somehow we’re all still awake longer than we should be.

Thankfully, the local weather improved for our last few days in Iceland, even requiring sunglasses for a few brief moments. With the sun so low on the horizon, it felt like early morning or late afternoon all day. We drove ourselves back to the southwest corner of Iceland over two days, giving us a chance to see a few things we’d skipped due to weather. Jökulsárlón, the beautiful glacial lagoon, fascinated the kids, and they wished they could have played with the glacier chunks longer on Diamond Beach. We hiked right up to Svínafellsjökull glacier. Iceland offers the chance to walk right up to giant glaciers from the parking lot – truly amazing. Farther west, Nic was especially happy to drive through Grindavik, a town that was completely evacuated a few years ago due to nearby volcanic activity. We drove on roads rerouted due to lava flows and saw steam rising from the ground all over the place. So many parts of Iceland look like a completely different planet!

Overall, nature in Iceland looks like what we remember from ten years ago. I’m sure the glaciers have receded, but we couldn’t tell. The level of development, however, has changed quite a bit. We visited Iceland just as it was starting to become popular. Ten years ago, we didn’t pay to park at any tourist sites – not so this time. We had solitary glacier experiences and often felt like the only people around. Again, not the experience today. Iceland still feels quite undeveloped and empty overall, but we’re thankful to have visited before it gained the popularity it holds today.

On the topic of food, here are a few things we ate:

• Skyr – every day, often three times a day
• Fresh produce from Icelandic greenhouses – a huge change in this industry from last time we were here and saw things like green beans from Kenya in the grocery store
• Grapes from California – I’d love to know the exact path they traveled and how long it all took
• Lamb sticks – like beef sticks but lamb, liked fairly well by all kids but a little funky
• Red currants – tart and delicious
• Cheese – we loved the Icelandic versions of Gouda and Emmental

One thing we won’t miss about Iceland is the very high cost of groceries. It makes sense that it’s expensive to get food to Iceland, but that doesn’t help alleviate the pain of swiping that card! Groceries to feed our family for two days cost about as much as five days of Walmart supplies back home. We ate out only one time, and like the locals, we got cheeseburgers, a hot dog, and fish and chips from the gas station grill. Doesn’t that sound like a meal that should cost about $30? Try $90.