Day six in Iceland was a gorgeous day. Up until now the weather had been your standard Icelandic summer: around 60 degrees with wind and clouds, sometimes with a little rain and sometimes with a little sun. I am convinced that Iceland is the place people had in mind when they came up with the saying we use in Boston all the time: "Don't like the weather? Wait 5 minutes. It'll change." But this day was beautiful: crystal clear blue skies and a genuine, no-rounding 70 degrees all day long! It was the perfect day for a flight over southern Iceland. And since we had been watching the weather forecast, we had booked one!

Eagle Air - so cute

We were picked up at our hotel in the morning by a van and brought to the local Reykjavik airport (which is a tiny airstrip that we could see from our hotel and is only used for domestic travel and these little tourist planes). Once we were at the Eagle Air trailer, uh sorry, "terminal," our pilot came out from behind the counter and pulled down a window shade over the window to reveal - surprise! - a giant map of Iceland. He then proceeded to go through the highlights of our tour, which was called "Ice and Fire" and sounded even better in his cute Icelandic accent (the accent reminds me most, and I say this with love, of the Swedish chef from the Muppets). The flight plan would take us over Reykjavik, further west over the Golden Circle sights (Þingvellir, Geysir and Gullfoss), then out past the volcano Hekla, and finally to the glacier-volcanoes Eyjafjallajökull* and Katla. All in a tiny little Cessna 7-seater.

Our fellow travelers were a couple from Canada. They were very quiet and took nary a picture. Never fear: I took enough for all of us.

wanna take off for a flight over Iceland?

I was a little nervous about the plane flight, since I am crazy scared of heights. Pointing the camera at the Hallgrimskirkja (Reykjavik's landmark) and watching the take-off through the lens was my little coping mechanism. But the whole flight was super smooth, despite high winds near the mountains - our pilot was aaaaaaawsome! - and the views were spectacular.

We passed over the Hellisheiði power plant we had visited on our own tour of the Golden Circle and could even spot steam rising from a new borehole in the distance. From our perspective above, we could clearly see how and why the landscape here quickly changes from lovely green fields to desolate areas of rocks and ash: this is just where the lava stopped. Cool.

a river running through the low-lying bushy terrain we'd driven past earlier in the week

Our first genuinely breathtaking sight was Iceland's largest lake, Lake Þingvallavatn, as blue as can be.

The water looks calm, but the steam in the distance reminds you that this area is very active, geologically speaking. Lake Þingvallavatn feeds into Þingvellir valley, home to Iceland's parliament for 800 years and one of many locations in Iceland where huge crevices have been formed by the movement of the tectonic plates. As we flew toward Þingvellir, we could see the massive rift in the earth alongside the lake and even through that incredible blue water.

wanna see a geological rift from the sky?

The rift continues all the way into Þingvellir valley. I can't believe that we walked through that ravine just a few days ago!

A few minutes later, hubby spotted this out his window.

A whole series of craters that created the lava fields here! Wowzers.

Next we flew over what our pilot called "a typical Icelandic forest." He said it's typical because "if you get lost, you just stand up." Badda-bing! Iceland jokes!

Just five minutes later (note: not 30 minutes on a crazy, pothole-filled gravel road), we approached the Geysir hot springs area. What a different view from above!

That cairn-covered hill we'd walked up behind Geysir was a mountain from the other side; the river alongside the road cuts an amazing zigzag pattern in the land; and Geysir itself, which looked like nothing more than a steaming hill from the ground was this shimmery bright blue pool from above.

And we circled long enough to see Strokkur erupt.

Alright, Strokkur might have been a little more impressive from down below.

Gullfoss was next, with its ever-present rainbow rising out of the mist and its distant view of the southern glaciers.

As we flew further inland to the center of Iceland, we reached the highlands, a vast uninhabited area of the island, marked by innumerable deep ravines,

huge mountain ranges,

I can't get over how blue the water was in these pools!

and expansive lava fields.

It is very apparent that this area has been shaped by some serious geological activity and that the area is still very active. This region, called Landmannalaugar, extends to the base of the southern glaciers and is a favorite hiking destination for visitors to Iceland. When we visited Skogafoss waterfall, we spotted many hikers beginning their journey down Laugavegur, the four-day long hiking trail (which shares its name with Reykjavik's longest shopping street!) to Landmannalaugar.

The trail leads you through the varied peaks to the glaciers Mýrdalsjökull and Eyjafjallajökull. Atop (or beneath, depending on how you look at it) Mýrdalsjökull lies the volcano Katla, a sort of sister volcano to Hekla that also has a history of large, devastating eruptions.

Katla's last eruption was in 1918, but she has become increasingly unstable in recent years, as if preparing for another eruption. Katla has also erupted after all three previous eruptions of Eyjafjallajökull (the volcano just to the East that erupted this spring). Katla, our pilot explained, is not "a tourist volcano" like Eyjafjalla. Its eruptions can be explosive and can also cause a glacial flood outburst where parts of the glacier break off and float away in massive flood waters, wiping out everything in their path. So, in the immortal words of Egon Spengler from Ghostbusters, "it would be bad."

Okay, enough scary stuff,** let's see that tourist volcano! "It's just lava," says our pilot.

our first view of Eyjafalla

Lots of black. Don't forget, this is a glacier. (Remember my photo of an ominous Eyjafjallajökull overlooking Þorvaldseyri farm? Well, here's how the view used to look when there was still ice up there!) The small white patches you see here amidst all the black ash are the only remaining bits of ice left. Except for the little bit of white just to the right of our fellow passenger's headphones. That's the hot steam coming off the open crater!

Our approach brought us over inconceivably large ashen lava peaks towards the crater itself. Our pilot assured us that we were very lucky to be able to see right down into the crater. On a normal day, even a relatively clear one, the volcano will pull the clouds down over it. But not today.

wanna look into a volcano?

Now that was a once in a lifetime moment. I flew over a freaking volcano! A still, technically, active volcano! (As of August 24th, five days after we flew over it, Eyjafjalla could officially be called dormant again, since it had shown no activity for three full months.)

You can check out how Eyjafjallajökull looks right now on the live webcams here! (They've got cameras at Geysir and the Blue Lagoon too!) From a little further away, we could see the astonishingly long swath the hot lava and ash cut into the side of the glacier. Our pilot pointed out to us that at the foot of the glacier there, right where that ash and ice slide ends, there used to be one of those beautiful blue lakes like we'd seen in the mountains earlier.

Oh.

After allowing us to ponder that for a few seconds, the pilot finally turned away from Eyjafjalla and started to turn us back toward Reykjavik. The flight back wasn't quite as scenic as the flight there. Unfortunately, the Westman Islands (the volcanic islands we'd spotted from the main highway on our drive the day before) were completely covered with clouds - the clouds had to be somewhere! - so we didn't get to see them like we'd hoped. (We had, in fact, hoped to take the Eagle Air tour to the Westman Islands, but each of the tours needs a minimum of four passengers to go and we were the only ones who'd signed up for that one. Maybe we can get the kids to take that tour with us next time!) We were a little overwhelmed from all the sites we'd just seen and then the plane got hot. We'd been rather high, because of the strong winds in the mountains, and it was really sunny, so we'd been steadily heating up the whole time. At some point, both hubby and I started to regret every bite of breakfast we'd had that morning. I began contemplating how to surreptitioulsly make use of the little vomit bag in the seat in front of me. Somehow we both managed to hold everything down until we were down again. Thankfully, the landing was just as smooth as the take-off (did I mention that our pilot was aaaaaaaawsome?!). Once we were back on the ground, it was sort of like I imagine it is for astronauts returning to Earth after having been in space for a week or two: we just did not feel right. We headed straight back to our room for a good lie down. There was no talk of lunch.

As we were recuperating, horizontally, it occurred to me that perhaps man was not meant to fly over volcanoes in tiny little propeller planes. Upon further reflection, I concluded that as true as that may be, it was so worth it! The flight was, by far, the highlight of our trip. It's expensive (although not that expensive when you consider that one of those über-popular helicopter trips is going to run you like $500 more per person!), but the view was absolutely priceless.

Once we'd recovered, we spent the rest of the afternoon visiting the shops along the urban Laugavegur. (Pics of our booty in my last Iceland post next time!) While walking around the city, we stumbled upon a green area in front of the current Icelandic parliament and found pretty much every citizen of Reykjavik stretched out in the grass in probably their only pair of shorts to bask in the rare sunshine.

We ended the day back at the hotel with the best dinner I will ever eat.

Grillið restaurant is a tiny, like 15-table gourmet restaurant on the top floor of the Radisson Hotel Saga. It has a panoramic view of the whole city and the most amazing food. The 6 courses they brought us and the wines chosen by the sommelier were absolutely amazing. It was all very Top Chef and I have no idea what I ate, but it was good. Really good. It was a perfect meal to celebrate our 10 years together. The skies were still absolutely clear, so as we ate we got to watch the sun go down over Hallgrimskirkja and the mountains beyond. And I didn't take any pictures of it at all.

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* - Don't worry, the Icelanders assured us that it's easy to pronounce.

** - Interesting Iceland fact: Did you know that the Icelandic volcano Laki could be said to be partially responsible for the French Revolution? A huge eruption of Laki in 1783 caused weather disruptions serious enough to decimate crops throughout Northern Europe, including France, leading to food shortages that exacerbated the poverty and unrest in France at the time.