Iceland, a dream trip come true! – International Travel Photographer- Blog Carousel

I am so excited to write this blog post. I am a huge travel fan and addict. I love to travel and get a natural high every time I go and visit a new place, or even a familiar place I have been before.  I had the opportunity to do a site visit to Scandinavia this past fall. I will tell more about this later in this blog post.

As I am originally from Sweden, this trip is so close to my heart.  I have so many beautiful photographs to share that I decided to split this post into each country in stead vs the whole trip in one blog post. I chose this time to focus on the country of Iceland.

If you are a reader of my blog, you will have seen in the past that I participate in a blog carousel on a regular basis. This  post is actually also a blog carousel post. The theme for this month was travel.  Scroll down this post to see my take on this theme. When you are done reading this post, please check out the link at the bottom of my post to see how some of my colleagues have interpreted this months theme of travel.

Iceland has always been a place I have wanted to visit. With it’s unique landscape and the gorgeous scenery. I can honestly say that Iceland was like nothing I have ever seen before. There was amazing clean, and gorgeous scenery every where. It is a photographers dream come true place to visit!

We started off with  a stay in Reykjavik and went to see the Hallgrímskirkja-Hallgrims Church. It was beautiful and the statue of Leifur Eiriksson was really impressive. Especially as we saw it right at sunset time!

The following day, we drove our rental car out in the country side. We did not even get far outside of Reykjavik until we saw beautiful Icelandic horses.

We went to see þingvellir, which is the original parliament in Iceland from ancient times.

After that we went to see Strokkur, the geysir. It was shooting up hot geothermal warmed water every 5-7 minutes. It was very impressive!

While it was freezing cold to stand outside to watch it, it was so worth the wait to see the geysir erupt.

After this we went on, to see the Gulfoss waterfall. This waterfall is located in the canyon of Hvítá river in southwest Iceland. The whipping winter winds were cold, but so worth to see this powerful and huge waterfall.

 

One of my hopes and dreams as a photographer, was to have the chance to photograph Aurora Borealis- Northern Lights. This dream came through while we were on Iceland. It was a really neat experience, to see the sky change in color just in front of our eyes. The Aurora Borealis only happens in winter climates, where it has to be cold temperatures on a regular basis. The Northern Lights are more likely to be seen during the winter months, if the winds are just right. We had hoped to see it on several occasions , but only saw it one night during our stay in Iceland.

There were snow capped mountains and volcanoes almost anywhere we drove.

We stayed for a couple of nights at Hotel Anna, in the southern part of Iceland. It was a lovely smaller hotel with amazing food. We were introduced to many Icelandic delicacies  in their restaurant. This is very close to the volcano Eyafjalla Jökull and the Skogafoss waterfall.

 

As we were driving along , we kind of stumbled upon the Dyrhólaey. It was this beautiful serene black lava beach with rock formations. During warmer months this is a haven for birds. Since we were here in early November it was a little bit chilly, but the scenery was breathtaking!

I read somewhere that someone had at one point flewn a small airplane through the opening of the Dyrhólaey , which actually means door hole in English.

Now to explain the reason behind this trip. The plan is to organize and put together a tour through the LSU Academic Program Abroad office where you can travel with them to learn more about Scandinavia without having to be an enrolled LSU student. This is a tour that will be open to all.  There will be an LSU professor going along on the trip as a tour guide. The professor will be teaching about all the beautiful and great things to see and do in Scandinavia. If you are interested in going on this tour with the LSU APA office. Please contact them by following this link.
http://international.lsu.edu/APA/

I do want to mention that we ended the trip with a visit to the Blue Lagoon. That is a geothermal heated spa near Reykjavik. It was a strange but relaxing experience to be in swimsuit with ice cold winds, and snow in the air. However the water was nice and warm and we even tried out the lava facial mask while in the warm water!

I would highly recommend a trip to Iceland. If you would like to go with a group of people on a guided tour. Then contact the LSU APA office and they will be happy to include you in an upcoming tour of Scandinavia.

These are just a few of the many hundreds of gorgeous photographs I was able to capture during our visit to Iceland. I am running out of space and can not share all in this post.

Thank you LSU APA for making this trip possible!

If you are interested in my photographs for any travel needs, please contact me at the contact form here at the top of my website or by calling (225) 284-6354

Please check back here on my blog in a few weeks, to see photographs from Norway, Sweden and Denmark as well!

Now please go and see my colleague Kate Parker who is participating in this blog carousel.There will be several photographers participating in this blog carousel. In the end you will have made a circle and will be linked back to this blog post again. You can see Kate’s travel inspired blog post here: Dallas Photographer