vik made me felt like the real adventure was about to begin.

and it did.

we drove down the south on a sunny day, a day which would put locals' and other travellers' smiles on their faces. but that was not the case for my dad, he needed a cloudy day to photograph waterfalls.

and there would be two famous and breathtakingly beautiful waterfalls on our way to vik.

those were seljalandsfoss and skogarfoss. foss is an icelandic word for fall, obviously.

we could see seljalandsfoss since we were still driving on the ring road, a few kilometres before we actually get there. it was during the end of winter so ice and snow melted and the amount of water falling from the cliff was significant. plus the wind that blew constantly which prevented us from walking behind the waterfall.

and that was the special thing about this fall, to walk behind it and look at it from the different view.


i was kinda sad (and wet) but we did have a chance to visit this place again a week later. and i was startled by how much snow had covered the fall during only a week. but even with snow. there was less water and wind so i got to walk behind the waterfall and wasn't that soaked with water. though i hadto admit that even with snow, seljalandsfoss seemed to look the best when its surroundings being green, which would be during spring and summer.


skogarfoss was, during april (and in my opinion), more spectacular than seljalandsfoss. rainbow will be almost always visible in the afternoon when the sun shines. and that was pretty amazing. especially when you walk right to the from of the fall and you would see the rainbow so close to you, with both of its ends. even though rainbow actually has no end, it's a ring.


there was a way you can climb the hill to the top of the waterfall. i did climbed up (because my dad spent way too long photographing the fall and i got bored) i was exhausted by the time i reached the top. it was extremely windy and my nostrils were in pain from breathing in such cold air.


actually, i could continue walking along the stream, but i chose not to. instead, i walked back down. and even when i felt like there was nothing worth the climb up there, at least i felt good that did not only eat but exercise to burn the calorie as well.


in vik, there were several sights you should not miss (and we missed, unfortunately. which we found out later when we didn't have time and the weather wasn't on our side.) dyrholaey could be accessed by  road no. 218, no further trekking was necessary. it was this huge rock/cliff with a hole—'door'—which made it look like an arch. it was probably the most famous sight of the area.


you could take a walk on reynisfjara, the black beach which faced one side of the reynisfjall mountain. from the beach, reynisdrangar, stacks of rock in the middle of the sea, was also visible. but the better place to look at them would be from the other side of the mountain (which was like 2 km. walk) or a trail which started at N1 gas station.


we missed a lot in vik even though we stayed there for two nights. the weather aaas terrible on our only full day. it started to snow since we woke up. later on, snow turned to rain and rain turned to frozen rain with strong wind, which was the worse part. within only a few hours, snow was everywhere. on the mountain, on the ring road, on our car, everywhere. on the other hand, it was amazing for us to see snow all over a seaside town. i had never imagined that it could possibly snow next to the beach. all we could do was staying in the car, drove around a little and took some photos from inside the car with our windows down. or the other choice was to go back to out hotel, welcome hotel in vik.

it was in the same building with hotel lundi and  it was also the worst stay we had in iceland. don't get me wrong, it wasn't that bad but it wasn't good enough (and maybe that meant the same thing) our room was okay, the service was alright but there was a big, (quite) old man, and he was pretty weird and scary.  he was probably the chief or something, and he was the only man i saw there. his service for us was nice but in a little bit creepy/scary way. i don't know how to put this but my opinion (that he scared us off) was confirmed by two fellow german guests who wrote on the guest book.

also, the breakfast was not appealing at all. there were only toast and crackers, ham, cheese, veggie, fruit and crappy cake from supermarket (which was inedible) and there were no eggs!

the bottom line is, i would not stay there again.


and a tip would be, look for an accommodation with a kitchen. when we were there, there wasn't really a great variety of places we could dine out, but there was a decent supermarket and alcohol shop. bistro strodin (which so many people said was good) was closed during low season. we had lunch twice at halldorskaffi (because we had no choice) the food was average but the prices were unreasonable, especial fish dishes which weren't that good and were like 1,200 isk more expensive than the fish company in reykjavik.

so two tips for vik, don't miss those three places and look for an accommodation with kitchen.