Jane and Jordan are up early in the morning, and thanks to the fact that we have the whole suite to ourselves, they are able to shut the door and let me sleep in for awhile while they eat breakfast and play in the geothermally heated kitchen. I eventually get up, and we clean out the fridge and eat tasty flavors of skyr (crème brûlée and coffee!) along with ham sandwiches and fruit for breakfast. We load up the car and head out well before any of the lagoon staff have arrived to open up the lobby for the morning. Then, it’s further to the north, now tracing the Golden Circle route that Jane and I drove back in 2015, with the goal of reaching Reykjavik in the afternoon. The highway crests a plateau and circles down to the Brúarhlöð bridge, a one-lane bridge that spans the Hvítá River; in the far distance, the mountainous highlands of southwest Iceland rise out of the morning mist. The road continues upriver, where we arrive at the iconic, two-tiered Gullfoss. In April compared to March, the area is much less icy, and this time we are able to clamber down a long series of stairs to view the waterfall from up close. Jordan goes for a sprint around the overlook while I mess with the camera; to his chagrin, we set up another family portrait. Jordan seems nonplussed by the amazing scenery, though he does stop to acknowledge Gullfoss as “Baba Waterfall” (compared to yesterday’s Skógafoss, which was appropriately “Mama Waterfall”). As we prepare to leave, I eye the return up the stairs and prepare to throw Jordan over my shoulder, but he chooses to make the climb on his own. Jane films a hilarious 4-minute phone video of Jordan and I going up the entire thing step by step, Jordan ending at the top with heaving breaths, flushed cheeks, and wobbly legs. I carry him the rest of the way back to the car, and he pinches my ears and nose while laughing again.
Back on the road, we check out another (closed) bounce-pad before stopping at the nearby Brú horse farm to say hello to the horses and pay for two cups of “horse candy” to feed them. Jordan insists on equally distributing the treats between three equally greedy animals; we duck out right as a tour bus pulls in with a massive crew of schoolkids on a field trip. Another few minutes to the west, we come to our second major stop of the morning: the Geysir Geothermal Area. The place is fairly similar to how I remember it, although the parking layout has changed here as well; the little lot where we parked in 2015 is now also dedicated to tour buses, so we park on the other end of the visitor center and take a longer, winding route to the geyser basin. Jordan has been eagerly waiting to see “the geyser!” but it still catches him (and all of us) off-guard when we round a corner in the dwarf pine forest and see Strokkur exploding into the air with a boom. “Too loud!” Jordan cries. He insists on Jane holding her hands over his ears for the rest of the outing. I stick around and photograph Strokkur going off a few more times (its regularity, going off every 5-10 minutes, puts Old Faithful easily to shame), while Jane and Jordan wheel over to a more distant viewing spot. We finish the loop around the geyser basin (Jordan now a little unnerved even by the miniature, bubbly geysers) and check out a nearby statue before heading to the car.
Our next stop (late morning now) is one that Jane and I skipped over eleven years ago — a quick walk to Brúarfoss, a wide shelf of beautiful falls with startlingly blue water coloured by glacial silt. I use my ND filter for the first time all trip here, taking long-exposures of the falls from multiple angles along the overlooking bridge. While I’m making my artsy-fartsy photos, Jane is busy chasing after Jordan (who is weaving his way through the crush of tourists’ legs and selfie sticks on the bridge) and generally trying to prevent our toddler from plummeting to his death in his an icy river chasm. I eventually finish up with the camera and help corral Jordan back to his stroller.
Back in the car, we head back along the gravel road and stop next door at the little farming settlement of Efstidalur, where there is a dairy farm/ice cream shop/restaurant combo, along with a playground with an open bounce-pad! It’s unclear whether Jordan or we are more excited by the last bit; after multiple days of disappointment, our little steam engine will finally have the opportunity to bounce to his heart’s content. First though, we need to grab lunch. Stepping out of the car, we are greeted by one of the local farm dogs, who props himself up to sniff Jordan in his car seat. We say hello to the ladies in the barn, and head upstairs to enjoy a buffet lunch (all-you-can-eat soup, hearty sourdough bread, and freshly churned butter). Jordan gets a kid’s cheeseburger with fries, but also samples a few sips of soup while watching the cows below. Despite the incredibly filling lunch, we save space for ice cream, sharing scoops of strawberry and coffee ice cream (with espresso-cookie spoons). Jordan laughs when I snap my spoon going for a big bite of ice cream. He turns to the cows and tells them through the window, “Thank you for your ice cream!” Back outside (fed, watered, and bathroomed), Jordan takes off toward the bounce-pad at a sprint. He and Jane spend the next half hour continuously jumping and laughing and falling all over each other. They play a game where they bounce until he pulls Jane down, after which Jane must cry out in Chinese, 救命 (jiu4 ming4) - “Save me!!” Jordan the astronaut to the rescue. I briefly join the bouncing festivities, but Jane bounces me off the surprisingly steep bounce-pad, feet first into a muddy puddle. I walk off to change my socks in the car.
Back in the car, it’s a long ride now to Reykjavik via the Þingvellir rift valley. The afternoon scenery is spectacular: open plains criss-crossed by rivers and snowfields, distant mountains, and scattered light shining between clearing clouds and blue skies. On a solo trip, I would have surely found places to stop, pull over, or circle back for landscape photographs, but with Jordan and Jane in the car, I am content to drive on and get to the capital city as soon as possible. We wind up serendipitously stopping at Þingvellir’s visitor center parking lot despite not intending to - but just to let Jordan bathroom, rather than to explore. Jordan finally falls asleep (followed immediately by Jane) as we descend the uplands and make our toward Reykjavik and the coast via the suburbs of Mosfellsbær. For the first time in days, we come to multi-lane city traffic and ubiquitous highway roundabouts. I navigate us to the heart of the capital city, and after circling for a bit in vain for free parking (our marked spot from 2015 is completely occupied on this Friday afternoon), I park in the lot behind the iconic Hallgrímskirkja and call it quits. Road trip complete. Jordan melts down when we remove him from the car and pluck him in the stroller so that we can handle the rest of our luggage. Unhappy to be woken from his brief car nap, he screams through the entire hotel check-in and only settles down once we drag him into our second-floor room and give him a big family huggie. Our hotel room at the Hotel Leifur Eiríksson - the final room on this trip - is also the smallest one, as one might expect from a hotel in the literal smack-dab center of town, next to the famous church. From our room windows, we can see the hustle and bustle of the city sidewalk below us; from one window, a view into the nearby art shop with a massive stone statue-head. From our other window, a direct view to the balcony seating of the café next door, where some tourists are sipping on an aperol spritz (“What is that orange drink?” asks Jordan). We move the room’s two chairs (with cow-print seat cushions) so that Jordan can look out the window and play Sneak-a-Peek to his heart’s content. We also hang the room’s fire ladder (we are apparently part of the hotel’s designated fire escape route) above our suitcase, for use as a drying rack for some of our washed clothes.
After some relaxation and goofing off in the room, we head out to acquire dinner from the nearby Bónus, which Jane and I visited liberally in 2015. At the budget grocery store, sandwiches and pasta boxes go for an affordable $7-10 USD, which we buy along with a final re-supply of drinks, snacks, and bananas. All far more affordable than the $30-50 dishes listed on most of the local restaurant menus ($30 for a 3-piece box of fish and chips?!). Along the way, Jordan gets waylaid in a little playground, where he makes friends with an Icelandic boy whose name neither Jane nor I can pronounce even though he and his dad repeat it for us several times. Finding a little round, hollow play structure, Jordan makes us climb in and pretend to be kids so that he can pretend to be a teacher at school. Returning from the grocery store along the famous shopping street of Laugavegur, we spot the polar bear-themed gift store that Jane and I posed in front of in 2015. We check it out briefly (Jordan cautiously eyeing the animatronic polar bear, which has been moved indoors and deprived of its cub since we last visited eleven years ago), and I buy a little gift for a work colleague. Dinner is in the hotel; the hotel staff kindly let us use the downstairs lounge, where we sprawl out our snacks and sandwiches. Jordan does good work on his pasta, and I go for double sandwiches: an egg salad with small shrimps, and ham/egg/cucumber. Father and son each enjoy a fruit smoothie.
In the evening, after Jane and Jordan go to bed, I head out on an outing that I’ve been looking forward to for a long time: an evening stroll through old-town Reykjavik and its colourful, beautifully designed streets. Jane and I never had a chance to see much of Iceland’s capital city after dark eleven years ago - that time on account of our exhausting itinerary, and one fortuitous nighttime excursion to see aurora borealis for the first time in our lives. But in light of my recent nighttime photography kick, I’m excited to go wandering and chasing the light at dusk. Reykjavik is a uniquely beautiful city with many different faces. In some of its public squares and larger buildings, it feels like an old-European capital; in many other streets and house façades, clean lines and boxy shapes evoke Scandinavian simplicity. There are bits of grunge and industrialism (the harbour, the ubiquitous construction), and there are bits of quiet romanticism (lamplight and winding alleys). I wander down to the pond to the west of the city center, Tjörnin. Rain begins to pick up, and I get utterly soaked along with my pack and my camera gear; minutes later, the weather is gone, and by the end of my walk I am completely dry. Conditions are perfect for window-light photography, the streets newly wet and beautifully reflective. I wander around the old town, stepping out into the quiet streets to photograph with leading lines. Without realizing it, I pass by the street-level apartment where Jane and I stayed eleven years ago; the location only clicks in my mind as I review my photos later at night. Then, all the way around Hallgrímskirkja and toward the north side of the city center. As darkness sets in, I head back to the hotel, and join the others in deep sleep.
Saturday morning. I wake up with Jordan’s hand slapped across my face (when did he move out of his crib?). It’s the final full day of our trip, and we have literally zero itinerary besides checking out Hallgrímskirkja and heading to the top of the church tower in the morning. After a nice breakfast in our hotel’s downstairs lounge, we head out for a little walkaround in the stroller. I bring Jane and Jordan to a playground I spotted the previous night, near the guesthouse where Jane and I stayed on our previous trip. Jordan spends a good hour playing here, climbing up and down the metal slide and again pretending to be a schoolteacher in a little house. He points out some dog poo in the playground’s black-sand sandbox (his current refrain for most things he encounters in the world: 為什麼?! (wei4 shen2 me1) “Why?!”). We circle down to the main shopping street of Skólavörðustígur (“Rainbow Street”), where the stores are just beginning to open up on this early weekend morning. We check out the namesake rainbow portion of the street, and Jordan instantly goes zooming off, unable to be stopped or recalled by any parent. He makes another friend here (another tourist family — European, nationality unclear) and they go zooming up the rainbow together. I note that the other child stops when his parents call him. My child does not stop. I go sprinting after him to prevent him from killing himself in the traffic intersection at the top of the street.
We head up the street, to the church, where we are first in line to buy tickets for the church tower elevator ride (along with our trip magnet, which much like our 2015 magnet features puffins, volcanoes, and a geyser). At the top, we admire the sweeping, 360-degree views of the capital city and its surroundings. I shoot some nice photos of the city’s colourful buildings, along with Mt. Esja looming to the north across the bay. The church bell rings at the quarter-hour while we are standing right underneath it; despite signs posted all over the tower warning of this, we and the other tourists are count off guard by the boom, which comes and goes so quickly that Jordan does not even have time to be upset. Later, he complains that I did not take a photo of the bell itself; to his mind, photography should be a complete catalogue of everything he experienced and is interested in. And why not?
Back downstairs, we step into the church and sit in the pews for awhile. I show Jordan the enormous organ pipes at the front and back of the church (“Rocket ship piano!” he cries) and I walk up the aisle with him holding my hand, to show him the church’s altar and tall, basalt-like columns. Then, we head back across the street to chill in the hotel. I stay in with Jordan, giving Jane a chance to go shopping and pick up a few souvenirs for family, work colleagues, and Jordan’s best friend at school. Jordan and I play Sneak-a-Peak while eating a totally healthy lunch of Kókómjólk, Battenberg cakes, and “beicon”-flavored chips. Jane returns, and for the first time in over a week, Jordan gets a proper mid-day nap (in an actual crib and a room), and he takes full advantage of it, sleeping until well past 4 pm. We join Jordan for his nap, and scratch any plans to drive out and look for bounce-pads or museums in the afternoon. Instead, it’s a lazy afternoon and early evening: some more time at the nearby playground,, and some scrounging about for dinner. I initially buy a street-stand hot dog for myself, while Jane and Jordan plan to clean out the grocery stash. But my fatherly intuition kicks in after Jordan uncharacteristically asks me for a bite of my hot dog. I head down the street to take-out a plate of fried rice at the local Thai restaurant; after Jordan is done admiring the hot-dog stand lady in her pink crop-top (“Her 肚臍 (du4 qi2, ‘belly button’ is out”), we head back into the hotel lounge where he devours most of the rice in one sitting. He is still a Chinese baby of Chinese parents, after all. Seven days without a rice dish is seven days too long. We have a quiet night and head to bed early after pre-packing some of our bags for tomorrow’s departure. I stay in, too tired and relaxed to go back out.
On Sunday morning, we have a chill morning. Jordan sleeps in and nearly misses the hotel breakfast; Jane and I take shifts to eat, and eventually I bring him downstairs when he wakes up and asks to join Mama downstairs. I load the car for the final time while they eat. Before leaving the city, Jane and I try to locate the coffee shop where we enjoyed a cookie and a latte on the final day of our 2015 trip (it’s now closed). We instead locate Reykjavik’s only cat café, Kattakaffihúsið, and stop in so that Jordan can say hi to the feline denizens. We sit next to an orange tabby named Floki, who naps as the three of us share a plate of waffles with strawberries and cream. Then, it’s back to the car. On Jordan’s persistent request for a bounce-pad, I route us to nearby options at a local park followed by a shopping mall (there is indeed an Icelandic website that maintains a map of all these things), but both pads are still closed at this point in rainy April. Jordan is bitterly disappointed, but his spirits lift once we start exploring Reykjavik’s largest shopping mall (Kringlan) and locate a children’s play area on the first floor. I take my final photo (and one of the best) of the trip: Jordan driving the Heelers’ car with Bluey sitting in the back.
From the mall, we depart back toward the airport on the Reykjanes peninsula, passing through the suburbs along the way. We stop for a final time near Keflavík to refuel the car and eat lunch (fittingly, in the parking lot of a Bónus grocery store) before heading to the airport in the early afternoon. Rental car dropoff goes smoothly, and we again slog back to the airport terminal through a bitter squall. Once inside, we’re treated to fantastic, family-friendly travel (being ushered to the front of the line at check-in, security, and boarding), though Jane’s backpack (primarily loaded with baby wipes and random snacks) somehow gets sent through the security scanner and hand-checked three times in a row. After more airport lounging, it’s a long return flight to Boston (we arrive at 7 PM local time and are through customs, with baggage, and home by 8 PM). Jordan is excited to finally be home, doing a little celebratory dance as he settles back in, doffs his jacket, and pulls a book off the shelf in the living room. He sits and reads quietly while Jane and I unpack in a frenzy, then whines all the way to bed. Jetlag will have us all up earlier than usual over the next few days, and he’ll begin co-sleeping on-and-off with Jane in the master bedroom’s king bed. In the days and weeks to come, he won’t stop talking about Iceland, about geysers (from which I eventually teach him that you can have mixed feelings about things), and bounce-pads (he’ll keep asking us to re-enact the singular functional bounce-pad we found in Iceland by moving the living room couch’s seat cushion to the ground). Most importantly of all, the trip will have served as a proof-of-concept of the virtues of travelling with a toddler, as Jordan (to my eyes) seems happier, more regulated, and quite appreciative (whether or not he can express it) of the intense family time he shared with us - photography, car rides, weather, warts, and all. That’s been the beauty of our two visits to Iceland: it’s a place that is wild and grand, but somehow intimate and kind at the same time. The landscape reveals something for each of us: adventure and exploration; a new way of seeing the world; a treasured set of memories. Much as we felt coming home in 2015, one gets the sense from such a travel experience that life will never be quite the same. More to come, here and elsewhere, someday soon.
