fh_trips | Lake Hotel Egilsstadir, Iceland

Lake Hotel Egilsstadir is a renowned, family-run hotel resting on an old, pine-like Icelandic farm culture.

The students are in modern-style rooms, while the teachers and ~~moochers~~ their guests were in antique-styled ones.

[ooc: room assignments!. NSFW in personal journals please!]

At the hotel's restaurant, ambition and devotion are paramount. The cuisine is based on traditional recipes, but the ingredients are often placed in a new and progressive context. Ingredients are always first-rate, mostly Icelandic, often organic and often sourced from the immediate vicinity, as efforts are being made to utilize and promote products from the district.

You guys know the drill by now, right?

[ooc: Add which bus you're on in the subject line for interaction and remember that your conversations will be heard by everyone on that bus. Because bus. :D]

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This is a very picturesque area, the largest forests in Iceland can be found here. Our journey will then take us through expansive areas of desert-like wasteland. There is a stark and threatening kind of beauty, which is greatly enhanced by a strong sense of isolation, as mountains span the horizon, making this drive an amazing experience in itself. The region is not entirely lifeless, reindeer sometimes graze on the frozen moors of Modrudalsoraefi (Möðrudalsöræfi).

We're stopping to see the most isolated farm in Iceland and visit the farm´s coffee house. At 469 m this is the highest restaurant in Iceland. As you approach Möðrudalur, you can't miss the unusual church built by an eccentric nineteenth century farmer on his farmland. You get time to enjoy a bite to eat at the café (maybe you would like to try a kleina (a traditional Icelandic pastry) with your coffee?)

We drive on to Dettifoss Waterfall, the most powerful waterfall in Europe. While standing next to this giant waterfall, we will actually feel the earth trembling beneath our feet. These trembles are not earthquakes: they are caused by the sheer force of the water.

Traveling through magnificent scenery we will arrive at the softer, greener, and totally surreal scenery around Lake Mývatn. We'll stop to admire the incredible geothermal fields at Namaskard (Námaskarð). You will be astounded by their multi-colored splendor, as technicolor mud pools bubble, steam vents hiss noisily, and a lunar-landscape surrounds you. The theme of unearthly vistas continues at the crazy lava formations at Dimmuborgir. This place is known as ´the Dark Castles’. Your guides will tell you how they were formed and share some local Icelandic folklore with you.

Up early in case I sleep in tomorrow morning.

As if Kanan could pass up the opportunity to try a local pastry? He'd been neglecting his sweet tooth since this trip began, and the chance to take a seat in a quiet corner of the café and just decompress for a little while was much appreciated.

After all, it'd be back on the damn bus before long, anyway.

Sabine had less interest in the farmhouse than most of the other stuff they'd seen, so she was fine ducking into the cafe. And even if she was only getting a coffee and a pastry, at least she was eating normally instead of running off to see more stuff and forgetting.

For a girl who specialized in explosions, the rumbling from something natural like this was pretty neat.

Maybe she was coming up with ideas for waterfall-colored explosions.

"Enjoying the trip?" Sabine asked him as she waited for her order.

"So far, so good," Kanan replied, smiling faintly as he glanced up at her from his seat. "It's a beautiful place, I have to give it that."

A pause.

"Lots of waterfalls."

Every day, a new waterfall or three.

"You?"

"My phone says I've taken almost 900 pictures," she said.

So, yeah.

"I... I've managed to completely forget to take any," Kanan admitted, laughing faintly. "So, you're finding plenty of inspiration here, are you?"

Quiet, until now. Because Summer was totally going to snag up a chance to catch up with her bestie between Instagram updates. And since it was Thursday and they'd usually have their class right now, it seemed an appropriate time, anyway.

"'Sup, currently-not-BDG?" she asked, plopping down in a seat across from him and melting into it all relaxed-like almost immediately. It was funny, really, how one could spend so much time sitting in a bus and then find relief in sitting more, on the simple fact that this sitting wasn't on a bus. "What'd you make of Iceland so far?"

"Beautiful place," Kanan offered, and then laughed faintly. "About ready to go home, though. Much as I'm enjoying the three million waterfalls."

Honestly, if ever he decided to embrace the proud tradition of Jedi hermits living in solitude, here seemed like as good a place as any.

"How about you? What's your selfie count at so far?"

"There may be a couple projects in the works." Like painting a basement pool ceiling. And future hair. "There are too many details in things I don't want to forget later."

Certain parts kind of reminded her of home, but in a good, unspoiled way.

Kanan knew a bit of that, himself, nodding a little.

"It's the lights that caught me the most, I think," he noted. "There's something about them that..."

... Well, that reminded him of somewhere he could never return to. He shook his head.

"I might come back again sometime, on my own terms. When I'm not rushed off and onto a bus a half-dozen times a day."

"Oh," Summer sort shrugged casually as if talking about the weather, "only about a million."

And she would still be losing a selfie competition with someone else if either of them had the foresight to think of such a thing.

Of course, this only prompted Summer to lift her phone and snag a quick one right then and there and post that, too. "A million and one," she updated. "And just you wait until I go have a look at some more of those cute sweaters."

Edited 2019-02-21 14:17 (UTC)

Kanan turned a bemused glance in the direction of the sweaters in question.

"Those are cute, huh?"

... He'd pass on those, anyway.

Kanan. Kanan. B.D.G. You had to know by now that drawing attention to them was a sure-fire way to get yourself stuck with one as a gift, right?

"Well," Summer amended, "not the cutest ones I've seen on the trip so far, but there's a lot to be said about some nice genuine touches if you're going for a whole Nordic comfy-cozy snow bunny look. Which, for the record, can be very complimentary to my autumn coloring."

You asked, BDG. You asked

"That's what I keep saying. I don't mind running around to see new things, but there are definitely places I wish we could see more of," she said. "Not that I know when I'd get back here."

Lake Hotel Egilsstadir, Iceland

Hotel

Rooms

Breakfast Buffet

Minibuses!

And We're Travelling!

On the Minibuses

Modrudalur (Möðrudalur)

Dettifoss Waterfall

Geothermal fields at Namaskard (Námaskarð) and Lava Formations of Dimmuborgir

OOC!

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