We woke up early this morning, and Pierre went for a run. So I was first under the shower and: achievement unlocked, first egg shower of the trip! We had strong memories of hot water really smelling like sulphur on our first trip, but we hadn’t experienced it yet on this one – this is now fixed 😀

Our first hesitation of the day was pondering whether we wanted to go to Hengifoss, which seemed to be a beautiful waterfall, but slightly out of our way. Additionally, some of the comments on Google Maps made me fear that the hike would be beyond my abilities. But I was reasonably rested, the waterfall did look very pretty (and high), it was still quite early in the day – so we decided to go.

I was fairly reassured when we arrived at the parking lot at the bottom of the hike: it looked FEASIBLE. Not easy, but feasible. And indeed, the ascent didn’t pose much of a problem – slow and steady wins the hike, etc etc. And the waterfall was splendid.

Going down was somewhat more challenging (I’m not very good at uphill, but I’m very bad at downhill), but we still managed with ALMOST NO DRAMA and overall it was a great hike.

We got a piece of cake and a coffee at the café next to the parking lot as a reward (and, most of all, as an essential break) before deciding what to do next.

Our next candidate (and next hesitation) was Petra’s Stone Collection. We were both very interested, but it did require going back all the way to our starting point, rather than being able to catch another more direct road south. We finally decided to do that, and am I glad we did.

It’s the private collection of a woman, Petra Sveinsdóttir, who collected stones during her whole life and displayed them in her home and garden. She passed away in 2012, but the museum lives as a family endeavour, and the whole thing brought me so much joy to see – such a labor of passion and love is to be commended. And obviously the collection itself is both impressive and has stunning pieces.

This is just a small corner of a part of the whole exhibition (and we have Pierre hiding in the middle of… pierres 🙂 ) (yeah that one only works in French) (he’s also been called a rock star, so that works). Anyway, I’m so happy that I got to see this place, which felt really special.

For the rest of the day, we mostly drove down the coast, enjoying the wonderful landscapes – this coast line is incredible. It did help that we had great weather, but still.

We did a last stop at the lighthouse in Hvalnes, which has a very nice view over the sea and the surrounding mountains too.

And we arrived tonight at our hotel, which has a clear view over Vatnajökull, the glacier which is the largest ice cap in Iceland (it covers roughly 10% of the country!). We had dinner, a sunset stroll around the hotel, and had a drink at the hotel bar, which had a good view over the nearby mountains and said glacier.

Little hope of northern lights tonight, the cloud layer that’s been absent for a large part of the day spawned around sunset time…

The photo album for this day is here: Iceland – 2025-08-21.