Glacier Lagoon/Diamond Beach

 Another great nights' sleep - and no hurrying to have everything packed up this morning!  We headed over for breakfast and I took a few pictures to show what a typical breakfast in Iceland looks like - because this is a smaller place, there weren't as many choices but still plenty! And this place DID have cooked eggs at the end along with bacon!

The bottom croissants were my favorite and they were served everywhere we went!

Most of the time they had regular orange juice - here they had a "multi-vitamin" orange juice - tasted a little strange but it was OK!  And the black box to the left of the juice was a WONDERFUL coffee machine - lots of choices and of course they had "mocha" which is what I drink so I was happy!

We saw this at every breakfast - CASTOR OIL!  Oh my gosh!!  I guess a lot of people take a shot of it to keep themselves healthy in Iceland!!  Tom and Matilda each took a shot and said it wasn't too bad!  I declined!

And when I went back to the room, the horses were right outside grazing in the snow!

Today was glacier day!!  And it was pretty chilly and gray outside - wind chill was 17 degrees!

We stopped to take a peek at this skinny waterfall - a far cry from some of the magnificent ones we saw but it was still very pretty!  As gray looking as it was outside, I knew most of my pictures would look black and white!

This glacier is HUGE!  It covers 8% of Iceland!!  We had to trek out to it which took us about 45 minutes each way!

The ice was so unique in places!

We were almost the first ones here so had the glacier to ourselves - lots of warnings about NOT stepping out on the ice!

After the journey back, we were to eat at the restaurant by the glacier - the view was unbelieveable!  Patty and I split a bowl of lamb soup - it tasted like a vegetable soup and was good!

Next up was the oldest church in Iceland, still being mowed by sheep!!  It was cute as can be!

The cemetery was right next to the church - note all the bumps!  Apparently the caskets weren't buried deep enough and the cold weather pushed them up!  

Then it was off to the other side of the glacier - can you tell this side was a LOT more busy?  Again, it was cold and very icy to walk on - yes, we had our crampons on!

Here's some of the steps we had to descend - good thing there were ropes to hang on to!

It was beautiful at the bottom - a definite icy wonderland!

Our final stop of the day was to Diamond Beach - oh my gosh - the beach was just glittering with ice and I can just imagine what it would look like on a sunny day!

The black sand against these "ice cubes" was beautiful!  This is one of my favorite pics as it looked like a huge diamond against the black sand!

Out in the ocean, there were a couple of huge "blue" ice chunks that had broken off the glacier!

This piece of ice kind of reminded me of a Chirstmas tree!

One more picture of the back side of the glacier!

It was a wonderful day, despite the cold and I clocked 20,633 steps that day - I was one tired gal!

Dinner that night was lamb - I had tried it in Greece and didn't care for it at all - but I did try it again - no change in my taste buds, I just couldn't eat it!  But it was placed on a nice bed of mashed potatoes and wonderful gravy along with carrots so I still had plenty to eat!  Dessert was a chocolate lava cake with chocolate syrup and whip cream - yummy!