Blue Lagoon, Iceland

There are just a handful of countries left in Europe that we have left to visit and Iceland was one of them! We found cheap tickets through WOW Air out of Frankfurt and made the fun trip at the beginning of May. Here are the other European countries we haven't visited in alphabetical order and our excuses haha:
Belarus (hard to get a Visa.)
Cyprus (a bit far... but maybe we can still make it happen?)
Kosovo (we were sooooo close to going when we were in Macedonia, it was on our itinerary and everything, but because of the 3 hour hold up at the border getting into FYROM, we whimped out.)
Moldova (has anyone been? Is it worth a visit?)
Norway (we're going there over my birthday next week!)
Turkey (we should have gone when we first moved here when it was still relatively peaceful... we even booked a cruise last summer specifically to go to Istanbul, but the itinerary was changed two weeks before it set sail and now all of Turkey is banned from traveling to when you're in the Army. Big fat bummer.)
Ukraine (again, not allowed to go when in the Army.)

Anyway! Iceland! The Blue Lagoon! The Golden Circle! Reykjavík! We packed a lot into our 2.5 days!

We've never flown out of Frankfurt as a family before so it was a fun new experience. Also, it was a holiday so we probably saw all of 10 cars on the 2.5 hour drive. It was awesome.

The WOW airplanes are raspberry and are each named with a 3 letter code - we flew "SON". I think we flew "GPA" on the way home... 3 hours later we landed at the Keflavík International Airport. Flying above and looking down at the terrain and landscape of Iceland, it literally looked like we were landing on another planet - I've never seen anything like it! 

Also, we've never seen so many people shopping at a Duty Free store like they were grocery shopping - carts and all! What the??

Mural inside the terminals and a cute girl named Jane.

Whelp, it's not called Sunland lol :) :) :) Fields of lava frosted with moss on the drive to the Blue Lagoon. We got a sneak peek of the "blue" in the "Blue Lagoon" as we were approaching the parking lot. Not even edited, straight out of the camera, it's just that blue! It reminds me of blue milk, which doesn't exist, but if it did, this is what it would look like.

Welcome welcome! Out on the Reykjanes peninsula between Keflavik and Reykjavik is one of Iceland's top attractions. Set in an amazing black-lava field the lagoon is fed with milky-teal water from the nearby Svartsengi geothermal plant creating an incredible spa. The lagoon has been developed for visitors with a cool modern complex with changing rooms, a gift shop, and restaurants.

The kids were freaking out walking from the indoor changing rooms to outside because it was raining (not torrentially, but still enough to get wet in a jiffy) and windy and cold. But as soon as they got into the hot springs... they were more than happy campers, they were in heaven!

Before I hopped in I took a few photos of the site.

This place is straight out of Pinterest ;)

I saw other people had their phones with them in the water so I jumped on that bandwagon. If you don't document, it didn't happen right?!

So. Flippin'. Cool!! And so dreamy with the fog!

The superheated water is a mix of 70% sea water and 30% fresh water and an average temperature of 38 degrees C, or 100.4 degrees F. Perfection.

The water is rich in blue-green algae, mineral salts, and silica mud which give the lagoon its characteristic color as well as conditioning and exfoliating the skin. We came out all soft and silky.

Again, straight out of the camera, the water is this blue!

The kids didn't even notice, nor did we, that it was raining. The warm water kept us, well, warm!

There are swim up bars and facial mask booths. We tried a smoothie and it was so good! "Skyr" is kind of like Icelandic Greek yogurt, but even thicker and richer in protein.

Two thumbs way up!

We swam around for about two hours and it was just so chill. No one gave us mean stares for having young kids (there was only a couple other babies), we could eat and drink in the water, we didn't get yelled at for splashing... We just really appreciated how relaxed the whole experience was.

We knew it was a successful outing when the kids repeatedly asked to go again! While we would have LOVED to do just that, you have to book in advance and it's pretty expensive, so, sorry kids, once in a lifetime opportunity! You can come back with your own families! :)

Snippets from flying to Iceland and heading straight to the Blue Lagoon:

Our family in the Blue Lagoon, Iceland on Monday May 1st 2017.

The next day we drove through the Golden Circle!