Ever since Iceland’s economy crashed in 2008, and its currency collapsed, I’d been wondering: Is that place finally becoming affordable? Well, just barely. But we figured it was probably as cheap as it would ever be … c’mon, let’s just do it.

The cusp of summer in New York is also the cusp of summer in Iceland. Temperatures rise to a blistering mid-60’s in May, which is always a great time to travel. But just when things were looking good, the volcano Eyafjallajökull (and yes Theo can pronounce it) blew its fool top off. Air travel in Europe was thrown into chaos, and the southern part of Iceland was under a dark cloud. Air travel from the U.S. was not affected, but you’d never know from the reaction of our friends. They were like “Are you crazy?” Well, maybe a little... but more importantly it was OUR non-refundable deposit at stake, not theirs. So we just crossed our fingers and stayed with the plan.

Our plan: Rent a car for 10 days and driving the Ring Road around the island. Our route went directly beneath the volcano, and one night we were scheduled to stay at a farmhouse inn right under the “Island Mountains” plateau. It was completely looming over us in the background.

Anyone who’s seen the “Lord of the Rings” movies can probably relate — it was like coming on the gates of Mordor, everything dark and ominous and the sun blocked out — except we didn’t see any trolls. And Iceland DOES have trolls, by the way. Driving was also another story. We really noticed it the next morning when the first forty kilometers were through the fallout zone. Some strong winds coming off the ocean to the south started lifting the stuff into an ash storm and a lot of it was piling up. There were actually ash plows and road crews shoveling ash drifts along the sides of the roads! Sometimes, we could barely see that road in front of us. We’d be driving along and then BAM there would be headlights coming straight at us.

Once we escaped the ash clouds, it was pretty smooth going. Blue skies from now on. The Ring Road is a beautiful piece of pavement, 1,800 km around the island. We took it in eight days so we had to cover less than 300 km a day. It gave us plenty of time to take it slow. We’d stop for pictures. Stop for lunch. Stop for a hike. Vacation is supposed to be relaxing, and that’s what we did.

But let me back up and say a couple things about Reykjavík. We spent a couple of days there at the beginning, and two more at the end. Our hotel was in an historic converted milk barn down by the harbor, not too far from the large sculpture of a Viking ship sculpture that’s one of those “most-photographed things” in Iceland. We had one of our best meals right in the old part of the harbor area. It’s the capital so there are tons of shops, especially ones with those famous Icelandic woolen sweaters. The local art scene wasn’t super exciting, but we still had a lot of fun checking out the galleries. Iceland’s music scene is legendary, but the closest we came to that was picking up the new Jónsi album for traveling music because we weren’t really in the city long enough.

First out we hit the three main highlights of the Golden Circle — a huge waterfall named Gullfoss (Golden Falls), the Þingvellir, a rift valley that was the awesome site of Iceland’s thousand-year-old national parliament, the Alþingi, in a spectacular natural amphitheater of rock walls created by tectonic forces ... actually where the European and North American plates rip apart. The third was Geysir — the original geyser namesake— and his sidekick Strokkur. That night we slept under the dark shoulder of the Eyafjallajökull.
We spent the next night at the Fosshótel Skaftafell — at the base of the Skaftafellsjökull tongue of Europe’s largest glacial ice sheet, the mighty Vatnajökull. I wanted a closer look, and so we drove our little little Nissan to the road’s end and then hiked the last half mile over rocky moraines.

Jumping ahead to Myvatn, we treated ourselves to a 90-minute scenic flight around the area. Waterfalls. Extinct volcanic cones. The big blue lake, Mývatn. Hot springs and geysers, and of course geothermal energy plants. From the air you can look down at the blue waters of the local “nature spa.” Back on the ground, we stopped by later that evening, and I rented a locker and towel and clambered out to the pool. Within 30 seconds the silver jewelry I was wearing turned completely black. Huh? Sulfur!

In Akureyri there was a very special attraction. Akureyri is Iceland’s second largest city with a population of about 17,500. It’s cute in several ways, including the interesting church, but the defining feature for Theo was the botanical gardens — known to be the northernmost in the world. As in, closer to the Arctic Circle than any other similar garden worldwide. His saga quest was, of course, to seek out any fuchsias hiding out here. I thought: Fat chance. But sure enough he found ‘em.

By now we were on the northern edge heading west onto the Snæfellsnes peninsula. We had seen weird and wacky churches all over Iceland, but Stykkishólmur had the strangest by far — a bleached bone from a whale’s spine. Yet, a little ways down the road was one of the most enchanting traditional church sitting at the crest of a lupine-strewn hillside near Ingjaldshóll. Inside was one of the most stunning blue ceilings, studded with gold-leaf stars of the heavens, that either of us had ever seen.

It was late afternoon but since the sun sets lazily around 11 p.m. our only reason to hurry was to not miss dinner at the hotel. If you missed that, there was, literally, no other option. Miles from nowhere, and neither deli nor diner in sight. So we couldn’t dawdle too much. But still, we did stop to savor views of the south slope of the Snæfellsjökull, plus the lighthouse at Malariff, overlooking the stony beach and guarded by a black goat apparently on patrol for any pesky trolls.

We made it to dinner on time, no worries. The grilled cod was tasty. And, in the rocky hotel garden I found a stunning collection of Icelandic poppies.

Next morning we went over to the cliffs at Anarstapi. It’s a rookery for screeching gulls, and besides the dangerous cliffs there are some really cool natural arches and blow holes. We lingered too long, of course, but felt in no rush to return to Reykjavík, or begin the other leg of our journey — a short excursion to Berlin.