- Start of day: Laugarvatn, Iceland
- End of day: Húsafell, Iceland
We said goodbye to Birna’s cottage.
We packed up and made our way to Húsafell, via Thingvellir National Park.
Þingvellir (or Thingvellir) is a UNESCO World Heritage site where the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates are visibly pulling apart, creating a dramatic rift valley with visible fissures and cliffs. They make a big deal out of this, and you can even scuba here. It’s also historically significant as the location of Iceland’s ancient parliament (Althing), established in 930 AD, making it one of the oldest parliamentary meeting places in the world.
After Thingvellir we took a bit of an indirect route, so that we could make a couple of planned stops.
Road construction surprise
Along the way we were caught by a red light kind of in the middle of nowhere, in front of a utility truck. I’d say we were at that light for a good five minutes wondering if we were doing some dumb tourist thing, but no… they were redoing the road and shuttling cars down one lane of the two lane road.
Anyway… no big deal, and we were off again.
Stops along the way
First stop was at a computer store in Borgarnes. For some reason my Apple Watch charger decided to stop working. The computer store was in a mini-mall, so we did our grocery shopping there, too.
Our next stop was a quick 20 minutes up the road at a mini-mart / gas station / restaurant called Baulan, where we were able to do a fast charge on the car (49 -> 90%) and have dinner outside.
It’s kind of funny… I snapped a quick pic of the English language menu for this place so I could show the kids outside and ask what they wanted. Then, later, I posted it to Google Maps. It’s been viewed more than 14,000 times since then as of December 2025. I’m glad I could help out!
Another 45 minute drive found us at Hùsafell.
Húsafell arrival challenges
We still didn’t have directions from the Airbnb host. I’d texted her AND messaged through Airbnb but all we had was that it was a cottage in Hùsafell… which, to use an analogy (exaggerated only a little), is like saying that your rental house is in this one neighborhood near Disney World. Me: “Do you have a GPS for the cottage?” Her: “No, sorry”. So I’m really scratching my head trying to figure out how I’m being the stupid Airbnb guest here.
jfc.
So we’re here now and it’s… fine. One of the door sticks, we accidentally pulled the handle off the door on the other side, the keybox is really sticky, the other door locks itself automatically, there are only two bowls, the TV doesn’t work. Anyways. It’s a place. We got settled, me and the kids went to walk down to the bistro to check things out, they bounced on the rainbow jump pillow, they tried the hot tub for a little bit (mostly swatting at flies).
