progress iceland blog

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content/travels/europe/iceland.md

@@ -12,16 +12,44 @@ Here one of my first impressions of Iceland:
 
 The lines that you may see at the bottom of the photo are highways. That might give you some size scale perspective.
 
-Once landed, we went directly to the car rental. We found out through chatGPT about *Blue Car Rental*. We didn't choose one of the international car companies because their prices for insurance were unfair, as cars should already be mostly insured in Iceland, paying extra shouldn't be required. I must tell that my experience picking up the car was way better than what I'm used to with other companies. We just needed to basically scan our QR code that was sent by email after reserving and paying online, go to the counter, confirm that the reservation details were correct, and immediately we got the car keys. All these steps were done in less than 3 minutes; a dream. Of course, we booked the cheapest car available.
+Once landed, we went directly to the car rental. We found out through chatGPT about *Blue Car Rental*. We didn't choose one of the international car companies because their prices for insurance were unfair, as cars should already be mostly insured in Iceland, paying extra shouldn't be required. I must tell that my experience picking up the car was way better than what I'm use km/hd to with other companies. We just needed to basically scan our QR code that was sent by email after reserving and paying online, go to the counter, confirm that the reservation details were correct, and immediately we got the car keys. All these steps were done in less than 3 minutes; a dream. Of course, we booked the cheapest car available.
 
 So here is the first impresion I had on ground from Iceland:
 
 ![Iceland on the ground](/pics/icelandground.jpg "Iceland on the ground")
 
 Yes, there are no trees.
-In the early days of Iceland, there were some trees, but settlers deforested and because of obvious climate and soil conditions none grew back. That created the erosioned landscape that nowadays we see on Iceland. Now, it has become a hobby for icelanders to plant trees and once a year the tree of the year is selected.
+In the early days of Iceland, there were some trees, but settlers deforested and because of obvious climate and soil conditions none grew back. That created the erosioned landscape that we nowadays see on Iceland. Now, it has become a hobby for icelanders to plant trees, and once a year the tree of the year is voted.
+
+![Tree of the Year](/pics/treeoftheyear.jpg "Tree of the year in Reykjavik")
+
+Before officially starting our roadtrip we stopped at a supermarket. Surprisingly the grocery prices weren't much more expensive than in Vienna. Contrastingly, when we went to the cafeteria next to the supermarket, there was when at least my wallet noticed that it was in Iceland. 
+To sum it up, having some food at a restaurant will be very expensive compared to the price of the ingredients at the supermarket; same applies for beers at stores and beers at bars.
+
+In this aspect I started noticing part of the influence that Norway may have had on Iceland. Some products were the same, but also the concept of just allowing supermarkets to sell beer with low alcohol percentage was based on the same principle as in Norway. Beverages with alcohol content must have less than *2.25%*. Beware, on an Iceland supermarket you might find yourself buying beer with almost no alcohol if you aren't aware. For alcoholic beverages one must go to a special shop called __*Vínbúðin*__. So if you go to Iceland and want to drink decent priced alcohol, make sure that you consider a stop at this store in your trip. There are not a, lot of stores on the island and the opening times are very specific, which makes the whole thing a calculation task.
+
+Another simmilarity with Norway for example is the max speed for highways. On Iceland the normal top speed is *90 km/h* for paved roads outside of urban areas. But not everything is the same, there are some different rules when it comes to driving on Iceland. Something new was the rule of having the headlights on the whole time when driving. It doesn't matter if the sun is shining during summer almost the 24h, one needs to have the headlights on. Finally, for the adventurers, offroading is strictly prohibited on Iceland. For that, there are the *F roads*, on which not every car can drive. If you want to go to the highland roads when there, make sure you rent a car that allows it.
+
+During the first day, we first drove west from Reykjavik following the coastline. This same day we had landed at the airport, and around 6 hours of driving through the day were awaiting us. It doesn't sound very exciting, but it was. It was very hard to get tired of the landscapes.
+
+![icelandsnowroad](/pics/icelandsnowroad.jpg "Elevated part of the road.")
+
+The first scenery was a snowed one. We were there during spring, but this views transported us to the winter. This was due to the elevation of this part of the island. The biggest mountain at the background is actually the famous volcano *Eyjafjallajökull*.
+
+Later on we started descending and the scenery turned completely different. We arrived at our first stop, Seljalandsfoss:
+
+![seljalandsfoss](/pics/seljalandsfoss.jpg "Seljalandsfoss")
+
+Something I didn't consider before stepping out of the car, was to take my rainjacket. It was a mistake, I got very wet from the waterfall. Fortunately I dried up by the wind and the sun, but take a rainjacket if you visit a waterfall on Iceland.
+
+
+![icelandpanorama](/pics/icelandpanorama.jpg "Panorama at Þingvellir")
+
 
 Maybe before I go forward telling about my trip, I should give some facts about Iceland that I learnt:
+- The also have the "-tl" ending in some words as we do in Nahuatl.
 
 *This blog is still being written. Come back later to find the finished version.*
 ![icelandpanorama](/pics/icelandpanorama.jpg "Panorama at Þingvellir")
+
+![icelandroadtripmap](/pics/icelandroadtripmap.jpg "Our roadtrip to east, to west, and back")