The next day we came back to our own route, and the first thing on it was Jökulsárlón again. This time we did it differently. Instead of the main car park by the bridge, we drove to a parking area further east, one that most tourists never use. There is a network of trails out here on the sand, and one of them runs all the way from the glacier in the national park down to Diamond Beach, about seventeen kilometres end to end. We did not do the whole thing. We walked a little over two kilometres of it, out to a quiet stretch of the lagoon.

It was worth it. The busy side by the bridge is a fine place, but here we had the lagoon almost to ourselves, just us and a handful of other people. You get close to the water, and it is quiet enough to hear the ice. The same icebergs, the same glacier behind them, but without the crowd it is a different experience. This is the lagoon the way you want to see it.

After that we drove on to Fjallsárlón, another glacier lagoon a little further west. It is smaller than Jökulsárlón and much quieter, though not empty, because there are small boat tours here, inflatable rafts that take people out among the icebergs. What Fjallsárlón has is the view. From here you look back across at the other glaciers coming down off the icecap, a wide sweep of ice, and the lagoon sits right under its own glacier with the bergs close in. It was calm and beautiful, and we spent a while there before heading on toward the campground as the weather cleared.