Tag Archives: Iceland

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Take a Game of Thrones Inspired Tour

Woman with sword

One of the most popular television shows of all time, Game of Thrones has captured the hearts and imaginations of many all across the world. For those of you who want to experience all of your favorite locations in person, here are some of the best Game of Thrones inspired tours to take.

Iceland: Game of Thrones Tour, Reykjavik – Gray Line
The brutal and mysterious landscape of Iceland has featured heavily in the television series, and this tour takes you to some of the show’s most popular Icelandic filming locations. The incredible landscape at the Pingvellir National Park will be one of the first sights that you see, including the Trail of the Wildings from North of the Wall and the stomping ground of the White Walkers. You will also be able to explore the Settlement Era Viking Lodge, which is where a number of intricate scenes were shot, and is also the site of one of the most disturbing massacres to be featured on the show.

Iceland

Malta: Game of Thrones Group Tour – Malta Film Tours
This Game of Thrones tour, offered by Malta Film Tours, is organized and led by two local actors who actually took part in the first season of the series, meaning that it does not really get much more authentic than this, as you will also be able to hear all about the experiences that come from working on the show. The first location that you will visit on the tour is The Gardens of King’s Landing, followed on by the Tower of the Hand. The Shadow Cliffs and the Red Waste come next, followed by King’s Gate, which was the main entrance to King’s Landing. Those who are fans of Ned in particular will especially appreciate the visit to the Main Square, as well as the Street of Steel and Tobho Mott’s Smithy, which was where Ned discovers Gendry. Many of these locations are only available to this particular tour, and the actors leading it have worked alongside the show’s biggest stars, making this the tour of choice in Malta.

Northern Ireland: Stones and Thrones Tour – City Tours Belfast
With Northern Ireland being the primary filming location for Game of Thrones, it comes as no surprise that there are a multitude of tours to choose from here. However, one of the finest has to be the Stones and Thrones Tour, offered up by City Tours Belfast. This is another tour in which you will be able to discover plenty of insider information, as the transportation company used is the same one that transports the cast and crew around the area.

Giant's Causeway

There are two tours to choose from, each lasting around one and a half hours. The first is the Westeros tour, which includes the Giant’s Causeway, as well as other locations such as Cairncastle from the beheading scene, Dunluce Castle, known as Castle Greyjoy on the show, and The Dark Hedges, or the King’s Road. The second is the Winterfell Tour which includes the exclusive opportunity to meet Direwolf Pups Thor and Odin from the show.

Each of these tours provides you with an exclusive insight into Game of Thrones, as well as plenty of photo opportunities. Even if you are not a huge fan of the show, the majority of the stops that each of these tours will make is at a naturally beautiful or historic site, meaning that they are still well worth seeing.

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Prettiest Winter Wonderland Destinations

Winter has the power to turn a beautiful destination into somewhere truly extraordinary, bringing out the best in many places all over the planet. OROGOLD takes a look at some of the prettiest winter wonderland destinations around the world.

Bergen, Norway

Bergen, Norway
For those of you who would like to see the real-life landscapes that inspired Disney’s Frozen, Bergen in Norway is the place to go. Bergen is located on Norway’s southwestern coast, and is surrounded by the Seven Mountains. From here, it is easy to visit some of the most beautiful icefalls and fjords in the country. OROGOLD highly recommends Eidfjord, a 650 foot frozen waterfall, dripping with stalactites, that can only be viewed in the winter. Skiers will love Bergen’s cross-country slopes, most of which are floodlit in the evenings, ensuring that you can have a ski-filled day.

Yellowstone National Park.

Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, USA
The world-famous Yellowstone National Park may be a popular destination in the summer months, but in the winter, it transforms into 3500 square miles of pure winter wonderland. The snowy landscapes are truly unforgettable, and there are many different cross-country skiing and snow-shoeing trails for those who want to really get out there in the white wilderness. If you aren’t too keen on the cold, there are heated winter safari vans available to take you out to explore the park.

Quebec City, Canada

Quebec City, Canada
The charming Quebec City, in Canada’s French-speaking Quebec province, is a great place to embrace the winter, especially during the two weeks in February when the city holds their annual Winter Carnival. Here, activities include ice sculpting, ice canoe racing, dog-sledding and so much more, and there are also skating rinks and toboggan hills throughout the city. The city experiences over 400cm of snowfall each year, and ski lovers will enjoy the multiple resorts and ski slopes available during the winter. For those of you who want to sleep in an icy winter wonderland, OROGOLD recommends Hotel Du Glace, Quebec’s version of an ice hotel, which is only ten minutes away from downtown Quebec City.

Reykjavik, Iceland

SurangaSL / Shutterstock.com

Reykjavik, Iceland
Reykjavik may be blanketed in darkness for the majority of the day in the winter months, but its dramatic winter landscape is still worth seeing. Of course, a visit to the azure-colored Blue Lagoon is a must, which glows beautifully in the dark, inviting you in with its layers of steam. The water is comfortably warm, even when everything around you is covered in snow, and these special waters also contain silica mud, which will work wonders on your stressed winter skin. While in Reykjavik, OROGOLD also recommends a visit to the incredible Golden Falls, as well as to the Strokkur Geysir, which is always alive with explosive activity.

While the winter cold may have its downsides, these are easy to forget when you are in a gorgeous winter wonderland. From the steamy Blue Lagoon in Iceland to the snow-covered landscapes in the Yellowstone National Park, these winter wonderlands are definitely capable of banishing those winter blues!

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Movie Inspired Bars Around the World

Glass of beer in a bar.

With such fierce competition in the food and beverage industry, bars and lounges have had to really step up their game in order to stand out, with many relying on unusual and creative themes, often borrowed from movies. Whether it be an old horror flick or a classic musical, here are some of OROGOLD‘s favorite movie inspired bars around the world.

The Hobbit, Southampton, UK
This Lord of the Rings inspired pub in Southampton, England, may be slightly geeky, but it definitely is popular. With two bars on two levels, a Shire-inspired beer garden, and an extensive menu of themed cocktails and other drinks, Lord of the Rings fans will feel right at home here. If you want to really go all out, OROGOLD recommends trying the Fellowship T-Shirt Quest, which involves drinking each of the 12 cocktails that are named after popular characters, ticking them off on a quest card as you go along. Those who complete the quest are presented with a free t-shirt, as well as the opportunity to sample the limited edition Nazgul cocktail, made up of blackcurrant liqueur, black sambuca and cola.

H.R Giger Bar, Chur and Gruyères, Switzerland
The surreal art of Hans Rudolf Giger will be instantly familiar to any Alien fans out there, and the H. R Giger Bars in Switzerland have been designed by this talented creative himself. Everything about the bars, from their ceilings to the walls to the tables to the floors, are all created in the same biomechanical style that is iconic to the films, with even all of the seats having vertebrae. With added furnishings of props from the films, and extra touches such as the skulls and ribs popping out of the walls, both of these bars are terrifying yet extraordinarily fascinating at the same time.

Lebowski Bar, Reykjavik, Iceland
The Big Lebowski, an American crime comedy movie from 1998, was a huge success, and inspired the Lebowski Bar in Reykjavik, Iceland. The interior of the bar is divided into four different sections; a 50’s diner, a Southern-style porch, a bowling alley, and a 60’s Playboy-esque lounge. Of course, the White Russian is a cocktail that is focussed on, and there are 16 different varieties of this classic drink to choose from, as well as six different milkshakes. With a bar that is made out of rugs, and quotes from the Big Lebowski plastered throughout, this retro American diner is one that will appeal to just about everybody, even those who have never seen the movie.

Movies have served as inspiration for almost every industry out there over the years, from fashion to food. Whether it’s enjoying a Cocoa Puffs White Russian at the Lebowski Bar in Iceland, or sipping on a Gollum cocktail at a quaint English pub in Southampton, these bars, without a doubt, take the movie experience to a whole new level, and should definitely be visited by fans of the movies.

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Safest Countries for Women Traveling Alone

Travel expands the mind and helps you break away from the day-to-day routine that leaves you feeling trapped in a box. This therapeutic effect is one of the reasons many people travel beyond simply getting truly fantastic photos to share with your friends back home. There are problems to consider when you’re a single woman traveling around the world though. Safety is often one of the biggest concerns. OROGOLD typically focuses on helping you look your best, but right now we’d like to help you feel safe the next time you feel the need to travel the world. As a result, we’ve picked a few of the safest areas of the world for you to travel to alone. Some of them may even surprise you.

Ice caves, Iceland

Iceland
No safe travel list is really complete without Iceland. Positive social policies and a constant look for improving their lives make Iceland not only a pleasant place to live, but actually one of the safest places in the world. The crime rate is so low that many people internationally often wonder how the country manages to ensure that it stays that way. The upside to this safety is that you can wander around some truly dramatic landscapes during your visit from green hills to ice-capped mountains. When you tire of seeing the beauty of the landscape itself, then you can retire to the famous Blue Lagoon thermal spring and relax the soreness in your muscles away to prepare for another day of exploring.

New Zealand

New Zealand
As another far-flung location, New Zealand might seem like a quirky choice, but it is actually a fairly safe country. The people, often referring to themselves as kiwis, take great pride in a sort of cultural eccentricity to go with their island home. Much like Iceland, New Zealand is known for some of the most dramatic landscapes. Complementing this is the sheer variety of the landscape that often leaves the mind reeling in awe that so many different places could exist on the island nation. You can tour various locations to learn about the original settlers of the nation as well as their way of life. Or, if none of that interests you, you can at least find one of the kiwi birds the people got their nickname from while you wander around.

Stockholm, Sweden

Sweden
Sweden is often called the gender quality capital of the world. This is a point of pride for egalitarian Swedes who are often quite happy to make use of their English skills to helpfully point people in the right direction. The country, like most of Europe, plays host to truly old cities and a long history for its people. You can spend the day exploring cities such as Gothenburg or Stockholm and run into examples of both their long history and the constant march of progress that the country tries to maintain. While not as safe as Iceland, Sweden does share in the overall safety of the Scandinavia as a whole. As a result, if Sweden isn’t to your liking, then you still have Norway and Denmark to consider as places to travel of similar safety.

Traveling alone any time can be a bit nerve-wracking, but especially when it is the first time you’re going out on your own. Consider this list from OROGOLD as a loose guideline at best as there are plenty of other safe travel destinations around the globe, but these are some of the safer ones with plenty for you to do while visiting. We do suggest that you double check before traveling to any country for any local conditions you need to be aware of such as civil unrest or protests though. It always helps to be aware of the current climate when you’re traveling, after all.

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Surreal Destinations

Although a beach or a city may be your go-to destination for the majority of your vacations, sometimes a visit to somewhere spectacularly unique will give you a much more unforgettable experience. OROGOLD takes a look at some of the most surreal destinations around the world, each of which guarantee that you will feel as though you are in another world.

Waitomo Glowworm Caves, New Zealand.

Waitomo Glowworm Caves, New Zealand
The Waitomo region of New Zealand is home to many awe-inspiring natural attractions, but one of the most popular of them all has to be the Waitomo Glowworm Caves. Only two other places in the world exist that are similar to this, one in Australia and one in Japan, but the caves in Waitomo top them all. A boat ride takes visitors along the underground Waitomo River, into a cave that is eerily dark except for the living lights, provided by the glowworms, that make the ceilings sparkle. This glowworm species is native to the area, and visitors describe this ethereal experience as truly magical. There are also many other caves and grottos in the area that can also be explored by visitors, making this definitely a worthwhile destination.

Antelope Canyon, USA.

Antelope Canyon, Arizona, US
Known by the Navajos as ‘the place where water runs through the rocks’, the Antelope Canyon is a slot canyon in Arizona that has only been made available to the public since 1997, as this is when the Navajo Tribe made it into an official Navajo Tribal Park. The entrance into the canyon is only a few feet wide, and, once in, the temperature drops by about 20 degrees. The curved sandstone walls reflect glints of sunlight, displaying glorious patterns and shapes in warm, vibrant colors. Although there are many other stunning slot canyons throughout the US, Antelope Canyon is one of the most popular, as it doesn’t require any climbing and has the perfect combination of mesmerizing colors, ambient lighting and otherworldly rock formations.

Ice Caves, Iceland.

Ice Caves, Iceland
Each autumn in Iceland, ice caves begin to form on the edge of glaciers, and last throughout the winter. Since these ice caves are temporary, the exact locations can only be determined nearer to the winter, but there are many experienced tour operators to take visitors to the best ones each year. From inside, the caves are constantly sparkling, as though they have been covered with crystals, with an eerie blue/white light glistening on the surface. You can also usually a hear a groaning sound, and although this can often sound as though the cave is collapsing, it is actually the noise that occurs as the cave slowly moves along with the shifting glacier.

The world is full of unbelievable destinations, from caves that glow with the light of glowworms to sweeping pink colored sandstone walls inside one of the most beautiful slot canyons. Whichever one you choose to visit, OROGOLD is sure that you will have a truly memorable vacation, and return home with plenty of surreal photographs!