Ion

I spent 10 amazing days in Iceland during July with Alex. We saw the midnight sun, explored an extinct volcano, crawled though ice crystal caves, and vacationed at the best hotel in the country - the Ion Luxury Adventure Hotel, as reviewed in the NYT and featured in the Design Hotels Book. I for one thrive on unique experiences and the interior designs of the world's most inspiring hotels.

We got lost on the way there from Reykjavik, and thankfully had an offline map on my iPhone and the hotel's GPS coordinates (64.71.19 N, 21.15 .95 W). Outside the city, the options for luxury were few, but the Ion with its emphasis on design and close proximity to the golden circle (Glufoss, Geysir, and Þingvellir) was a perfect place to relax. The majority of Iceland’s best accommodations are in its capital, where the country’s first five-star hotel is scheduled to open in 2018 next to Harpa, the glass-and-steel concert-and-conference hall towering over Reykjavik’s old harbor. Below are some shots of the Ion and its nearby scenery:

A triangularization effect in the shots above I wrote on the plane ride over (which you can download from my computational photography package on Github). Below you can see an ice-cave that we visited and a snapshot of this filter working over time on the right.

Skaftafell icecave, Iceland

Filter preprocessing: Gradient Detection and Mesh sampling