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Just got back from a 3-hour soak at Bláa lónið, the Blue Lagoon in Iceland. It's a big natural pool full of geothermally heated water, silica and minerals, algae, and all sorts of things that are supposed to be very good for you. It's also full of tourists, and old European dudes in Speedos. I'm not convinced either one of those is as good for you.

Thanks to my early Icelandair flight from Seattle to Reykjavík, I caught Reykjavík Excursions' first bus from Keflavík Airport, arriving at the Blue Lagoon just at opening time, 9 AM. We had secure storage for our luggage and I opted to rent a swimsuit (€5 or €7 or something) rather than deal with soggy swimwear for the rest of the day's travel. It fit!

They give out snazzy plastic wristbands with a chip (RFID, I presume) inside, which you then wave in front of sensors to perform various tasks: entering and exiting, locking and unlocking a locker, and even buying drinks at the poolside bar!

I learned that I'm totally spoiled by the Friedrichsbad, a spa in Baden-Baden, Germany ("Wallowing in luxury"). In perfect German fashion, the Friedrichsbad experience is completely directed and scheduled. Numbered signs in each room, in four languages, instruct visitors exactly which room to enter, what to do, how long to stay, and where to go next. Helpful Frauen are everywhere to make sure things stay on track. At the Blue Lagoon, even though I'm normally an instructions-reader, I somehow blundered around and made my way to the water in blatant disregard of numerous rules which were documented in, among other totally obvious and helpful locations, tiny print on the inside of the locker. (Silly me, I assumed print in the locker was about the locker - and I had already figured out the locker because the locker was easy and also because they had already explained it, but nothing else, in detail at the registration desk.) I totally missed the thing about showering nekkid before entering, which earned me the misplaced admiration of a few other American women who were squeamish about showering nekkid. (Friedrichsbad: all nekkid all the time. But no poolside bar.)

Nobody threw me out for my transgressions, although I did witness a lifeguard try to throw out a 9-year-old girl because someone had given her the 8-year-old-color wristband which meant she must either put on safety water wings as required of all 8-year-olds, or she and her parents must leave the pool, get dressed, and go back out to the reception area to exchange it for a correctly-colored wristband. Her parents stuck her in water wings, as I'm sure I would have done, but it pained me to watch the kid (Australian or New Zealander, it sounded like) get demoted from age 9 to 8 by some well-meaning but emotionless Scandinavian lifeguard. Wonder what she'll think of her trip?

I had read online that it is important to use a ton of conditioner in one's hair and leave it in before entering the pool, due to the tendency of the silica not to want to rinse out later. I found this to be useless advice - the conditioner isn't thick enough to last in the water. Fortunately, I don't have much hair, it seemed to rinse fine, and my hair would probably style wonderfully with silica in it anyway. I had also read online that it is important not to apply silica mud to oneself directly off the bottom of the lagoon, which I also found to be useless advice since there wasn't any mud on the bottom of the lagoon, just rocks. I agree that one should not apply rocks to oneself. My conclusion is that people online are idiots, and I do not recommend listening to any of them.

[Update: a couple of young women across the cafe from me just started touching their hair, and each other's, and making faces about how presumably yucky and silica-y it feels! Perhaps I have underestimated!]

Anyway, I floated around in the pool a whole bunch. Much later, I discovered that the tiny print on the inside of the locker also advised to be careful not to get silica in one's eyes, and I can attest that this would have been a good thing to have known more about in advance. I assumed that silica would probably damage my glasses, but didn't think about how uncomfortable it would make my contact lenses. A few freshwater showers made things much better.

The other reason it made me miss the Friedrichsbad was that I never really figured out what the point was or what I was supposed to do. So I floated, I applied a purified silica mud mask out of the boxes on the edge of the pool, I rinsed under a waterfall a few times (natural geothermal mineral waterfalls are smelly - Friedrichsbad's is, too), I sweated in a hot steam bath, floated some more, and watched everyone else floating around seemingly trying to figure out what to do, too. Or is that what other people call "relaxing"? I don't get it. How do I unlock the Achievements?

All kinds of languages floated around with the steam in the pool - a lot of English, a lot of German, a lot of Spanish, some Russian, and bunches of Scandinavian languages I can't distinguish from one another. A pruny United Nations indeed.

One of the funnier moments was when a tour group, bundled in layers and fur-lined parkas, showed up on the edge of the pool to take pictures of us! I cannot imagine visiting the Blue Lagoon just to look.

Anyway, I floated around some more, then decided to head to the locker room a little early to make sure there'd be no chance of missing my bus back to the airport. I found huge queues for the tiny number of shower stalls with privacy doors - and breezed by them to shower in one of the many open stalls, like a brazen (continental) European. :) Get over yourselves, people.

I had a tasty banana smoothie in the snack bar. Since the placement of the exit doors forces everyone to go through the gift shop on their way out, I didn't feel too guilty about using all the "testers" of all the beauty products and then not buying any of them. :) As I left, the line coming in had grown huge, making me appreciate all the more that we'd had the entire place - lockers, showers, WCs, pool, steam rooms) to ourselves when our bus first arrived.

I made it back to Keflavík Airport in plenty of time to find that my flight to Gdańsk is delayed. So I'm sipping chai and blogging via airport (not-free) wi-fi, now ready to wander around and pick up a few more photos of Iceland before moving on to the next stop. I'll be back here, visiting the city of Reykjavík, on the way home in September!

See all my pictures from Iceland on Flickr: Ísland 2010 Set

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