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Published: March 17th 2007
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It was late in 2006 in sunny Sydney when we were discussing with our good friend Matthew (aka brother in law!) about all the places we were interested in visiting whilst in Europe. The usual suspects like Paris, Rome, Barcelona and Prague came up as did some less visited places like Finland, Lithuania, Belarus and Iceland.................
By the end of our conversation we opted for Iceland as the place of interest because the lonely planet guide describes it as
a place where fashionable young things thrive on coffee, music, sex and beer.............. and yes.......we are young things!...........however it was merely a conversation......little did we know that Matthew, being a keen traveller himself, the next day booked flights for 3 to Reykjavik leaving on Friday 9th of March and returning on the 11th March.
So after a long 4 day working week we packed our bags with every article of clothing that even vaguely suggested warmth as the weather forecast for the 3 days was between -2 and 5 degrees and they were the high for the day!
The British Airways flight was uneventful as was the food .....
Iceland is a very interesting and peculiar place. It
challenges all your senses and things that look familiar actually are not. Icelands scenery is spectacular filled with geysers, waterfalls, ocean, lakes, snow capped mountains and thermal baths with a population of 400,000 people.
Reykjavik, the capital, is also known for its wild night life and the place where beer and vodka shot drinks were invented and they have a very high living standard .....
On the first day we toured the capital, Reykjavik. This took about 15 minutes. It is very small.
They have one main street where all the bars, cafes and really exclusive retail is located. The capital although small is very picturesque surrounded by large snow capped mountain peaks and sea which makes for some beautiful scenery which my camera, unfortunately, struggles to capture.
Whilst doing our tour of the capital we went to the main church, Hallgrimskirkja, made from concrete and took 34 years to build. The cathedral is massive and is quite interesting for its form on the outside and simplicity inside.
We went for a quick coffee (they make good coffee) and then went for a walk along the port via the government run liquor stores as
they are the cheapest in Iceland (still quite expensive). We bought a bottle of vodka in preparation for the
runtur .
The runtur is a ritual that hard working Icelandics do every weekend which involves drinking as much as you can in your own home until midnight, then, you go to the main street and wander from bar to bar.
Lets just say we had a few drinks at the hotel and then began to wander the streets in snow.....and continued at a pub on the main street......here we continued with a fantastic live band playing with a lot of very frienldy Icelandics and some cranky Russian mafia (3) who were talking politics.........the russians were interested in selling drugs....whilst the icelandics were buying me shots of some zambuca tasting drink..........which meant that my runtur consisted of visiting one bar ONLY which apparently doesn't count! Lets just say we left rather happy.............all in all we had a great night and went home at about 3.30am.....
The next day we hired a car and Matt drove 50km out of the capital to the Blue Lagoon a thermal bath facility with very blue water at 38 degrees celcius......all set
in a black lava rocks and surrounded by snow capped mountains. I can honestly say it is amongst the most beautiful sceneries I have ever seen! However, the water is made blue by sulphur, which smells like rotten eggs....................you quickly forget this though when you look at the scenery.......
Here you can put on some silica mud face packs, go into a spa and steamers all in hired swimsuits!!!!!! Once in the water it is very, very hard to leave. The open air thermal water at 38 degrees feels very nice when the temperature is -1 degrees........... We left after two hours!
Next stop was to see another very famous site in Iceland, a geyser located in Geyser..... Matt drove the two hours to get there through some mountain ranges and grass lands. It was a very pretty drive.
Geysers are boiling water blow holes that erupt from the earth...........The geysers erupt every 5-6 minutes and after an erruption you can see the water beginning to boil in a pot like crater in the earth again and then 5 minutes later it blows the water again. These are truly fascinating.......
There are numerous geysers in the one precinct
and they all erupt at different rates to different heights making it a very interesting landscape................we enjoyed this area very much.
It was now around 3.30pm and time to head back to the hotel which was about 1.5 hours away. We wanted to ensure that we left before the sun went down to avoid any issues. The sun goes down early in Iceland.....It was my turn to drive....
In order to get back to the hotel we had to go back over a mountain range and in the following valley was our hotel. The drive comenced smoothly enough but as we reached the pinnacle of the mountains a blizzard dropped...........yes a BLIZZARD. I am not sure if you have ever had the chance to drive in these conditions but let me tell you that it is very difficult and actually quite scarey........it is as though a sheet has been dropped on the vehicle....it is much worse than fog and made all the more difficult with Cris in the back seat saying how pretty everything looked!
The only reference point one has when driving in these conditions is to follow the tracks the car ahead of you has
left.....whilst making sure you are only a maximum of about 15m away to ensure that the tracks don't get covered up by fresh snow. You can not stop either because cars behind you will crash into you or your car gets buried in snow................I was sticking to that car head of me like glue and making sure we kept on driving!
At one point I must have let the distance between our cars get bigger as the snow did cover the tracks.......I am not sure what my face looked like but I looked at Matthew and he looked rather afraid to put it mildly!!!
Cris was still saying how pretty it all looked as she was unaware of what was happening at the front!
I was scared but looked cool calm and collected............ I am sure!
This went on for about 25 minutes..................... before we were able to get away from those weather conditions.
I am glad to say we made it in one piece back to the hotel.....................where we relaxed for a while before going out to eat dinner and making sure we were in bed early ready for our morning flight!!!!!!!!!
All in all
Iceland is a spectacular place and well worth visiting.............
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Cessna152
Jason Smart
A very good read. 2-3 day trips are the sort I like and Reykyavik is somewhere I've always fancied visiting. Out of interest, how much is a pint over there? Is it the most expensive pint in the world like I've been led to believe. My record was a pint in Dusseldorf. Cost 8 euros. So about 6 quid. Nice though!