Advertisement
Published: September 16th 2009
Edit Blog Post
Okay, so I'm slacking on the blog entries. It seems like each day, 75% is spent seeing things and 25% is spent planning things to do next. I don't mind it, really, especially now that my sleeping schedule is beginning to get on track. Each night I write down what I did during the day so that I remember. Seems like a bit of a blur since I landed and catching a cold over four rainy days in Reykjavik didnæt help much, either. I landed in Oslo yesterday morning, but want to catch up on the things that happened in Iceland, so you'll just have to hang in suspense (all 2 or so of you who I imagine check this blog...)
My second day in Reykjavik was mostly dedicated to sleep. I befriended a Canadian man with who was staying at the same place I was (okay, he's really from Seattle) and we headed to the city pool in the afternoon. I feel as if calling this a pool is an understatement when I think about the pool at Brattleboro Memorial Park (that seems to get closed down every year when some kid thinks it's his own personal bathroom.) Because
there are so many hot springs under Iceland, hot water is abundant... and smells of rotten eggs (sulfur.) Showers smell, pools smell, even some of the cold drinking water smells... but it makes heating houses and water nearly free!
'The pools' consisted of hot tubs, two olympic sized swimming pools and one HUGE waterslide. I'll admit, I'm a little scared of waterslides, but Evan and I agreed it had to be done before we left. So, after dipping in hot tub after hot tub, we climbed the stairs amogst several kids who gave us confused looks. The slide was covered and, toward the end, lights of all different colors on the 'ceiling' broke things up. We stayed until about 22:00, taking one last trip down the slide before we left.
One of the many things that is wonderful about Iceland, is that Salmon is insanely cheap. On the walk home, Even and I bought a package for about 480 kroners (about 4 USD.) I ate like a &%£@ bear. We snacked for dinner, then headed back out to the club where danced (yes, danced) and ran into an odd man who claimed to work for Iceland Air. He
was very upset as it was his birthday and his boyfriend (who he informed me was Italian and quite wealthy), hadn't called him. After informing me that he only wore Gucci, we had a shot of some Icelandic liquor, then proceeded to walk down to the hot dog hut (hot dogs are quite popular in Iceland... but are no Fenway franks.) Not to be outdone by the morning before (or Claudia's comments), this time I made it home around 6 am as the sun was coming up. I grabbed my camera and headed to a nearby sculpture park to take photos. Unfortunately, the sun never showed through the light, just clouds. I went to sleep around 7 am.
My thrid day in the city, I went out for the closest thing I could find to an Icelandic dinner. It's hard to find authentic food unless you want to pay an arm and a leg to eat at one of the big hotels. I managed to find a small place and eat the best lamb I've ever had. The sun doesn't really set until about 21:00, so I headed to a huge watertower on top of a hill overlooking the
Gullfloss
Very windy... don't look down :) city (fondly refered to as 'the pearl', but that really only makes me think of Tampons.) My day ended much earlier than the other two, drinking a CHERRY COKE (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) I found at one of the grocery stores that was having an 'American Day.' Heaven.
On my last day in Iceland, I took one of the excursions outside of the city. The 'Golden Circle' tour (feel free to google) is a day tour that takes you first to the Nesjavellir geothermal power plant outside of the city. Funny that in the States we're having an energy crisis while in Iceland they're extremely proud of their power facilities (again, thanks to the hot springs.) From their we went to a spectacular waterfall (Gullfloss.) Words can't do this justice, so you'll have to wait for the photos 😊 Our next stop was a geysir in Haukadalur, where it started to pour rain... but I did get a picture of the thing spouting. Our final stop was a place where the Euroasian and N. American plates come together to form a huge rift. Again, too amazing to describe... pictures to be posted later.
I'm running out of time so I will
stop here. Hopefully I can put some pictures up soon, but these connections tend to be pretty slow and my files are pretty large...
Cheers!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.316s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 10; qc: 49; dbt: 0.0814s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
Sue Tooke
non-member comment
Glad to hear you are having such a good time!
Hi Sister! I am glad to hear you are having such a good time! Don't foget the picutres! Love you!