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Published: October 4th 2015
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I’ve really been getting into the solo-travel hostel life. It's nice to just park your backside in the hostel cafe and chat to whoever about their travels, it often ends up with the whole cafe involved.
It didn’t take long for me to realise that Iceland is just too expensive for my budget and anything other than eating, sleeping and walking is pretty much out the window. I spent all day Monday walking along the waterfront and back through the city. The mountains on the other side of the bay are stunning and quite a few Icelanders have said to me that once the mountains turn white, summer is over. Well, in the time I’ve been here they've certainly become white. I stopped off for lunch at a cheap but tasty Vietnamese place and found a supermarket to buy some pasta for dinner.
I'm training for a half marathon in Portland in three weeks, so I needed to get at least one run in whilst I'm here. I prefer to run with other people and had found a running club on the internet that do a long slow run every Saturday from the swimming pool so I thought I'd
try and join them.
I got a bit of a scare when I looked out of the hostel window in the morning to see that everything had a coating of snow, which made the 3km run to the pool a bit treacherous. When I arrived and started asking the group of runners, who had congregated outside the pool, if it was OK if I joined them they looked a bit confused. Apparently the group club that normally runs from there hadn't turned up and by coincidence this other group had decided to run from there.
They turned out to be a great bunch of people and were very welcoming. We did a loop around the city which is well equipped with separate cycle and pedestrian lanes. It's a great place to run and I'd recommend looking up the
IR Skokk running club if you want a nice social run with some lovely people.
I ended up doing about 24km in total which I think is the furthest I've ever done before. I got back to the hostel, had a shower and spent most of the rest of the day dozing. I know it's not the best use of my time in
Laugardalur Swimming Pool
You couldn't take photos inside the pool so I pulled this of google. You can tell I didn't take because it's sunny. a great city like this but the running wiped me out and I really needed it.
Sunday started well with a fb message from Anne to say that Glastonbury tickets were booked and it looks like everyone I know who wanted tickets managed to get them.
A wander to the shop told me it was wet and cold, so obviously the thing to do on a wet and cold day is go to an outdoor pool. Even more sensible is to walk for 45 minutes to get to the wet and cold pool through the wet and cold weather. I went with my American roommate John who gave me loads of advice about traveling around the USA. By the time we got to the cold and wet pool we were very cold and wet.
The facilities at the pool where actually amazing and the best thing was it was only £3 to get in. It was all geo-thermally heated, so was actually quite warm and I enjoyed sitting in one of the many hot tubs whilst it was raining. There’s no chlorine used in the pool so it feels nice and fresh but because of this they
were very insistent that you shower thoroughly and naked before getting in. It didn’t bother me much but being told that you must get naked was a little bit strange. Quite a few people had recommended going there rather than spend £46 going to the Blue Lagoon. If you come to Reykjavik It's well worth a visit (
check it out on tripadvisor).
Highlights
• Running a loop round the city and talking to the locals about Reykjavik marathon.
• Jumping in the freezing cold tub at the pool the running over and jumping into the geo-thermally heated pool.
Lowlights:
• Cold & wet, the bloody rain is relentless,especially when combined with a freezing cold wind.
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