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Published: September 16th 2007
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I decided to take the Thursday off instead of working, even though we were leaving from Heathrow at 8pm, I new it would be a late night.
Cam wandered to Walthamstow, and we headed on the Tube thru central London towards Heathrow.
After checking in and ensuring we had a window seat (at night). If any of you know me, one thing I’ve always wanted to see is the aurora borealis. (Aka, the northern lights). This was the closest I had ever been to the Artic Circle and therefore my best ever chance to see the lights, unfortunately even though we were flying into Iceland at midnight it was still dusk. They do call it land of the midnight sun during summer.
On flying into Reykjavik, we land and find the quietest airport on earth. Cam and I found ourselves whispering for some odd reason. It was quite unusual. You could have heard a bee fart.
The capital is around 40 k from the airport so we jump on a bus and head to the city, the driver stops to let us off and assures us we are just round the corner from our hostel.
Well
after walking around the corner, and the next corner, and the next, we are lost and no where near our hostel. We then find that drunks who were piling out onto the street at 2am were very friendly and helpful at pointing us in the right direction. The most expensive hostel yet. 200 bucks a night for a very small hostel room. We are WELCOMED to the most expensive country in Europe.
The next day we wander the town’s streets and map out our journey for the next few days, relaxing in some hot natural springs in the afternoon as the rain fell was quite an unusual experience. Iceland is full of Geo-thermal activity and there are numerous hot springs.
We thought we would head out for dinner, but the average main meal costing around 50-60 bucks we made our own meal back at the hostel and then headed out on the town. We found the live music scene in Reciavik was kicking as it was Jazz festival time. The rounds were very expensive, Beers were around 12.50 and Cam paid nearly 25 bucks for Jonnie and coke. So we really made our drinks last that night.
After about 50 seconds after picking up the car from the centre of the city, we hit the country. You see Iceland has a population of about 300,000 people and is about the size of the UK. The UK has about 60 million. Therefore, the capital was not overly big.
During the day we walked across the continents of the Americas and Europe. U see the continental shelf Americas and Europe pass basically straight thru the middle of Iceland.
We visited a Geyser that would blow up and shoot hot boiling water over our head. A huge waterfall, but best explained in the photos.
The next day we headed to the biggest Glacier in Iceland, wacked on some crampons and headed up on the Ice. Actually we really paid a large some of money and went with a tour guide from NZ. Who took no time into ripping into Cam and I with every joke he could muster about Aussies and us being the troublemakers of the group we gave it right back to him. It was actually quite sad as he told us of a storey of a few Germans who had been lost in the
crevices of the Glacier only a month before.
On driving onto our next hostel, cam yells to me to STOPPPPP. I pull over and we head over a hill, on the crest of that hill what I saw was probably one of the most amazing natural wonders I have ever laid my eyes on. A huge Glacier carves its way down the mountain and meets a lake, with deep blue icebergs floating everywhere while seals played around in the water on a sunny clear skied day. One of the opening James Bond sequences was filmed here.
On the day we fly out, we head to the Blue Lagoon, the most famous hot springs pool in Iceland. I love these geo thermal pools. So relaxing.
On landing back in London, I try and catch the tube back to Walthamstow, but unfortunately there’s a tube strike and have to catch a bus home. Sitting on the bus thinking of what I had to do at work the next day my mind seemed to keep wandering back to the geo thermal pools I had been in earlier that day.
Well the folks turn up on Monday, I haven’t seen
them in 9 months so it will be great to catch up again. We will be touring the UK and Europe over the coming 5 weeks. In october we then head to Egypt to cruise the Nile and then off to New York, Boston and Niagara falls.
See you all soon....
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Em
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lucky bastards!
wow that looks amaaaaaazing!! i can't believe you guys are still travelling! I'm so jealous! Iceland! Egypt! I feel like I'm stuck in a MASSIVE time warp, bosnia/serbia was that long ago. And there shall be no more travelling for me for at least three years, thats forEVER! (Unless you count conferences, which I do, but thats a wee way off too). Have fun, imagine I'm there whenever you meet a nzer, its the only way i'll get to go places, haha