Reykjavik, Iceland

Back on the road again. After a long time. It took me a while to get here but now I’m back in the travelling mode. I’m travelling this time with my mom and Larry. And our first stop is Reykjavik. When booking our flights to Germany, we decided that Reykjavik would be a good stop over…which Iceland Air allows you to do. None of us have been here before, we’ve heard only great things and why not throw in an extra adventure. And what an adventure! We arrived at 7 in the morning. 3am for our body clocks. It was still pitch black out. It was like it was the middle of the night. The sun didn’t come up until 9:20. And then at 2pm it already started feeling like it was late afternoon when the sun is low in the sky.

We rented a car at the airport. Since we weren’t going to be able to check in that early at the hotel, we went for a driving tour straight from the airport. We drove around the little western peninsula through a few little villages and lots of barren countryside. It doesn’t help that it’s late fall, but the land looked completely barren, forlorn and frankly quite uninhabitable. No trees. Grassy tundra like plains at first, then it changed to fields and piles of lava rock as far as the eye could see. At times I felt like I was in a forbidden territory. Then we rounded a corner and saw the billowing plumes of steam from the hot springs. Not far behind were a few tour buses heading to the popular Blue Lagoon Thermal Baths and Spa. I had read somewhere that you could have breakfast there. So that was the plan, breakfast at the Blue Lagoon and then a dip in the medicinal waters.

Well. Things didn’t work out as planned. The weather was not very cooperative. We arrived to very high winds. Gale force winds. Like 100 km/hr and more winds. Some thought they would have been the last remnants of Hurricane Sandy. My mom, the walker and me were practically all blown over at once when we walked out of the airport door. And though the actual air temperature was only 0C, the wind chill must have been at least -15. It was very crazy. We managed to walk from the car to the Lagoon entrance, a path built through the lava racks, without freezing or getting blown over. Then we discovered that breakfast at the Blue Lagoon actually means eating sandwiches wrapped in plastic and tasting like cardboard. And that we didn’t really want to get into bathing suits and get wet in that weather! There were a number of hardy tourists that did…but not us.

By the time we got to Reykjavik and found our hotel it was noon and we were lucky to have our room ready for us. We settled in and then headed out into the cold, windy city. We walked through the main streets of the old town, stopping frequently in shops to warm up and have coffee. It’s pretty pedestrian friendly and accessible. The coolest thing is that their roads come up to meet the sidewalk at certain crossing points. So you don’t have to step down into the road. And it provides a speed bump at the same time for the cars. Quite clever, I thought. The second day was going to be our see-more-of-the-countryside-and-spectacular-natural-wonders day. We set out after breakfast only to discover that the winds seemed to be even more powerful than the day before. Driving along the harbour you could see the waves spraying and crashing right over the wall onto the road…like you would see in tv hurricane coverage reports. Very crazy. We drove for a little while. Made it out of town a little ways when we had to abandon the whole idea. It was just too hard to drive in that wind. And seeing a sign that indicated winds were at 140km/hr clinched the deal. We had a nice lunch in the hotel restaurant, where we also had dinner.

In the afternoon we ventured out again to go the museum which was very near to the hotel. We borrowed a wheelchair for my mother to make it easier for her and whipped on over in the wind to what we thought would be the museum, but actually turned out to be the art gallery. It was interesting but not very spectacular or large. So we got through it in no time. We noticed that the city seems to be very young. Lots of young people around the area that we were in. Lots of bars and coffee shops too. (Of course, it could be that everyone else was just smart enough to stay indoors.) Yesterday evening was the Tuborg Christmas Beer parade. The first kegs of Christmas beer were opened and as the evening wore on the bars got more and more busy. We didn’t actually see the parade, but saw some of the revelers on a short walk later in the evening when the wind had finally died down some. This morning when we left at 5am to get to the airport there were still quite a number of people staggering about. They didn’t look like they were enjoying themselves so much anymore.

On to Germany.

PS. The pictures are Larry's. I have my camera along but don't seem inspired to use it much...I think because there are many other things to do...and Larry's so good at it and doesn't mind sharing.