Iceland, Part I

We decided to travel to Reykjavik for a couple reasons: first, many of our friends have visited and said that it’s beautiful. Also, living in Seattle as we do, flying to Europe is quite an endeavor. We decided to break it up (7 hour flight to Reykjavik, 2 day stopover, then 7 hours travel to Madrid, Spain) in order to get acclimatized and not feel like we live in an airplane 🙂

The flight from Seattle to Iceland is fairly long but it’s also eastbound across eight time zones, so that’s a lot of time. The plan was to sleep most of the flight, but we couldn’t resist the free media Icelandair provides its passengers. The movies on offer were all somehow Iceland-themed, and both of us having never seen it before, Mark chose the Pixar animated film Frozen for us as a matter of basic research. Much later after he passed out, Yana made a better choice by mixing a playlist from a wide range of music, from Bjork and Kate Bush to Sister Sledge and Outkast. But following that and after a brief wait to go through customs at last we were officially in Iceland!

The journey had left our tummies a bit sour, so we bought some black licorice at the airport store. This is a favorite candy of both of ours, so when we put it in our mouths we were shocked and, frankly, horrified to discover that licorice in Iceland is salted (they even sell salted licorice flavored Extra gum!).

Soon en route to Blue Lagoon, the premier Icelandic hot spring resort in the midst of an otherwise desolate volcanic but mossy “moonscape.”

The massive, salty, and opaque blue pool accommodates hundreds and varied somewhat from place to place in temperature but averaged at “very warm bath.” It was just the thing after a long flight and since the wind whipped at high speed and quickly moved the steam emanating from the lagoon across the resort, felt like a being in a humongous hot tub in a winter storm. Yana found a sweet nook with a bench near the bar where it was always warmest. We conversed with a few pairs of friendly Americans and after exhausting our three-drink in-pool limits made our way to the on-site Lava restaurant for a delicious three course meal and complimentary honeymoon champagne.

Unadvertised was the fact that the shuttle into Reykjavik, a 40-minute ride away, ran only once an hour. After missing it by close enough to see it drive away, we taxi’d into town at great expense — but the fancy Volvo had seat warmers, so Yana warmed her tuckus and took a nap while Mark benefited from hearing a lot about the greater Reykjavik area on the way from the driver.

After settling into our AirBnB we journeyed into downtown.

We passed by an old graveyard and a large pond with ducks and geese immediately to the south of the Icelandic Parliament.

After wandering a little we found the central square downtown, complete with an Irish pub, an English pub, a French cafe, an American bar, and a lovely cafe that is also a laundromat. Mark narrowly won both Yahtzee games there.

We returned the next morning for an early lunch before walking toward a nearby cathedral which the taxi driver had also called out.

We strolled through town toward the coast and got some sense for how the people live in Reykjavik.

Getting back into downtown we learned we’d long missed the Whale museum following its change to winter hours and instead made our way to Hallgrímskirkja, the iconic church dominating the Reykjavik skyline.

On our way back we happened into the Lebowski Bar where we found 2-for-1 beer and wine during happy hour, American comedies being screened by projector, and a couple from Kentucky which had just come back from Germany. They warned us that a lot of Germans want to talk American politics! We’ll see how true that is later this month, but meanwhile, the Dude abides.

Our flight to Madrid was at 7:40am the next morning, so we decided to head home early to take advantage of the Airbnb’s washer and dryer. To call the machine we used a dryer was a kindness it didn’t deserve, so we went old-school-fire-hazard and hung our clothes on the radiator.

Jet-lag won this evening, with both of us being unable to sleep (but we were able to watch 3 episodes of Sex and the City!). We met the shuttle to the airport at 4:30am and made our way out of Reykjavik and on to warmer climes: Madrid, Spain.