Iceland

We arrived in Iceland at the height of summer - 15 degrees Celsius and raining! We then drove for an hour through nothing but barren lava plains before reaching civilisation in the form of Reykjavik. It's not the most inviting way to arrive in a country, but things improved. We stayed at the Rekjavik City Hostel. This was great. We had originally booked two beds in a 6-bed dorm, but they upgraded us to a private double room at no extra cost. We were very pleased. The hostel was next to the largest thermal pool in Reykjavik, Laugardalslaug, which was great fun. It is open 24 hours a day and has many 'hot pots'. These are circular pools of varying temperatures in which Icelanders sit around and solve all the problems of the world. Since neither Ellie nor I speak Icelandic, we mainly talked about the Jonas Brothers (in English). :-)

Ellie was horrified to see that it was compulsory to have a thorough, soapy shower before going into the thermal pools, and the helpful signs even highlighted the parts of the body that needed particular scrubbing (feet, hands, underarms and groin, in case you're wondering). The only problem was that people were required to have the shower completely naked and in a large communal shower. Now after many years in the Australian Army, playing various sports and sharing communal showers on Bougainville, I wasn't worried about being seen naked by a bunch of elderly Icelandic women. In fact, at 8am when we got there, the only other women in the communal shower were enormously overweight old ladies. By comparison, I started to feel less like a whale and more like a dolphin, so I sucked my stomach in and leapt into the shower. Ellie refused point blank. To the withering stares of the naked Icelandic whales, Ellie stood under the shower in her bathers, refusing to wash. Later, she enjoyed the thermal pools and 'hot pots' a lot. But she never went back to those showers again. :-)


The next day we did the classic Iceland tour, called the Golden Circle Tour. We visited the Gulfloss, or Golden Waterfalls (top photo), which were very impressive, then headed inland to see Geysir (photo at right), from which we derive the English word 'geyser'. We stopped briefly at an extinct volcano (photo below) and saw the site of the world's first parliament, which has been in use for a millennium and is spectacularly situated in the rift valley where the North American and European tectonic plates are slowly tearing Iceland apart. It was really interesting and Ellie and I sampled tradtional Icelandic meat soup. We tried to find whales and horses to eat, which Icelanders are supposed to enjoy, but failed, and had to settle for a sort of greasy lamb version. Very tasty!

On our last day in Iceland we went out into the harbour and watched the puffins which are nesting there. There were very cute. We then went back through the lava plains to the airport, where Ellie discovered that she'd left her Nintendo at the hostel. The wonderful staff there agreed to mail it to us in England, since our plane was about to board. Thanks Reykjavik City Hostel!

Finally, we flew to London in the afternoon. It was only when we were collecting our bags at Heathrow airport that we realised that we were on the same flight as Bjork. I was very excited, along with everyone else over the age of 25, but Ellie had never heard of her. Sigh. I decided not to try to photograph Bjork, since she has attacked people photographing her at airport arrival halls on more than one occasion. I wasn't going to risk it, although one other traveller did so from behind a screen. Brave man!

So there you have it - we've seen two rock stars in three weeks. I wonder who we'll see in England? :-)