Flying Home

Just a few more!

We were on the tarmac with Iron Maiden's plane.  They didn't play Iceland - don't know why they were there.

http://www.ironmaiden.com/index.php?categoryid=15

A couple of photos of... Greenland? from the plane window.

The Blue Lagoon (Blàa Lonith)

The Blue Lagoon is a terribly overpriced but fabulous geothermal bathing pool.  The water is milky blue - where the runoff is less disturbed it is bluer and less milky.  The bottom of the pool is mostly sandy; the sides are smooth white silica deposits over lava rock, which would otherwise be sharp and black.

 

There are pots of silica mud, which you can use to give yourself a facial.  It leaves your skin soft, but we found the the water leaves your hair feeling awful - kind of wooly, like an Icelandic sheep.

Outside the spa, the undisturbed water is bluer

Moss growing on lava rock. You see this all over where there is lava rock.  There are signs telling you not to walk on it.

Day 7: Keflavik

Keflavik is the town near the airport in southern Iceland.  I'd read that it was ugly, but it seemed nice enough to us.

Bear, Daniel and Kate at art installation by Keflavik harbour.

 We were in Keflavik on June 21, the longest day of the year.  The picture below is the sky at 11 pm - about as dark as it ever gets this time of year.  (We were too tired to stay up to see the sun at midnight.)

Almost-midnight sun.

Day 6 & 7: Driving

Driving in Iceland: don't.

The driving itself isn't that hard, it's that feeling that you are lost and in the middle of nowhere.  There are signs for things, but they are right on top of the thing itself.  There is no warning that a particular road or town is coming up - there will be a sign at the intersection where you need to turn, and that's all, and not a very big sign. 

Icelanders are not good at giving directions either.  For instance, take a look at this How to Get There page on the Blue Lagoon's site: http://www.bluelagoon.com/Geothermal-spa/How-to-get-there.  Notice that there are no street names or route numbers on the not-to-scale map?

Day 5 & 6: Vestmanneyjar Islands, Heimaey

We are on the largest of the Vestmannaeyjar islands, the only inhabited one of the bunch. The others look like big rocks with sheer sides sticking out of the water. We're really tired this morning - all the activity is catching up with us - so we decide to head to the tourist information office, check the hours on the aquarium, have a quiet morning and maybe do something more ambitious after lunch.  Instead we end up climbing the lava flow and wandering along the rocky beach.  The harbour has sheer cliffs on one side, and the rocky, ashy beach on the other.  Above the cliffs are steep green slopes where sheep are grazing.  We're not sure how they don't fall off.

Look, Mom, seaweed,

In 1973 A volcanic ridge opened up on the eastern part of the island.  It turned into a single-cone volcano and continued erupting for 4 months.  The island was evacuated.  Lava covered a  third of the town, and most of the rest of it was buried in ash 4m deep.  Windows were proken, homes burnt down, and the harbour was almost closed off by the lava flow.  Pumping sea water on it was the only thing the slowed the flow and saved the harbour.

Says something along the lines of "Here under 14 metres of lava stood a house built in 1946.  It was buried under lava on March 26, 1973,"

This was the second-floor living room window.

This was a water tank, and nearby it used to be a pool

Also visited the aquarium and naural history museum (3 rooms above the fire hall), and saw the Volcano Show, which showed us footage from Eyjafjallajokul's eruptin in 2010, the Vestmannaeyjar eruption in 1973, and the formation of Surtsey in 1963, which started under water and went on for 4 years until an island was formed.

Observations

Icleanders are pretty reserved.  They will not volunteer information, but if you ask, they are helpful and mostly friendly.  In a restaurant, you have to ask for the bill when you are ready to leave.

Icleanders don't speed much, but they do tailgate.

Islanders love pizza.  It is on every restaurant's menu, usually a dozen or more varieties.  They also like to serve salad on top of pizza or pasta.

I thought that Icelanders, being acclimatized to cooler weather, would keep their stores and houses relatively cool.  No.  We have all been too warm indoors.

There is very little crime - Icleanders are very trusting.  We saw bikes not chained up on the street, and in Heimaey, a baby in the carriage left on the sidewalk while her parent(s) were in the store.  She was so cute and happy I wanted to take her home, but Bear says no more babies or kittens.

This has to be the neatest, cleanest country ever.  Even cabs and public bathrooms are spotless.

Day 4: The South Coast

We left Reykjavik this morning - our host at the guesthouse gave us postcards to send to our friends so that they will come to Iceland and fill his pockets with money (his words).  If you do go to Reykjavik, I would recommend Edda & Gunnar's guesthouse, Eric the Red, near Hallgrimskirkja.

We drove out of town down Route 1.  This is the 401/I-75 of Iceland - it is also called the Ring Road and goes all around the island.  It's two lanes wide, and no shoulder to speak of.  The speed is 90km/h, and there are traffic cameras.  Acording to the car rental guy, "A picture of you can be very expensive."

First we went to the town Hvergerthi (again, thorn or eth, not "th") to see the geothermal area in the middle of town. Hot springs and steam vetns mean that electricity, heat and hot water are practically free.  The geothermal area contained a steam vents and hot springs.

Farther down the road we got off Rte 1 and went south to the town of Stokkseyri.  The attraction here is the Ghost Museum (Draugaserith).  There is also an elves and trolls musuem.  The real attraction proved to be the view of the ocean, and the Magical Lobster Soup at the local restaurant.

Back on Rte 1, which flat land and the ocean to our right (south) and mountains/glaciers/volcanoes to our left, we carried on to Slejalandsfoss (foss = waterfall).  We were able to see it fromt he road far ahead of us.

The kids went up behind the waterfall, but the path was muddy and slippery, so we didn't follow.

A little farther down we stopped at the foot of Eyafjallajokul, the glacier that erupted in 2010 (yes, glacier, that's right).

Then, off to the ferry to the Vestmanneyjar Islands.