July 18, 2016, Stockholm hostel.
It’s been a few days of silence here, but I am alive and well in Scandinavia!
Iceland was a whirlwind. I really made the most of my 34 hour stopover. When I arrived, I took a coach bus that went to the city, which took about 45 minutes. I was instantly in awe of the scenery – the low and layered clouds, mountains, and rocky vast terrain, with water surrounding everything. The rocks were unlike anything I’ve seen before, which I learned later was because this is actually lava.
The streets in Reykjavik are too narrow to fit coach buses, so we transferred to minibuses (15 passenger vans) outside the city that took us to our hotel doors. This was the standard transportation pick-up/drop-off method for pre-booked tours, as well. There were a few minutes of weirdness when the bus driver couldn’t open the coach storage doors to get our luggage, and some characters came and were gesturing wildly and trying to make the passengers laugh while this happened.
I got to the Downtown Hostel, on a quiet street, and changed in the lobby bathroom before dropping off my suitcase and going for a walk. I walked to the harbor which included the Harpa concert hall, a famous statute called the Sun Voyager, and some gorgeous scenery including mountains that still had some snow on them. It was about 60 degrees and breezy, which is apparently nice and warm for Iceland. It dropped to about 50 while I was there, with high winds at times, and I was glad I brought a light jacket and scarf.
On the walk back I went down Laugavegur Street, a popular street with restaurants, bars, coffee shops, and lots of tourist shops. I walked into a coffee shop and kind of panicked about making a purchase and asking the barista some awkwardly-phrased questions, because I was unsure if the English phrases translated, which they did. Is there a credit card minimum? Coffee. Bagel. Um, to stay? Actually I’m running later than I thought; can I change it to take-away? I was the only awkward person in that situation.
The Icelandic language is pretty ugly. Apparently it hasn’t changed much over time, as other Nordic languages have. The good news is that everyone pretty much also speaks English.
I made it back to the hostel to get picked up for my Golden Circle Tour. The Golden Circle is a popular route around some of the Iceland countryside about an hour and a half outside of the city. I took a guided tour on a coach bus that lasted 6 hours. It was all just stunning. The 3 main stops were a little quick for me, just because I wanted to keep exploring! We saw Þingviller national park, drove on land where the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates were pulling apart, passed by lots of horses and wild sheep, visited Geysir – the one by which all geysers got their name (the original main geyser, no longer active, reached heights of 200 meters. The one we saw was also very tall and awesome! And smelled terrible!), and Gullfoss Falls, the largest waterfall in Europe.
As the tour went on, I found some weird things start to happen to my body. First, I had to pee like all the time. I went at every stop. Maybe I was just being diligent about staying hydrated? Then, everytime the bus started moving for more than about 10 minutes without the guide speaking, I fell asleep. I was so mesmerized by the landscape and wanted to keep staring, but I just couldn’t keep my eyes open. It’s only now in Stockholm 2 days later that I’m realizing this is probably jetlag.
I did not really sleep on the plane, as expected. When I got back to the hostel I napped for an hour and then set out for a long walk through downtown, mostly on Laugavegur Street again. I paid to go up an elevator in a church to get a great view of the city and the colorful roofs. I ate a great cheap dinner of falafel and a vegetarian place I found (which sold fish). I’m trying to save money on food on this trip and eat cheap where I can. This region is very expensive. There’s a lot of meat and fish in Iceland but it’s easy enough to find veggie options (for the record I am not a vegetarian – I also eat chicken and turkey). The street design was pretty cool. The main street was closed to cars for the most part. There were very few cars in the downtown, though. People walk. The intersections were hard to get used to as they did not have standard curbs, but let cars and people share the streets. Iceland and the Scandinavian countries apparently have some of the lowest traffic fatalities in the world.
There were so many tourists all over the city and on my tour that it was hard to feel like I was seeing anything authentic, but it was still very pretty and I really enjoyed it. The population of Iceland is about 330,000 and 120,000 live in Reykjavik.
Again, I really couldn’t believe how much I had done in one day. It felt like many different days. I went to bed around 11pm and it was still light out, but dimmer. I woke up in the middle of the night around 3:30 and looked out the window to bright skies. I’m not really sure what happened in between those hours. This is called the “midnight sun.”
The next day, I ate breakfast in the hostel and got on a bus with my luggage for a trip to the Blue Lagoon, Iceland’s most famous geothermal pool that you can swim in and is located between the city and the airport. It was another beautiful drive into a vast lava-filled countryside. The lagoon was just stunning and sort of hard to describe. The air was freezing and windy but the water was about 100 degrees and salty – but it was actually algae and silica and some other natural minerals. It was surrounded by lava rocks. I wore sunglasses mostly to protect my eyes from the wind, which was difficult at times and made it difficult to see with the natural steam blowing around. There was a swim-up bar, saunas, and algae mask. I left feeling relaxed and with really dry hair. A great day!
I got a bus to the airport, leaving 2 hours before my flight to Stockholm. As I waited in line to drop off my bag the line just stopped moving and no one explained what was going on. I think the luggage conveyor belt was broken. It was very crowded and upsetting. I ended up having to rush through the airport to make my flight but the boarding was delayed a little so it was fine. I didn’t have time to buy anything in the airport, which I was hoping to do since I didn’t get anything in the city. I was disappointed that I didn’t get a blank postcard to add to my collection. I rationalized it as an excuse to come back one day. A little stress to the end of a big adventure!
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