Iceland

Tuesday- Arrived at Reykjavik in the morning and it was about 45 degrees and raining when I got there.  The bus ride takes you over a barren lava field for about an hour and then you finally reach the city.  I took a short nap and then walked around the city of about 200,000 people.  Everything was really clean and the city was very upkept just like the rest of Scandinavia.  It was only different in that there were more cars than bikes than in Sweden and Denmark but I think that is like that because the weather is usually so ugly.  Apparently the 45-degree weather and rain is quite common in the summer.  I can’t imagine what the winter would be like.  There was snow on the mountain tops surrounding the city and the mountains were only about 3000-4000 feet so it gets and stays pretty cold.

Downtown Reykjavik

Walking through the rain

In the afternoon after a 25 dollar small pizza I went up the main cathedral in the city and got a great view of the town. 

Leif Erickson Statue

Atop the Cathedral 

The currency is about 100 crowns to the us dollar so everything cost in the 1,000’s. 

Whale and Puffin for 59 dollars

I just went back to the hostel which was kind of outside of the city so about a 40 minute walk from the city center and watched American tv for the first time in way too long.

Wednesday-

I awoke to sunshine and about 60 degree weather.  It was basically a heat wave in Iceland.  Since it was so nice out I thought I would make my way to the Blue Lagoon which is the famous geothermal pool in Iceland.  The hour bus ride out to it went through barren lava fields just about the entire time.  The light blue of the water contrasted well with the brown lava rocks.

lava rocks

outside the blue lagoon

The water was very warm at probably about 100 degrees.  I just kind of swam around for a couple hours and talked with a  couple people I met at the hostel.  It was pretty cool being there but you can only sit in a hot tub for so long so it isn’t really a whole day event.  I got back to Reykjavik in the afternoon and went into town to get some food with Daniel an Australian and Christian a German.  Later that night I stayed up to watch the Bruins win the Stanley cup!  I was the only Bruins fan and there were about 5 Canucks fans watching so that was fun. 

Blue Lagoon

Blue Lagoon

Thursday-  Thursday I did the free walking tour around the city.  I think I was the only college aged person doing the tour.  Iceland is much different than the other places I have been because Iceland is more of a outdoors place to go to.  People go there to hike and bike which is much different than Barcelona and even Copenhagen where it seemed like there was a huge college population.  The tour guide kept telling bad jokes so I didn’t really know whether he was joking or actually telling a fact.  But apparently Icelandic people believe that elves live in certain rocks and roads will go around big rocks because they believe an elf could be in it. 

Reykjavik with 4000 foot mountains in the distance

Later that night Christian, Daniel and I went to a geothermal pool next door to our hostel and it was 1/15^th the price of the Blue Lagoon and easily twice the fun.  It had 4 separate pools and about 5 hot tubs all different temperatures.  They also had a huge water slide that Daniel and I went down way too many times.  It was a ton of fun though and really relaxing.  I went to bed pretty early as my flight was at 9am but got awaken at about 5am with the 2 New Yorkers in my hostel room coming back from the bars hammered.  They just did a 600 mile bike tour on the island so I guess they were rewarding themselves.

Bruins with the Stanley Cup!

Friday-  Caught the bus to the airport and caught my plane back to Boston!  Then boarded a bus to Portland got picked up by my dad and my experience in Europe was complete.

back to Vacationland!