Iceland

I have so much to tell you about our trip to the magical, wondrous place that is Iceland.

Hallgrímskirkja in central Reykjavik

We flew to Reykjavik on Friday afternoon and took the Flybus from the airport to our hotel, a 50-minute journey through the lava fields of the Reykjanes peninsula. The flight from Cophenhagen only took three hours, but the overall journey from Helsingborg was a bit more challenging than expected. Thus, I found myself staring blankly out the bus window with bulging eyes and a throbbing headache when I saw it: a mother goat and her two babies on the lava rocks near the road. Since Erin did not see them and the rest of the bus was utterly silent, I wonder if the natural goat family was just a mirage. Did my mind merely create a nice thing to see at that exhausted moment?

This is what a lava field looks like: rocky, expansive, mossy, barren, eerie, lonely, wondrous. Feel free to imagine a goat family in this picture if you'd like: this blog is a judgment-free zone.

Here are a few facts about Iceland that I find especially interesting:

• Icelanders are trilingual; they speak Icelandic, English, and at least one other European language (usually Norwegian, Swedish, or Danish).
• There is a 100% literacy rate in Iceland, and one in 10 Icelanders will publish a book in their lifetime. Reykjavik is a designated UNESCO City of Literature.
• Iceland is among the happiest countries in the world and has topped the list in many years. This article explains why Icelanders are so happy.
• The mayor of Reykjavik, Jon Gnarr, dresses in drag for the annual pride parade.
• There are 100,000 horses in Iceland for a total population of just over 300,000 people. That's a ratio of one horse for every three people. The horses live outside all year long and sure seem to have a good life.
• By law, cows are required to spend the entire summer outdoors. 
• Nearly all of the heat and hot water and a good chunk of their electricity comes from geothermal power, which is 100% green energy. Because of this, the hot water smells a little sulfurous. The water in the tap is the cleanest in the world.

Downtown Reykjavik

After checking in at the hotel and freshening up with a shower and a cocktail, we went out on foot to downtown Reykjavik, a mere five-minute walk from our front door. It's incredibly small for a capital city and feels a bit more like a hip vacation town that is filled with people wearing outdoorsy clothing and a surprising number of American and Canadian tourists. We tried to compare it to places like Marquette and Portland, but the truth is that Reykjavik is not like any other. Since tourism jumped from 500,000 visitors in 2012 to 1,000,000 in 2014, Iceland's largest city is full of tourist shops selling crafts, postcards, and t-shirts that say things like, "I wear my sunglasses at night in Iceland." It is filled with brightly colored, quaint houses and sits on the North Atlantic Ocean with a view of snow-capped mountains. It is jam-packed with bars that stay open until 5:00 a.m., interesting restaurants and gastropubs offering a surprising array of ethnic foods and vegetarian options alongside some of the best seafood in the world, and a lot of attractive, tattooed artist types.

Though my weather app claims that the sun sets around midnight and rises again around 2:00 a.m., we did not see a moment of darkness while we were there, and I personally believe the sun merely takes a quick fika and then reappears. It is high in the sky at 3:00 a.m., and blackout curtains are attached to every window. This is in direct contrast to the winters when there are only a handful of daylight hours. Icelanders manage to stay happy, though, even in the dark.

The midnight sun did keep us out later than usual, though Icelanders are known for barhopping all night long on the weekends. We stayed out until 11:00 p.m., and our first meal consisted of a shared tomato flatbread, shrimp mini tacos for Erin, and falafel mini tacos for me. Falafel tacos? Yeah, they were delicious.

The Blue Lagoon

We did our duty as tourists and bussed out to the Blue Lagoon on our first full day in Iceland after a typical Nordic breakfast at the hotel (there are no trains in Iceland, and most travel takes place by car or bus). The Blue Lagoon's website lists it as one of the 25 wonders of the world. Though I wonder which list their marketing department is looking at to make this claim, it was an absolutely amazing experience and I encourage every one of my readers to go there. Like, soon. 

Go ahead. I'll wait.

The Blue Lagoon is a geothermal spa within the lava fields of the Reykjanes peninsula. It is filled with salt water that is heated to 104 degrees and that naturally replenishes itself every 48 hours. Upon entry, you are given a plastic bracelet that acts as an in-spa credit card and told to saturate your hair with conditioner and to leave it in the whole time you are bathing. Though I conditioned mine twice, it still felt a bit like hay when we left. 

Bathers are told to shower fully naked before entering the lagoon, an Icelandic tradition that takes place before swimming in any sort of public pool, but we are Americans and so we cheated by keeping our bathing suits on. After showering and then walking out into the 50-degree air outside, the chill on my body was instantly relieved by the soft warmth of the lagoon. Writing that sentence just made me close my eyes and do an internal "aaaahhhh," because that's exactly how it felt.

  

There is a great deal of silica in the water, and there are vats of the stuff in a couple places near the bathing area which you can use to coat your skin, let sit for 5 - 10 minutes, and then rinse off in the lagoon. It's basically a mud mask, and the silica is supposed to have restorative properties. We saw one bald man with his entire head and chest covered so that he looked like a mud man, and another guy with a full coating on his face and his perfectly clean glasses carefully set upon his nose. 

The floor of the lagoon is lava rock with a little bit of sand over the top, though the rock is as smooth as glass from the salt and minerals. There is also a bar where bathers can walk up and order a beer, smoothie, or glass of wine while in the lagoon. You can bet your buns that we had a couple plastic cups full of Gull, an Icelandic beer, while sitting on a glassy ledge in the lagoon and talking about how lucky we are. 

The Golden Circle and Free Nipples

The next day, we took a six-hour bus tour through the Golden Circle, which refers to the three stops we made at a national park called Þingvellir, a waterfall called Gullfoss ("golden falls"), and a valley containing a very active geyser called Strokkur. Our tour guide was a lovely older woman named Fanny who likes to hang glide and who is very passionate about Icelandic horses.

Þingvellir was our first stop. Do not ask me to pronounce this. What's especially remarkable about this national park is that it is where the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates come together in the Mid-Atlantic ridge. These two plates are moving apart at a pace of 2 cm each year. Fanny told us that this is also the length that your fingernails grow in a year. We were able to hike out to the edge of the North American plate, which overlooks the largest natural lake in Iceland. Once again, pictures fail to do it justice, but here you go.

Our next stop was at Gullfoss. Pure majesty. I actually choked up here. From here, you can also see Iceland's second-largest glacier, which basically just looks like a vast expanse of snow in the mountains.

Our final stop on the tour was to see Strokkur, a geyser that erupts every 4 - 6 minutes. It is located in a geothermal area within a valley that contains other geothermal pools and another, less active geyser called Geysir. The area around the walkway is roped off, and we were warned ahead of time that the water on the ground is boiling, which was only apparent because the ground was steaming in many places. We hung around and watched Strokkur show off at least five or six times; I may have never seen Erin so happy or excited. We also made a stop at the travel shop, where we each ate a container of Skyr, a kind of Icelandic yogurt.

After the tour, we made our way back to central Reykjavik, which was experiencing the warmest day of the year after a long and difficult winter, and we took our place amongst the crowd. Loads of people soaking up the sun were piled on a lawn in a square near several bars and restaurants where a band was playing. Several women were laying topless on the grass, and many others were wearing t-shirts with breasts drawn on them. I later learned that something called the Free Nipple Movement was happening; it's a campaign against the censorship of women's breasts, and this was their second "free the nipple" event. We also hiked up to Hallgrímskirkja, the Lutheran church that overlooks much of the city.

Though I could probably go on and on about how much we loved Iceland and what an amazing trip we had, I will leave you with one final note: there was a small baby sitting behind us on the flight home. While still parked at the gate, she reached between the seats and pinched my arm twice. On another occasion, she reached through and held my index finger. At one point during the flight, she touched Erin's hair. I was pretty happy with the arrangement until a few minutes after takeoff when she started screaming and did not stop. For three hours.

Happy Midsummer's to my Swedish friends!