At 04:00, it began. “What?” you ask. “The day”, I say.
I couldn’t sleep. I normally have no problem with jet-lag, but when I awoke at 04:00 this morning, I just could not get back to sleep. After much tossing and turning, I eventually read a little of one of our guide books and then eventually gave in and got up.
I went downstairs to the hotel’s computer room at 07:00 and proceeded to read my work-related and personal e-mail. I quickly discovered there were events in process at work that required my immediate attention, before things here take a turn for the desolate and it becomes really hard to access handy things like telecommunications.
After a shower and some troubles with the hotel’s computer (which wouldn’t allow temporary files to be created, thus rendering Adobe Acrobat Reader inoperable), I eventually managed to print out (on the hotel reception’s own computer, no less) the forms I needed and then Sarah and I went out for some breakfast. That was followed by a brisk walk over to a wool shop and along some of the city streets we’ve previously hardly touched, after which we went back to the hotel room to fill in the forms. By this time, it was pouring with rain. Later in the afternoon, the hotel graciously faxed our forms to Google free of charge for us, after which I put the originals in the international post at the central post-office, handily located just around the corner from our hotel. Hopefully, that’ll be the worst of our remote bureaucracy taken care of.
Later in the afternoon, we soaked off the stress of the last week or so by taking a bus out to Reykjavík’s main swimming pool, called Laugardalur. The boiling hot water soothed our troubled brow and fulfilled the dream of returning to that spot that I’ve been nurturing for the last year. It was remarkably refreshing to bathe waist-deep in a hot pool, while cold rain pounded down on our head, back and shoulders.
After dinner, I made an unexpected return to the swimming pool, as Sarah noticed during dinner that my wedding ring was missing. Damn! I had left it in my locker at the pool! A hasty phone call to the swimming pool from the restaurant revealed that they had found it and were keeping it for me, so I was treated to a second round trip on one of Reykjavík’s expensive bus routes.
Tomorrow, we head into Iceland’s wild interior on a 4×4 safari to Iceland’s most active volcano, Hekla, and the variegated hills around Landmannalaugar. There, we’ll take some time out to lounge in a piping hot geothermal pool, surrounded by rhyolite hills and lush greenery. Hopefully, the weather will cooperate, as this trip will involve some serious off-road activity, such as river crossings.
That’ll be a full Saturday for us. Then, on Sunday, it’s off to the Faroe Islands for an altogether much more remote experience than Iceland’s capital has to offer.
And to finish with the beginning, what about Thursday? Our bus from the airport into Reykjavík broke down and another one had to be sent for to pick us up: an inauspicious start.
Poor weather looked like it might rain out the day, but it cleared up remarkably fast when we made it into the city. To improve things yet further, we were able to check into our hotel at 09:15 and get into our room, where we grabbed a couple of hours sleep, before rising again at noon.
The afternoon was spent hitting a few of Reyjavík’s fine coffee shops. It’s great to be back in a country with such great coffee! We did a few other things, too, but Thursday is already becoming somewhat of a blur.
Austurvöllur Square is once again home to a wonderful open-air photographic exhibition, exposing the many different people, lifestyles and locations that make up this fascinating country’s character. Hopefully, we’ll get to look at all of the poster boards before we leave.