At least I think that’s today’s date, as our flight was overnight. I’m writing this first diary entry while sitting in the lobby of the Hotel Cabin, which although it is very clean and utilitarian, is not a Marriott. The house sound system is tuned to a radio station playing something that sounds like Willie Nelson singing country music, but in Icelandic. Go figure. When Eric and Stephanie join me, we are going to try and figure out how to get to the Rekjavik harbor for a night out on the town.
As far as the trip, all I can say is that making a long flight in the eastern direction is the pits. After 6.5 hours in economy class, we had lost all sense of personal space, and were glad to get off the plane.
The expedition to the Blue Lagoon, was scheduled immediately after our arrival in Rekjavik, and before check-in at our hotel, and this was a surprise to me, but worked out for the best. At the time, I was feeling a bit put-out, because if I had known, I would have shaved my legs. I was consoled by the thought that I was in Europe. Besides, I didn’t expect anyone to be interested in my legs.
The Blue Lagoon, contrary to the expectations of anyone who has seen the movie of the same name, is at the site of a geothermal vent whose heat is harvested for energy, and then the leftover, still-very-hot water is dumped into the lagoon. Publicity photography notwithstanding, the water is more green than blue. There are a few inlets where the water is piped in, and where you can see steam rising. Although the water is at least tepid throughout the Lagoon, the temperature rises sharply when approaching one of the inlets.
There are a lot of minerals in the water, and it tastes slightly salty, although I wouldn’t recommend getting it in your mouth. Floating is very easy – all you have to do is take your feet off the bottom and you naturally start floating on your back. There are pots of the white silt, which you can put on your face. (They charge a lot of money for the stuff in gift shops.) Picture hoards of white-masked women, floating blissfully on their backs in greenish, tepid water, and there you have it.
The landscape around the Blue Lagoon is somewhat like the surface of the moon – piles of tumbled volcanic rock. The terrain would not be easy to walk across, if one were inclined to take a hike. In places where there are lava fields (like around the B.L.), rocks are piled up, and reminded me of Mordor (“The Lord of the Rings” movies). I wondered if Peter Jackson (or more to the point, J.R.R. Tolkein) had gotten those visual images from Iceland.
A short bus ride later, we were at the Hotel Cabin. Our room was very small, with twin beds, and a shower that was barely big enough to turn around in. Our main challenge was having any room for our luggage. They did serve a free breakfast buffet, and the hotel is only about a mile’s walk from the harbor and downtown.
We took a rather long, scenic walk to the harbor, in search of a restaurant Stephanie had read about in the Washington Post. Its name translates as “The Sea Baron.” Until its popularization by the Post (and The New York Times), it was just a local favorite. We had some wonderful lobster soup and seafood kabob. Eric and Stephanie had salmon and I had mink whale, which, if we had not known otherwise, I would have taken for beef.
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