Wow and I mean Wow!

So, though we rose early after a restless night dealing with Mitcham garden shed issues, it was a little wasted as the car rental company did not pick us up till 9am. You forget how tiresome the travel arrangements can be. No big issues, it just takes time and you are always arguing about something.....yes I am sure we ordered an automatic, see the word automatic on the voucher.........yes I am sure I do not want mud stain insurance......then trying to find somewhere to sell us bread and lunchy stuff. apparently many Icelandic supermarkets do not open on Sundays, public holiday, before midday or after 3pm. But we finally found one and got out of Reykjavik before sunset.

It was not long before we were driving between the sea and the mountains and it looked pretty good. Our driving was also not too bad, given we had not done the right side drive for a while. A bit nervy, especially when we nearly went into a tunnel we wanted to avoid....more about route than tunnel terror.

We arrived at our fist hike, the Glymur waterfall, just before midday after a spectacular drive up Hvalfjörðu (Hval Fjord). The walk was about 6-7km return and about 245m elevation, seemed more given our training regime.

We took the easier path as we did not fancy a log river crossing, and rope pulls up the steep east bank. The walk was up a rocky path that just kept going up through highland grassy hills, with sheep and wildflowers to keep us company. Marjan struggled a bit and it as looked like I might not make it to our anniversary.

Eventually we got to a lovely highland plateau, and a spot to check out the falls. Apparently these were (until recently deposed) the highest falls in Iceland. Not bad.

At a cairn by the viewing spot we met a young Canadian, Eric, who was very chatty. It seemed to make Marjan cheer up, listening to him chat away about everything and anything. A young man (about 18 I gather) travelling alone for the first time on his college break. He was hiking around Iceland on a shoestring and had camped up above the falls overnight.

We wound our way down a different path, closer to the ravine. It was steeper and a little hairy in parts, necessitating a few bum slides. Still, safety over dignity any day. All the way down we listened to Eric, or responded to his questions, as he strolled down with a backpack, a towel over his head
(never travel without a towel) to dry, and a guitar.....yes whilst we bum slid! How embarrassment!

We invited Eric to share our car for a bit, and shouted him lunch by the fjord.....just some  rolls, our normal lunch routine on these jaunts. We finally dropped Eric off at the next town, Borgarnes, where he was trying to sort out his bank card, which had been stopped. He was surviving on some money he made busking in Reykjavik.

The country just became more spectacular. Every mile could have been a stop....a beautiful scree slope to a volcanic mountain top.....a fast flowing river....... a field of sheep or Iclandic horses.......an icy pinnacle in the distance....and always getting closer to our destination Snæfellsjökull, which:
-  was making its own weather; and
- is pronounced snagglepuss, according to my reliable Icelandic language guru.
We did not stop as often as we would have liked, due to the lack of available places to stop in many places, the verges dropped away alarmingly, and because we were running behind schedule.

We got into the little settlement of Hellnar with enough time for a walk down to the beach to see the birds....mostly kittywakes....a largish, gull second cousin.........before dinner called. We paid the cruel but fair prices.......the alternative was to drive for 2 hours to find a bread shop that would have closed four hours ago.......no, we paid.......and enjoyed the very nice and very expensive food.

I went out after dinner and took some latish shots....and then a shot through our bedroom windows at about 9:30. It is now 10:30 and not much different.

Just walking around

Highlight of my morning....checking out our planned route in yellow highlighter.......

Well a more normal night of sleep saw us head off a little earlier and slightly more clear headed. So clear headed in fact that when we passed the  a statue to the founder of Reykjavic, Ingolfur Arnanson, Marjan thought his first words might have been "This looks like a cold, inhospitable, dump of a place. Let's live here!" 

We are actually quite liking Reykjavic. It is a fairly calm, inviting place. The weather has so far been friendly and there is enough to keep us amused. We walked down to Harpa again and walked along the harbour. There is a fair bit of work going on....an Icelandic docklands, if you like. The difference being that together with the touristy bits there is a fair bit of heavy industry, particularly fishing, going on. A small boat seemed to have an extraordinary catch of mackerel....ready for dinner tonight.

We walked out to a public, living sculpture called Þúfa, apparently pronounced Tinkerbell....or at least that is as much sense as I can make of Icelandic sounds at present. It is essentially a grassy knoll from which to view Reykjavik across the harbour. It also has an old style Icelandic fish drying hut at the top.

I kept pointing out the sights to Marjan

More strolling, a coffee and another hot dog saw the morning and lunch off. It started to rain, but we were prepared...Marjan had her hooded fleecy windcheater, I had on my winter weight T-shirt....nonetheless we decided to head indoors for a short break.

After giving our feet a bit of a break, we headed out again along the main shopping street. As you will know Marjan and I consider shopping an unpleasant necessity, like work perhaps, and so whilst it was interesting to see the similarities and differences, my eye kept being drawn to the occasional glimpse of sea and mountains at the cross roads.

One of the interesting things we noted was the number of very nice looking book shops. If you lived here you could have a coffee at each one during weekdays and then go to the mountains on weekends.

We ended up outside the main commercial centre in some areas that were much grimmer. One particular street could have been, and probably was, straight out of a Arnaldur Indriðason novel.

So they do things to brighten it up.

We checked out the church again, and this time read the blurb on Leif Erikson on his statue. Impressive guy, apparently apart from trumping Columbus, he did similar to Marconi and, most importantly for an Icelander, Niels Bohr. Just kidding...............

Anyway we wandered, and wandered, and found ourselves, accidentally on purpose, near the Sea Baron. Apparently the best lobster soup in town. Haven't tasted any others so I can hardly compare, but the soup was very nice, the bread plentiful and the follow up wolffish skewer very tasty indeed. The place was tiny though........probably sat 20 on rough wooden tables with small barrels for seats.....a local institution we were told......by the guy getting 10% commission.......

Well, we are both feeling much better after the rigours of the trip, and ready and willing to hit those mountains. We pick up the car and head to Iceland's first national park, Snæfellsjökull, to see why Jules Verne based his idea of the centre of the earth entrance there.......and maybe a see a waterfall along the way. But we are sad to be leaving Reykjavic.

Chundering Heights

After the long travel we hoped for a long, deep sleep. It certainly was deep, however i was brought to a reluctant conciousness by the bright sun forcing its way through the heavy curtains at around 6 am. I headed out on a walk so as not to disturb Marjan.

Managed to find my way to a supermarket for some fruit and lunchy things, and a seven-eleven look-a-like called a 10-11. There I picked up a SIM card from a young woman from England enjoying the relaxing pace of Iceland for a bit. Not a lot happening at that time of the morning. The busiest place was Dunkin Donuts which seemed to have attracted the sort of crowd that Dunkin Donuts would attract in Iceland. Tautological yeah!

By the time I got back, Marjan was up and eager for a feed, so we breakfasted at the hotel buffet and headed off for a walk.

Started off walking up Skólavörðustígur towards the cathedral. Always start the day uphill and coast from there........a motto to get a weary traveler through the day. Nice street...full of spine tingling prices......and a view of Hallgrimskirkja at the end of it.

Hallgrimskirkja is a fairly modern church. designed in the 30s to resemble the geometric lava flows, it was named after a 17th century hymnster....sort of like an old style hipster. Lovely to look at; outside and in. We decided to get up the tower for a look. Unfortunately some weary tourist, or queasy believer, was overcome by the movement of the elevator, or the presence of the divine, and decided to share his, or her, breakfast with the rest of us visiting for the day. It made for a smelly ride.......but the views from the top were awesome.

Having been as high as possible in old 'smoky bay' (the meaning of Reykjavik) we then wound our way downhill through the Asgard region of town...streets named after Norse gods. Lovely old houses, many using lots of corrugated iron. Then down to the art museum......really weird sculpture using two whole horse skins......around the local pond with the heated water for the ducks.......to the town hall and its dripping moss walls......recruited into a famous soccer team.....into a flea market............past a recommended restaurant, which we bypassed after seeing it had steaks for $70 (6900 krona....the big numbers are doing my head in), and onto a street vendor selling hot dogs for $3. Apparently the hot dog is an Icelandic tradition....so we became traditionalists and passed up the $70 steak for the $3 hot dog.

We decided to take a break/nap back at the hotel, where we added to the hot dog with some nice local bread and a yummy local white mold cheese. Hopefully we will have some more energy for another burst later.

Well, Marjan had a very solid nap, and we managed to get out for the second session. A walk along the waterfont and a visit to the newish Arts Centre/Conference Centre called Harpa. Apparently it was quite controversial. I liked it, and it is quite impressive for a country, let alone town this size.

We then did some more wandering around the old town, particularly around the parliamentary quarter. By then we were hungry....it is a vicious cycle....walk...eat...eat.....walk.....eat.....we looked at a few recommenced places. The fish and chips place was full and had people waiting for tables, the recommended lobster soup place was full and we did not fancy an outside table, so we settled for a pubby type place and each had fish.

We followed that with a walk around the pond, checking out the sculptures and watching the arctic terns fish and feed their chicks. Then a little more walking through some quieter streets. .....the bustle dies down about 25 metres from the main streets....and an ice cream for desert.

Enough for the first day. Hopefully a solid sleep will get us back on the right sleep pattern

The saga begins

…..with a 30 hour travel schedule from Melbourne to Reykjavic. We got to the airport with plenty of time.......of course.......and had a fairly smooth check in process. I say fairly smooth because Marjan packed the good nail scissors in her carry on toiletries bag, so that is the last we'll see of those. A minor irritation to start. A second minor irritation followed with a 15 minute delay to take off due to the plane arriving late.

I am hoping we make that up along the way as the connections do not have a huge amount of leeway and the airports have a huge amount of travel between gates. The big win, which by far overshadows any minor irritations, is that I managed to channel abuela and snagged four middle seats to add to our two windows seats. So Marjan is presently stretched out on the four seats trying to get a little sleep on the first leg.

The next two legs were not nearly as comfortable, though we did make up the time. The Dubai leg was OK but the flight was absolutely full, so no stretching out. The Dubai to Amsterdam flight was also full and we really felt the tiredness kick in during the second half. We then did the Schipol shuffle.......up a flight of  stairs then down, round a circle of corridors and up and down again. It is a big and confusing airport. We were almost comatose for the relatively short flight (3 hours) to Reykjavik. Marjan was just sitting slack jawed and dropping off, and I was doing the head jerk thing as I micro slept. giving the lack of functioning intelligent life, we forgot to take a photo of the second sunset sky.........after absolute darkness along the British coast it began to lighten as we got towards Iceland, with wonderful sunset colours.

The worst part of the trip was the arrival in Reykjavic; in an amazingly busy airport, for the size of the country, the carousel broke down and so our bags were delayed quite a while. Then, our friendly driver decided he needed to do 6 other things before dropping us near our hotel. He could not drop us at our hotel because roadworks meant we had to hump cases around partially done paving. Great at 2AM, and after 38 odd hours of travel.

Anyway, we are safe and in Iceland ..........in the gloaming light, which will start increasing in a minute so I am going to hit the sack.