Saturday
By now we realised the best of Iceland was behind us. Our bodies were sore due to traveling great distances and from all the excitement the past 2 days had given us. Being Diwali we spoke to our families using the UK SIM as the Icelandic SIM did not allow us to make overseas calls. It was raining by then and with a late sunrise, the light, or its lack thereof, hardly made any difference.
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| Þingvellir National Park |
We left at the usual time we have been leaving the past few days and our first stop was Þingvellir National Park. Part of the Golden circle and home to the fault lines between the American and European plates it was a popular destination. The plates are moving apart at a rate of 2 cm per year. It was also popular for diving between the plates into the Silfra fissure which is filled with clear water offering a view of 100 metres. Since this was out of our league we headed to the main parking lot at Þingvellir. For this we drove over the Almannagjá fault to the American side and parked our car at the main car park. It was pouring and windy too. After figuring out how to pay the parking fee of 500 Kr, which happened to be the first time we paid for parking in this country, and cajoling the kids into getting out of the car we headed straight for cover and warmth of the visitor centre. To our surprise it was super crowded. We dried our faces and warmed up a little bit before SC went out to check on what we had actually come to see. He returned to take us to the mouth of the fault line and the view point. After a couple of quick pictures, which was nearly impossible with all the rain blowing into the lenses, we rushed back into the visitor centre and to the car. There was little else we could do with that weather! So we had successfully crossed over from Europe to America within a few minutes!
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| Almannagjá fault at Þingvellir National Park |
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| Harpa Concert Hall |
Our next planned stop was lunch which we were eagerly looking forward to. We drove straight to the Smáralind mall and expected it to be crowded as it was a Saturday. We parked near Debenhams and headed straight to the mall entrance to find that it was absolutely deserted! There were hardly a handful of people! That was a moment of self-realisation - that we were living in one of the most crowded cities of the world!! Pizza was unanimously agreed upon as the choice for lunch and with the option of Sbarro and Pizza Hut we chose the former as nostalgia struck us. It used to be Shash’s favourite restaurant back in the States when she was a kid. Quickly picked up a couple of pizza slices and spaghetti bowls and settled down. Though we did not have much activity in the morning the weather made us hungry. The sight, aroma and feel of warm food was enough to whack up an appetite.
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| Hallgrímskirkja |
Iceland is a country that is generous with free wifi. Gas stations, Visitor centres, Restaurants, Guesthouses, hotels… you name it, they’ve got free wifi! So I made this opportunity to make a quick call to my family back in India and passed on the updates. Soon we were done with lunch and were completely dry. We walked around the mall looking at stores and checking out merchandise. TIGER pulled us in while Cintamani bargained a glance! We came back to the car. While it was still drizzling lightly there was no wind and we were mighty glad about it. We drove on to park at Harpa for a short walk around Reykjavik. On the way we passed the Sun sculpture and I sneaked a picture with my iPhone. There were some confusions about paying for the parking at Harpa and SC headed down to the info desk to pay for it. We were soon up into the concert hall and were admiring the glass structure when our eyes fell on a concert coming up in January - a jazz concert by Vijay Iyer and Wadada Leo Smith! A familiar name gave a sense of pride and we walked out of the concert hall into Reykjavik. It was a short hike to Hallgrímskirkja and we followed the throngs of tourists. Exploring the bests of a city, if you’ve never planned, is very easy. Just follow the crowd! After passing through some interesting looking shops and shop names we reached the Hallgrímskirkja. Sadly it was not the sight I expected. The weather wasn’t helping either. We took a few pictures from the outside and went into the church to admire the choir stand and the organ. Shash wanted to ride up to the top for a view when SC announced that we’d be visiting the Blue Lagoon. I was surprised as it was never part of our itinerary. He thought that since we missed Secret Lagoon the previous night we’ll give Blue Lagoon a try. So we hurried back to the car and started driving out to Blue Lagoon. It was a good 45 minutes away from Reykjavik. I was hoping to catch some free wifi signal to check for tickets but, unfortunately, never managed to.
We arrived to see large pools of blue water in front of a steaming factory of some sort. The geology of the whole area was very different. It was just black lava rocks through out. It was nearly dark by then and we quickly parked our car and walked into the Blue Lagoon ticket centre. We were utterly disappointed when the attendant announced that there weren’t any tickets left. He also encouraged us to check online as that’s the first place tickets will turn up if there’s some cancellation. We used their free wifi and found tickets for 9pm entry. SC was interested but I declined as it was too late for the children plus we had an early flight out the next day. I still had to reduce the number of bags from 6 to 4.
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| Blue Lagoon from the road |
After some pictures just outside of the blue pool and the black rocks we returned to our car for our last ride in Iceland. We drove to Keflavik, filled the tank with gas and returned to Kef guesthouse for our last night in Iceland. SC still pushed me to visit Blue Lagoon and that he’ll drop me. It was just about 15 minutes from Kef Guesthouse. I continued to decline as I had a lot of packing to do and what fun would it be without anyone! We had our dinner of pot noodles and I worked on the packing while the children went to bed. While visiting the kitchen to heat our noodles I met one other family that chatted with us about seeing Northern Lights. It was their last night in Iceland and they hadn’t seen it until then. Quickly gave them tips to head out and find a spot and returned to the room to find out that a school friend of mine was visiting Iceland and in Akruyeri. Informed her that we were in Reykjavik and she also asked me about Northern lights.
Only then I realised how lucky we actually were! I recalled how pessimistic we were before we had planned our trip to Iceland about being able to see Northern lights during out short trip. We had booked the trip with little to no hope of seeing northern lights but instead to see the different geology and some things that could only be seen here - like the ice lagoon or the thermal pools. We had indeed been blessed generously! Clear nights, good solar activity and the appearance of the northern lights at the right time! With that contentment I finished packing and a bit of re-packing before turning off the lights for a sound sleep.
Sunday
We awoke pretty early and got ready to leave. After a quick breakfast and calling Blue Car rental a few times to get them to pick up the car early, they arrived on dot at 8:30. They had a quick inspection and left with no complaints. We then boarded the airport shuttle and made our way to KEF airport seeing the beauty of Iceland one last time on this cold, wet, dreary and gloomy day.
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| Jet Nest at KEF. PC: fotothing.com |
We joined the long line for checking in our bag in the EasyJet counter. The counter staff said it was a full flight and asked us to check in more bags. We quickly locked two more bags and relieved ourselves of 2 pieces of hand luggage. We then started walking towards the departures. There was a purple aubergine statue outside and was wondering about it’s significance which, I learned later, was not an aubergine but the sculpture of an egg cracking and the beak peeking out called the Jet Nest! We had saved our shopping for the last and entered the Rammagerdin store to pick up some souvenirs and some Arctic sea salt. The flight was delayed by at at least 2 hours. Surprisingly they had some good sandwiches on the plane for purchase and we managed to finish our lunch on the plane. We landed at Gatwick to a cloudy evening. We were soon on our way home on the Southern trains and District line. Our biggest catastrophe was yet to come! We reached home to find out that we were locked out due to some gap in communication between a contractor and the leasing agent. After numerous phone calls we entered our house a couple of hours later. As with any travels, it felt good to be back home and all the misery of the locked out situation were soon forgotten!
Iceland is a place we’ll never have enough of. Especially when the weather is good. The landscape is absolutely gorgeous. There’s fewer people around once you leave Reykjavik. Even within Reykjavik there’s hardly any crowd. We hope to return some day for a thermal pool experience, seeing some more sights in other parts of the country, hopefully a couple of hikes and perhaps even go down the Snæfellsjökull to the centre of the earth! There are always enough reasons to visit Iceland!
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