Sunday, July 24, 2011

Weekend in Reykjavik

Saturday was pretty mellow.  We slept in then went downtown to check out the Flea Market and the Worldwide Friends Latin American Festival.  The Flea Market was a little overwhelming….like 1,000 garage sales all under one roof and certainly no bargains.  The Festival was pretty funky…imagine being in Iceland and listening to Salsa and Merengue.  It was held in the back lawn area of some shops and the main purpose, I think, was to recruit volunteers to go work on some little island off Cartegena.  It was fun watching the people from all over and the dancing.  We decided to pass on the Blue Lagoon as we didn’t feel like paying $50 a piece to get in….this didn’t include any of the spa treatments.  We opted to go home,  take a nap, cook dinner and play Upwords….I beat Bill!!  We wanted to be rested for our big adventure on Sunday.
Woke up to almost hurricane strength winds, rain and cold but headed out anyway to drive the Golden Circle.  Fortunately the weather calmed down a bit and all the sights we visited were incredible.  Pingvellir was our first stop.  The site lies on two tectonic plates that are constantly diverging causing fissures and gullies throughout the zone. It’s also the where the first parliament was founded in 930 A.D. The landscape was fascinating and beautiful.
Second stop was Geysir where the term Geyser originated and was the first one discovered in the world.  It goes off every five minutes and we’ve included some pretty good photos.  The Geysir Info Center and shop was an experience in and of itself.  Beautiful  things but prices off the charts.  We really had to resist buying an actual can of Icelandic Mountain Air for a mere $10.00.  I guess we could have bought a bunch and given them for Xmas presents. Then off to Gullfoss…a pretty spectacular waterfall.  However, the weather got bad again and it was freezing so we headed home with a stop along the way to see this little lake in a crater.  It was beautiful but one of those things that you couldn’t really capture in a photo…though we did take some.  We back at the home front and are going into down for our last dinner here in Reykjavik.  







We’re off to Brussels tomorrow afternoon.  The Maastricht people arranged for a driver to pick us up at the airport and take us to their home about an hour away.  They’re arriving in Mexico Monday morning.   So, our next posting will be from our new home for the next three weeks where we’ll  be feeding the sheep and other animals and exploring this part of the world.

1 comment:

  1. Wow! What adventures--I'm so glad you're posting thoughts and photos. I look forward to reading more-
    ~Marina

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