Reykjavik, Clear and Blue

After withering away for two days in a horrible but cheap hostel in London, John and I discovered (really, it was my fault) a ridiculous and by far the most expensive mistake of our travel experiences thus far. We showed up at the airport a day after our scheduled flight, and had to pay a small fortune to make it to our rendezvous with Sean. But, we're here, and we are enjoying the city, the language, the people, but not so much the high prices. Thankfully, it's a bit more affordable than Norway, but that's not saying much. We've been eating cheap food from 7-11, 10-11, and 11-11, and Sean's been getting us cheap Skyr and bread from his friends that work at bakeries. We try to enjoy the free and affordable experiences, like browsing the records at 12 Tonar, sitting on coffee shop porches, and looking through galleries, boutiques, and of course, tourist shops.

We've spent our first two days here wandering the shops of Laugavegur, the pedestrian paths around city hall and the University of Iceland, and the walkways along the harbor. Yesterday, we climbed the windy bell tower of Hallgrimskirkja, the highest man-made point in Iceland, and looked out over the city and ocean and natural scenery, and then at night went out to watch the drunk people wandering out of the clubs and bars just before sunrise. We've been trying to keep up our authentic Icelandic experience by spending substantial amounts of each day in the hot-spring heated public pools. Tonight, we progressed through the graduated hot tubs and ended up soaking in a small pool of sea water until the sun had set and the pool closed (around 10:OO PM now that spring is under way here). On the walk home, the Northern Lights were especially visible, and I had a bit of a stumbly walk home looking up at the sky and still feeling light-headed from our time at the pool.

Tomorrow, we're borrowing Sean's neighbors car and doing a driving tour to see a waterfall, the Geysir, the Blue Lagoon, the Continental Rift, etc. etc. Hopefully, there will be some lava fields and bubbling mud puddles along the way. The weather so far has been uncannily beautiful: relatively warm and sunny, sunny, sunny. Sean says the wind has even taken a break since we arrived. We've probably gotten more sun the past few days then the entire semester in England. Maybe this won't be the coldest, grayest, and rainiest spring break ever after all.