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After the Wedding

Before the Wedding

Ísland Diaries, Part 5

Note: Cat's text is in the normal color, Gregg's is in light blue.

Day 5: 30th July

The next day, after some more swimming and hot pot-ing at Frost and Fire, we drove the Golden Circle Tour, listening to the audio tour along the way. We saw a volcanic crater lake, another nice waterfall, the original Gyser, and Gulfoss, a super big waterfall.

This is the church at Skalholt where the Lutherans killed the last Catholic Bishop and his sons in 1550. Take that, Rome!

More Icelandic commu-libertarianism. This waterfall is a bit off the beaten track, but you can go up to it, and hang out, as long as you don't take pics for commercial purposes. C and I had our worst fight of the trip while looking at it. Like I said, it was rough trip for us emotionally. Sad really, to squander such beauty.

Geysír! Actually this one is Strokkur, but let's not spoil the magic. That there spouter is the one that all geysers everywhere are named after. That pic with Cathead walking like a goof is to demonstrate the constant high-speed wind that plagued us during the second half of the trip. If the whole geo-thermal thing ever goes kaputt, wind will be a viable replacement! The pic shows all the tourists, waiting for the Geysí to go off. I guess it's worthless unless it's doing its little trick. Ecch. Also note that there are wooden walkways wending through the hot springs. This is because if you step off, the ground may collapse, and you will fall in to near-boling water. Being that safety measures only appeared in places housing imminent death, we obeyed these.

Is the blue stuff visible in this sky or glacier? We could never figure it out.

This is Gulfoss (Ísl: "Golden Falls"), which is a more Niagara Fall-ish sort of waterfall. In the first pic, there is a basalt promontory half-hidden in the mist. This is where I am waving from in the later pics. No fences here, people!

We saw this little building near the intersections of roads 36 and 37 on the northeast side of Lake Þhinvellir (Ísl: "Parliament Plains", home of the Icelandic Parliament from the 900's until modern times), where we were for the second time. We think this is part of the network of "warming huts" that are found all around the Ring Road, and in other areas, but we aren't sure. It was just a little shed, but it had a gas line, so who knows? These "warming huts" are rumored to have beds, and food, so if you get stranded in the winter, it will take a few days for you to die, and thus you will have time to journal about the process. This is a rich source of Icelandic literature.

Then, it was back to Reykjavik, to stay at a downtown apartment. When we saw the Hotel Atlantis website, we were excited. After all, they were cheaper than the hotels, have furnished kitchens, and were in the center city, within walking distance of fun stuff. Things were a little different in reality. The hostelman was an exact clone of our first night hosteler... loud and capitalistic. Is this Iceland or the Ukraine? He and his assistant/son/boy/lover/slave were engaged in a loud argument that ranged from English to German to Iceland covering room reservations, breakfast times, and what seemed to be a million other small topics of great import to Guesthouse owners. After this, they handed us the keys, complex directions the apartment, and off we went.

We arrived to discover that this apartment was just some girl's apartment. It was weird to be in some stranger's space. A few cabinets wer locked, but everything else was fair game. We used her dishes, watched her tv, and looked at her kids' comic books. It was strange.

Since it was still raining, we had decided to cancel or tentative plans to go rock climbing. It turns out that we had brought our climbing shoes to Iceland for nothing, but it was okay. We never used our baseball mitts either, which makes me a bit sadder!

We had resolved that our return to Reykjavik would be in style. We would eat meals, and enjy ourselves. We checkout out two more erotic shoppes, and ate a great dinner at Vegamót, a stylish hipster place (Lobster Quesadilla for me, and fresh Tuna salad for C.), and walked around. We toured the two gay bars in Reykjavik, and tried to go to the GLBT center, but it was closed. We walked around downtown, and ate some good cake at the Cafe Paris.

We were unable to stay up late enough to see the night life (which on a Friday, begins at 1am or so), so we went to bed happy and exhausted after watching a BritCom called My Family.

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Last Updated: February 07, 2005 -- 17:19:01.
Time since the wedding: 2197 days 23 hours