Where I Make Do While My Suitcase Parties In Oslo
There won’t be a separate blog for Day 17 – the transit day from Norway to Iceland, but here’s a brief summary:
Everything went perfectly, except for one tiny detail: I was in Iceland, but my suitcase was sitting in Oslo. Fortunately, IcelandAir had already located my bag and had it lined up to be on a flight to Reykjavik first thing in the morning. IcelandAir provided me with a cute little kit that included a (very nice) t-shirt, a toothbrush, toothpaste, a comb, a razor, and a teensy weensy container of deodorant. They also gave me documentation and a brochure to place where I could rent some outerwear (all I had was the hoodie I had on). We took a cab to the address on the brochure. I rented a raincoat and gloves. I demurred on waterproof pants (anything they had would have been about 12″ too long) and hiking boots (guaranteed none of their shoes would have fit my box-shaped feet). Fortunately, I had packed a little extra clothing in the carry bag, and I had all of my prescription meds.
Now it was Thursday morning – Day 1 of the Icelandic part of our adventure. The morning’s schedule included a trip to the Blue Lagoon. I would need to rent a bathing suit, since mine was in the suitcase on its way from Oslo.
Our tour guide was the same person (Lena) who picked us up at the airport. Yesterday evening she seemed to have a rather abrupt/clipped demeanor, and her English was good, but not great. There were two buses, two tour guides, two groups. We were randomly assigned to Lena.
This morning she seemed a little more abrupt, maybe? as she gathered us up to board the bus. The bus and bus driver were different from the night before, which apparently was not planned. We also heard that someone from the other bus suddenly became sick overnight and left the tour to go home.
Lena proceeded with her tour guide duties, talking about Iceland in general – e.g. what the country was like. I found myself just staring at the scenery as we sped towards the Blue Lagoon, located not far from the international airport.
Before too long, we could see the steam of the Blue Lagoon in the distance. Apparently the name “Reykjavik” comes from “smoky harbor”, because the Vikings saw the steam from assorted geothermal sites.
The Blue Lagoon is not a natural thing – it is an artifact resulting from the building of a geothermal power plant in 1976. The “lagoon” is the runoff from the power plant. Originally, nobody wanted to bathe in this water, since it was basically waste water. But in the mid-1980s, Grímur Sæmundsen began investigating the potential healing properties of the water. The modern-day spa was opened in 1999.
When we arrived and got off the bus, Lena took off towards the spa without looking back.
Lena raced right along the entire way. When we got to the spa, she had disappeared inside the building. We all made the same mistake – we walked through the wrong line in our attempt to follow her while she arranged for our entrance.
Turns out she had left half the group behind at the bus. When they finally caught up (for once it wasn’t me!!), one guy tried to ask Lena to make sure the whole group was together before she took off. That part of the group had absolutely no idea where she had gone, and were a bit panicked. She was a bit rude and abrupt with him (something about timelines?) – but the guy was right: all she needed to do was wait another couple of minutes for the whole group to disembark the bus OR announce on the bus what we needed to do even if we didn’t see her. She had done neither, and now she had upset customers, which didn’t even seem to phase her a bit. This was going to be a long day.
She also provided no information on how I could rent a bathing suit. Fortunately, the spa’s staff was very helpful. Obtaining a suit was super easy.
We were all given green electronic bracelets, which we would use to control our lockers. I used a locker room on the main floor that didn’t require climbing a huge flight of stairs. A bunch of us in the locker room grabbed a staff member to show us how to use the bracelets – somehow the instructions posted on the walls didn’t make 100% sense.
Once suited up and in my robe (that was way too long, as expected), off to the pre-spa shower, and then to the lagoon!
Andy brought his phone to take photos.
We had a total of 2 hours at the spa, including getting ready to go into the lagoon and then getting dressed. I had to leave myself at least 30 minutes for getting dressed.
Took a minute or two to get used the lagoon – and then it felt WONDERFUL.
Our package included a drink and 3 facial masks. The first mask was a lava scrub, that took quite a bit of effort to removed. I had put my hair up in an attempt to avoid getting it wet, but the mask around the edges of my face got into my hair. Yum.
The lines for the mask started to grow, so a second window opened up. The 2nd mask was “anti-aging”, left on for up to 10 minutes.
Around this time, a staff member announced “story time”. I kept an eye on the clock – there would not be time for the 3rd mask AND story time.
The staff member told the lagoon’s origin story (see above). We had no idea the spa was barely 25 years old.
Fun story:
In the mid-2000s, the spa owners wanted to build a restaurant. But they could make no headway plowing and drilling through the lava field. Finally, it was decided to bring in an elf-whisperer, who studied the site for 3 months. She declared that the elves were seriously angry, and if they wanted to build their restaurant, they would need to do 3 things:
- Put the plans for the restaurant on a USB flash drive.
- Have the Prime Minister of Iceland present the USB drive to the elves, and
- Insert the USB drive into the rock.
Amazingly enough, this was done, and then work was able to proceed! Apparently if you go into the restaurant, you can still see the USB stick in the wall! Unfortunately, we didn’t have the time to see it.
As I expected, it took me about 30 minutes to take a shower (no time to wash my hair), get dressed, pay for the rental suit, and get back to the bus. I could feel my hair stiffening from the lagoon-mist residue. Blech.
Back on the bus, we headed to the hotel for the lunch break. We ate lunch at the hotel’s restaurant, where we saw Cathy and Carl, a couple we had met on board ship. We talked about our respective tour guides – their’s sounded much better than ours! We decided we would change buses. We knew that the tour guide can make or break the experience.
After lunch, we approached the second tour guide – Elin? Ellie? – and she was happy to have us on board, especially since she had lost the two people that morning to illness. Elin was all happy and light! Even the bus was better – it had USB ports for our phones! All was well with the world, but Lena didn’t seem happy we had left her. All the more reason to change.
The afternoon included a tour of Reykjavik, something called the Petran center, a ginormous Lutheran church, and an “open air museum”, though not necessarily in that order.
First up – the open air museum. It’s a collection of historic buildings from the last 100 years or so, brough from their original locations from all over Iceland to this spot.
Our local tour guide was dressed in period clothing. She walked us from building to building and explained each one. And of course I don’t remember now what she said.
The church is still used for weddings and other events.
Next up was a visit to the Perlan center – mostly for the bathroom break and the observation deck.
We didn’t have enough time for any of the interactive shows/activities, but the view was great.
Next up was an alarmingly tall Lutheran church (yet not a cathedral) called Hallgrimskirja. I have absolutely no idea how to pronounce that.
There was construction work going on inside the sanctuary. so we couldn’t sit anywhere.
Then we were on our way to the city center for the most physically challenging part of the tour – keeping up with Elin. BTW, Elin’s English was fabulous – very colloquial, and she loved to tell jokes. And randomly break into song. We kept thinking how different the day was with her as our guide instead of Lena.
She also had a tendency to take off without looking back, but somehow we always found her.
First up was city hall, with a giant 3-D map of the entire island. It was down a flight of stairs that I didn’t want to deal with, so I sat up at the top, and heard almost nothing. I think the big white patches are glaciers:
As it grew later in the day, it became harder to keep up with Elin. I focused on walking. Andy took some photos.
Amazingly enough, it barely rained the entire afternoon. Elin called it a “beautiful, warm summer day”. Not sure I’d go that far, but at least it was somewhere around 50 degrees and not pouring.
A couple of people stayed behind at the end of the tour to go to dinner. We opted to get back on the bus and go back to the hotel It did rain on us a bit on that walk, but my umbrella was good enough.
A quick photo stop of the Harpa concert hall on the drive to the hotel. Photo credit goes to Andy – I didn’t get off the bus.
We had dinner at the hotel restaurant – second meal there in one day. The nearest restaurants were not interesting enough to walk to them in the rain.
And my suitcase showed up right around 7:00 p.m. YAY.
Tomorrow: The Golden Circle
Maryland Meshugas 