No, We Haven’t Left Yet.

I’m Just Testing The Blog Interface

It’s been a hot minute since we were on the move. Other than the visit in early April to Niagara Falls, ON, for the total solar eclipse (no blog entries, sorry), we haven’t been out of the country since last August on our British Isles Explorer adventure.

As you can see from the image of the itinerary, we are off on another Med cruise on Norwegian Cruise Lines (NCL). There will be 6 of us this time – Andy, me, Andy’s sisters Susie and Janet, and their friends Stefania, and Tom.

We fly to Venice on Monday, May 13. We’ll be there for a couple of days pre-cruise; we’ve hired a driver to take us from Venice to where the ship will be docked about 2 hours away in Trieste. There’s a couple of repeats (Split, Rome, Florence, Cannes, Palma de Majorca), but some new ones as well: Dubrovnik, Corfu, Naples (Pompeii! Yay!), and Messina (Sicily).

Happy thoughts that we have good weather and nobody is on strike!

Where We Meet Iceland’s Weather Head On And We Finally Get To Sleep In Our Own Bed – After We Find Where We Parked The Car

Day 19 – The Golden Circle

Our second day in Iceland showed us what the weather is actually capable of – 45+ mph winds and torrential downpours. And then it would suddenly stop. And then it would suddenly start again. Basically all day long.

When we boarded the bus, our tour guide, Elin, broke into song – Oh What A Beautiful Morning! we sang, as the rain came down.

A bit of a drive to our first stop – the spot where the North American plate and the European plate meet and are in the process of separating, one of the many reasons Iceland is a hot spot for geothermal activity.

I was wearing my rented raincoat. Unfortunately no photo of it, but it was amazing.

I made a brave attempt to climb up the hill to the railing overlooking the valley below and begin the walk down to the rift, but I never made it to the railing. The wind and rain/sleet/whatever that was blew right in my face. I tried zipping up the jacket’s neckline above my nose. I tried putting on a mask under the jacket. No matter what I tried, I could not take a deep enough breath to be able to move forward.

A lot of this is because I have asthma – ever since I was very small, I’ve not been able to walk into cold, gusting winds. I just flip into hyperventilation, and that’s about it. After the 3rd try, I was so hopelessly behind, I just gave up and went back to the bus. The bus driver keep joking that this was a mere breeze! This is nothing! But to me it wasn’t nothing. It was a non-starter. A bunch of other people came back as well, not willing to deal with the downpour.

Of course, 15 minutes later the rain stopped, but the group had vanished down the trail. There was no catching up with them.

The bus drove about 15 or 20 minutes to the meeting spot at the end of the trail. The scenery is other-worldly beautiful, there’s really no other way to describe it.

At the end of the trail, the sky cleared for a moment.

Some photos of the walk that Andy took

Our next stop was at a geyser park. One of the geysers spurts about every 10 minutes, give or take, billowing out a sulfurous cloud.

I was at least able to do this walk – the wind had died down and it was merely drizzling.

After the geyser park, we were steered toward the huge, crowded, and expensive gift shop. Though our real target was a completely different building where we had lunch. Quite frequently, meals served to large numbers of people are not good. This was the exception. The buffet was excellent!

Onward to our next stop on the Golden Circle: the Gullfoss waterfall. As luck would have it, our bus passed by a massive sheep round-up, as sheep farmers begin the process of bringing their flocks to winter pastures. This is a communal thing – groups of farmers bring all their sheep at the same time.

When we arrived at the falls, the wind and rain kicked back into high gear. Without the wind, I would have been able to walk to the top of the short hill to look over the falls.

The wind gusts once again stopped me in my tracks; I only got partway up, just barely seeing the falls before I had to turn around. My new friends, Cathy and Carl, came up behind me – Cathy and I grabbed Carl’s arms from either side, and the three of us trudged back to the bus. With my raincoat collar zipped up above my nose from below, and the hood flopped over my face, I had a narrow slit to watch my feet. We dashed back into the gift shop and walked through it to an exit closer to the bus parking lot.

Meanwhile, Andy took on the challenge of walking down the 100ish steps down to the bottom of the falls for an even more spectacular view.

When Andy made it back to the bus, he was soaked through.

Our last stop on the Golden Circle was the Kerid crater – a volcano crater filled with blue water. I didn’t even try this one. Photo credit is all Andy:

One last photo stop on the way back to the hotel – the Sun Voyager sculpture, with the mountains in the background showing off the otherworldly scenery that is Iceland:

We had our last dinner in Iceland – and on this vacation – in the hotel restaurant (again), with Cathy and Carl and another couple from the ship. What a blast!

Day 20 – Homeward Bound

All good things must come to an end.

The weather was absolutely beautiful! If only it had been like this yesterday, I might have been able to do so much more!

Our time slot to depart to the airport was 1:40 p.m. Plenty of time to pack up, check out and have breakfast. After breakfast, Andy walked over the coat rental store and returned the raincoat and gloves.

We walked to a burger place next door for lunch. Not so exciting.

I can’t begin to explain how wonderful it was to have Elin escort us to the airport. Unlike other experiences, where the bus dropped us off a huge distance from the terminal, this time the bus brought us right to the terminal door.

Elin went with me inside the terminal to this odd device (I should have taken a photo) to call for my assistance. If Elin had not been there, I’m not sure I would have figured it out. It was more like an intercom system, with terrible sound quality. With Elin’s help, the assistance showed up in just a few minutes.

I had read reviews about the Reykjavik airport. Iceland is a victim of its own marketing campaign – it worked so well, that the country is flooded with (mostly American) tourists. The airport is way too small to handle the volume. Because I had assistance, I was able to go directly to the gate. The rest of the flight’s passengers weren’t notified of the correct gate until 20 minutes before boarding, because there was no room for all the people of multiple flights leaving at about the same time. For our flight, we had to take a bus to the plane on the tarmac, and walk up a flight of stairs to the plane.

Apparently some connecting flights were delayed, so our flight was held. It left an hour late and made up about half of that. We landed at 7:30 Eastern time, and then drove around for another half hour until a gate was secured. We should have been off the plane shortly after 7:00.

It was another while before we were able to make our way to the pick up location (Federal Circle off the AirTrain). Then the confusion began.

I had made a parking spot reservation with what I thought was a Crowne Plaza. But none of the phone numbers on the receipt worked. The people around us said the Crowne Plaza had been closed for 3 months, taken over by the city to house immigrants! Then where was our car?

Stapled to the printout was a receipt for the car with a QR code – when I scanned it, a website for a Radisson came up – but no phone number. We googled the Radisson to get the phone number, and called it. Bingo! Twenty minutes later, a taxi subbing for the courtesy shuttle showed up for us and three other people.

By the time we were on the road, it was 10:30 p.m. We were home shortly after 2:30 a.m.

A very, very long day.

Stay tuned for Amy & Andy’s Excellent Adventure 2024 Part 1, coming next May!

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:

1. Put the plans for the restaurant on a USB flash drive.
2. Have the Prime Minister of Iceland present the USB drive to the elves, and
3. 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