End of Iceland, onto London

After our adventures with the Toyota, Natalie and I were more than happy to return our little car to its rightful owner. We also needed recovery time and spent our last three ish days wandering around Reykjavik, highlighted by a tour of the northern lights, some serious coffee shop thinking, and the great Icelandic pub crawl, called the Runtur, on our last night. We journeyed out over the ice in our heels around 11pm, left the bar around 6am and found a group of people still queuing to get in. It rounds out the list of top nights out, but unfortunately we had to catch the flybus to the airport at 8:30 the next morning.

Arriving at Gatwick around 3, I made my way into central London for one more day in England before heading back to Michigan for Christmas. The trip manifested itself with Indian food, walks along the Thames, a trip to Camden, the Tate Modern, and the various large and not so large Christmas trees of London.

so the first two pictures are of the northern lights (much more spectacular in person but nevertheless present), and the rest are from various locations in London including Parliment, Camden market, chinatown, millenium bridge, and St. Pauls.




weird modern art scuplture in the downtown area


6am in Reykjavik

Thingveller, Geysir, Gulfoss (The Grand Circle in Iceland)

So on day three of our Icelandic journey, Natalie and I hired a car. Our lovely little Toyota Micra, equipped with a manual transmission and an american sided steering wheel, proved interesting, and we only nearly crashed the car three times. We started early though and managed to make it to Thingveller National Park (where the viking congress was held back in the day), Geysir (geothermal water shooting up like old faithful), and Gulfoss (Iceland's second largest waterfall).

Iceland is a literally a hotbed of geothermal and volcanic activity, which was exciting for the earth science teacher in me. At Thingveller, we walked along the most visible plate rift in the world--where north america and eurasia are diverging away from one another. At Geysir, we watched Strokkur geyser blow, drank very hot hot chocolate and made our way to Gulfoss. Nearly there, it started power snowing, we missed the sign and skidded the car into a two-foot drift. Icelandic people are quite friendly and hospitable, and the electrician at the lodge helped us push the car out so we finally made it to the quasi frozen waterfall. From there, we found an English family to follow and made our way slowly back to the motorway.

From there we notably navigated our vehicle around inactive volcanoes, various tiny towns, and made it to the Blue Lagoon--a nearly undescribable outdoor bath of sulfrous, silicate water that ranged from 88-104 degrees F in different spots. Wooden boardwalks dotted the lagoon, geothermal steam filled the air, and between bouts of white steam, the MOST AMAZING stars gave us their love. I have no pictures; it is difficult to find a place to conceal a digital camera within a swimsuit or towel in -5 degree celsius weather. But it was the essential end to a very long, adventure filled, near death experience filled day.

Reyjavik

So these are backdated because i'm lazy (read: i've been reading five books a week and writing lots and lots every day). Basically, Natalie (camp friend) and I went to Iceland (tickets were cheap) during Christmas term break, before heading home to Michigan and then onto Toronto and New York. I was busy. Sunrise was at 11:24am and sunset was at 3:32ish pm. So here are some pictures from around the 115,000 peopled biggest city in Iceland, Reykjavik! (more iceland to come later)