This morning I got up at 3am (ouch!) and walked to Victoria Coach a Station. I got the bus from there to Luton airport which took nearly 1.5 hours. Queued up for ages (bank holiday weekend coming up so lots of people going away!) and boarded my three hour flight to Reykjavik. Hardly had any room at all - Easyjet sure know how to pack people in!!
Flight went fairly well though and before I knew it we had arrived. Cruised out of the airport as I got my suitcase within about ten seconds and the customs offices at airports here aren't even manned most of the time so walked straight out!
Here I met my bus tour to the famous Blue Lagoon. It's not too far from the airport so I booked a bus that brought me straight there, dropped me off and then I could pick what time to head into Reykjavik later. Met a couple from Oxford on the bus and we all took in the scenery. It kind of looked like the moon! Very rocky and no trees.
We arrived at the Blue Lagoon and so began the confusion. On their website (at least the last time I looked anyway) it says you can just rock up and buy a ticket. Well me and many other people turned up and it turns out you need to book a timeslot and they were telling us it was fully booked. Luckily I went on their website and nabbed one of the last 12pm timeslots. I killed an hour downstairs using wifi and then got in.
Soon came more confusion. I was given a wristband and directed to the changerooms. It was manic! Women everywhere and all these procedures you had to follow that weren't signed properly. You had to shower first, leave your towel in certain places, condition your hair so the minerals didn't ruin it and then use your wristband for your locker. Another girl was just as confused as me so we worked together and eventually figured it out.
I then went outside into the lagoon itself. It was beautiful and sunny today! Only a top of 10 so a bit fresh but I loved it. It was so beautiful in the lagoon! Not as big as I thought it'd be but fairly big. It's 38 degrees in there and filled with 600 million litres of water. The water has minerals, algae and silica in it (the one that ruins your hair and jewellery) and takes 40 hours to replenish itself. The Blue Lagoon began to appear when a geothermal power plant was built in 1976 and the waste water formed a pool. People started swimming in it and it became famous for its healing powers! Sounds a bit weird - makes me think of the nuclear plant in the Simpsons!
At this point I was feeling like a bit of a loner roaming around the lagoon while literally everyone else had someone (or multiple someones) to speak to. But then I ran I to the girl from the change rooms! Her name was Emily and she's from Melbourne. She was there with her friend Will. We had a great two hours together putting the facial scrub on, trying to mimic people making "sexy poses" and laughing ourselves silly at the strange norwegian group who kept bursting into song mid lagoon! They were really funny and I had a great time. We roamed around the whole lagoon and its bridges, waterfalls and even had a quick stop in the steam room and sauna (I didn't last long, not a fan!).
Emily and Will left and I had about half an hour in there by myself. Then I went and had a shower and got changed, and went for a walk on some tracks around the lagoon.
I got the bus back to Reykjavik and kept falling asleep on some poor Canadian woman's shoulder because I was exhausted. How embarrassing!! I arrived at my hostel bed am so lucky to have already made a good friend. There's a German girl in my room (I think she said her name is Marlene) and she loves travelling just as much as I do. We walked to the Main Street of Reykjavik. It's lovely here but the strangest capital city I've been to! Iceland is 103,000km squared and has a population of only 330,000 making it the most sparsely populated country in Europe. So Reykjavik is very small! We walked the Main Street, got some groceries and then had dinner. We had Thai, pretty funny seeing as we are in Iceland! But Marlene had been there on Wednesday and said it was cheap and they cooked fresh veggies. It was delish! And fairly cheap, as far as Iceland goes.
We then walked along the harbour for a little bit. The sun sets at 11pm here and rises at 4am so it's still very bright at the moment and will be for some time - out comes the eye mask!!
Looking forward to a wonderful week here. Everyone is so nice and helpful. Tomorrow I'm exploring the city and then the two of us are headed to a bar to watch the Eurovision Song Contest final. They love it here, I watch it every year on delay and now I can finally watch live. AND Australia is performing, and not just Australia, but one of my favourite Aussie artists who I've loved since I was 12 - Guy Sebastian!
Love to all
Claire
Xoxox
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