A very short night
Traveling to the east makes for quite a short night. Iceland is on GMT and not on daylight time. That's four hours ahead of my home base. Let's see, the flight left at 9:30PM Eastern Daylight time and landed at 6:30AM Greenwich Mean Time. Four hours of sleeptime disappeared. The good news is that I managed to sleep for most of the flight. The bad? I don't do very well on 4 hours of sleep. Here's hoping I can manage to fall asleep at a reasonable hour tonight.
I managed to keep moving all day, starting with a drive around the southern part of the Reykjanes Peninsula, stopping for a long soak at the Blue Lagoon, driving in to Reykjavik, and doing some walking along the harbor. That should help my sleep situation because I'm quite tired right now. Ah, it's time to walk again, this time to find some food!
My home for the next two nights is Askot B&B.
Hey - I think I need to jump in and write today too! Denise is so tired she forgot to tell you some things.
As we were wandering on the Reykjanes Peninsula, it struck both of use how much the landscape reminded us of the Big Island of Hawaii. The rocks from the volcano aren't as black here, but the surface looked similar. It wasn't the swirly flowy lava, it was more of the explosive chunky kind.
At one point Denise saw an empty parking lot in the middle of what seemed like no where, so we jumped into the lot and wandered down a path. We found a bridge with a sign saying that we were standing on top of the fracture line that splits the northern Atlantic Ocean bewteen the North American plate and the Eurasian plate. That's pretty interesting, isn't it?
While we were just about to jump into the Blue Lagoon (and oh! the water really is a beautiful shade of blue) Denise started chatting with some folks from Toronto who are just about to head home. They recommended that we head to the east, towards the spot where the volcano erupted earlier this year. I have a feeling that our non-plans may be changing. Denise still thinks she wants to see a piece of the west, but I am pushing her to go east too. We're going to chat with our B&B owner after breakfast tomorrow; Arna volunteered to help with a brainstorming session on our wanders. It's always a good thing to get advice from someone who really knows the country.
And oh! how the wind was howling! I stayed close to Denise, even hid in the camera bag for a bit. Denise was having a hard time standing still without swaying, and I was afraid that I would get blown away. I wonder if it's always this windy in Iceland. I guess we're going to find out!
Didn't I tell you that Denise forgot to tell you about large chunks of our day? I guess it's a good thing I adapt a bit better to east-bound time changes than she does.
--- Rover
And now for the weather report.
It was gray most of the day, although patches of blue started showing up late in the afternoon. It went from dry to "water in the air" to dry to wet again. I walked home from dinner in the rain, and I'm sitting listening to the rain outside of my window right now.
It was cool enough that I was continually looking for the warm spots in the Blue Lagoon. The temperature fluctuations were quite surprising.
Cool air, comfortable when I was adorned in light layers.
I wonder what tomorrow will bring.
