N-Iceland
Had the most amazing two days here. Just going to mooch round Reykjavik tomorrow before the flight home, so we've really crammed in the activity over the past two days.
I spent yesterday morning going to the national art gallery, photography gallery and the settlement exhibition. The art gallery was full of the strangest conceptual art I've ever seen - a whole room of broken TVs, weird collections of objects, that kind of thing. I guess I may have missed something in translation. The photography gallery was fantastic though - they've got a retrospective of an Icelandic photographer from the 1950s, and his portraits were so stunning and contemporary, they looked like they might have been taken last week with people in period dress. Amazing. The settlement exhibition was cool too - I now know a lot more about how people came to live in Iceland and how they lived. It's based round the ruins of a house that's more than 1,000 years old, which was found in the centre of Reykjavik, and it's been preserved in the basement of a building with a big interactive exhibition around it. Chilled out in the afternoon and went to a couple of bars last night. It's so strange being able to smoke inside again - I'm not sure I like it. Bring on the ban!
Today's been a big outdoorsy day. We hired a big 4x4 this morning, and went to see all the big tourist sights, and one so far off the beaten track we had to off-road through a river to get to it. On the way to see a geysir, we stopped at the side of the road and wild horses came up and made friends. With everyone except me... I have a phobia of horses from having been bitten by one when I was small. Nice from a distance though. The geysir was spectacular and we managed to stay the right side of it so we didn't get soaked by the spray. Then on to the Gullfoss waterfall. And then, if we weren't being outdoorsy enough - we'd spotted a glacier on the way to Gullfoss, so came up with the brilliant idea of seeing how close to it we could get. Which involved 8km or so on a dirt road, driving across a river (thank goodness for 4x4s!) and climbing a massive hill. But it was absolutely worth it.
Piles of rocks seem to be a big thing in Iceland, and I built one at the top of the hill overlooking the glacier.
We then took the coast road down to Grindavik - the cliffs and rocks were spectacular, if unremittingly grey! But it was a fantastic way to get to the Blue Lagoon, where we sat soaking in the bright blue water as the sun went down.
And now I've eaten, I'm back off out again...