In Iceland: The Blue Lagoon!

The Blue Lagoon welcomed us to its doors much as Iceland had welcomed us onto her soil a few hours before: with wind and rain.

Despite the mild weather we had left behind in downtown Reykjavik, barely half an hour later we found ourselves running for cover when the Flybus dropped us off at the mouth of the long path to the spa’s entryway. I laughed nearly the whole way up the black, lava-lined sidewalk, my umbrella not over my head, but in front of my face to block the stinging rain that was blowing directly into our faces. Tony had given up shelter and strode determinedly by my side, the very image of "whatever, it's rain" manliness. I got a quick peek at a pool of blue, steaming water to my left before diving inside the safety of the building. We joined the rest of the dripping queue waiting to pay for admission and took in our surroundings. To our right, an inviting-looking gift shop edged in gray stone displayed presumably pricey spa items, and straight ahead, delicious smells were wafting out of the on-site restaurant.

The Blue Lagoon's pools look just like this, except full of swimmers!

There are many naturally-occurring hot springs in Iceland (many of which you can just drive up to and jump into), but The Blue Lagoon is the only one that offers guests the full resort experience, complete with overnight stays or massage and other spa services, in addition to the basic warm swim. National Geographic has declared The Blue Lagoon one of the 25 Wonders of the World. From the website: 'In its description of Blue Lagoon National Geographic says "the steaming turquoise pools of Iceland's Blue Lagoon, trapped in volcanic rock represent an otherworldly vision." National Geographic says that Blue Lagoon is a geothermal gift of nature.' Tony had been there the previous year, but was eager that I should experience the lagoon for myself.

We each paid for the basic package: hot springs admission, and a towel, which came to about $50 US; admission is good for the entire day. Other packages include fluffy robes and slippers, spa supplies such as pumice stones, spa service packages, and access to a warmed, post-pool lounge. At the lagoon each guest is given a waterproof wristband that acts as the key for their locker, as well as allows them to charge food, drink, or spa purchases. Mine nearly slipped off about a hundred times, but in theory, they are adjustable. At the set of stairs that led up to the women's locker areas, I said goodbye to Tony, who said we would meet at the back door, where we could enter the water. 

I ascended the stairs and turned the corner into the women’s area, where I suddenly and unexpectedly encountered a wall of pasty, slack flesh; the locker room was absolutely crammed with naked women. Naked, old women. The only young people in the room were the female assistants (mercifully clothed), trying in vain to ignore the language barrier and the nudity, in order to help these jabbering, jiggling guests work their lockers. I tried to edge into the room, looking for a free locker, but the crowd wouldn’t budge. Feeling meek, I turned and walked back out and across the hall, where I thought there would be a second changing room. That was full too. I peered back around into the first area, where some of the women seems to have shuffled into the shower area. Another American girl who looked to be about my own age had squeezed into a corner and found an open locker there. She and I shared a quick, "this is awkward" look before she began to undress.

I looked around for a private dressing area but didn't see one, so after locating a locker, I though "fuggit," and quickly stripped, pulling on my bathing suit and wrapping myself in my towel. After some difficulty I managed to squeeze the backpack, umbrella, and all of my clothes and shower gear into the locker, and with some assistance, secured it. Then it was on to the shower room, where all guests are required to bathe before entering the pools. I kept my suit on, though most of the women there did not. Each stall is filled with a special conditioner which guests are urged to apply thoroughly to their hair, which prevents it from being dried out and damaged by the salty water.

Downstairs I found a shivering Tony already waiting for me. "Lots of naked people?" he asked; I guess I still looked shocked. "Yeah...it's like that here," he said. "Sorry I didn't mention that."

We found a corner where we could leave our towels, said a quick prayer that no one would steal them, counted to three, then pushed open the door and dashed across the wet boards. I think I made an audible "woo!" sound as my bare flesh encountered the less than fifty-degree temperature and bitter wind, and we splashed clumsily and desperately down the wooden steps into the pool.

The silty bottom caressed our feet as we sank in gratefully up to our shoulders, where we were largely out of the reach of the wind. The water we were paddling in was fluorescent, almost neon blue, but so silty that we couldn't see to our hips, let alone our feet. We doggie-paddled to the center of the pool and took in our surroundings; the wooden and glass spa buildings were straight ahead, as was a waterfall where brave swimmers were taking turns subjecting their shoulders to the pounding natural massage. To our left, a small wooden structure which Tony said was the bar perched just over the pool like a water skimmer in the creeks back at home. Behind us were walls of lumpy-looking, jet-black volcanic rock, and the occasional guard dressed in a snowsuit, patrolling the perimeter for children in need of water wings, and that kind of thing. To our right, people were scooping white clay out of wooden boxes and applying it to their faces. Many of them were laughing at one another's masks.

Tony led me over to the clay station, where I dipped my hands into a ladle full of the thick, soft substance, and smeared it over my face, from forehead to chin.He decided not to risk getting the stuff caught in his beard, and so went without. After about 10 minutes I washed it off, amazed to already feel my face feel tight, clean, and softer than a baby's butt. After that it was over to the waterfall, which pounded down on us with surprising force, but which effectively loosened our muscles, tight from all of the previous day's travel.

"Well," sputtered Tony, his now-soaked beard giving him a very Viking-esque appearance as we emerged from the waterfall's spray; "want a beer?"

 We swam over to the bar and joined the queue. Apparently the little shack perched above the water sold not just beer, cocktails and smoothies, but spa accessories as well, and several people swam away with pumice stones or "volcano scrub" to pamper themselves further. Tony and I settled on two cans of Gull beer, which we paid for with a swipe of our wristbands. We carefully carried the cups to a corner of the pool, where we perched on a ledge there, and toasted to our adventure. "To The Blue Lagoon!" We frequently giggled in between sips, just amused by the novelty of it all, and gripped our plastic cups carefully, not wanting to earn the infamous reputation of the tourist that forever ruined the springs' PH balance.

The lava-lined path to the spa's entrance.

We would have loved to stay all day, but we had a plane to catch! And so we dragged ourselves out of the water after nearly an hour of soaking; our fingers and tows had been effectively reduced to raisins. We separated again for locker room time, which was hectic; I managed to find a shower stall with a door, and so bathed privately but quickly. The spray from the shower took up the whole stall, soaking my bag of toiletries and actually knocking out one of my pearl stud earrings, which I luckily located on the shower floor before it was swept down the train. Ladies, sake my advice: remove ALL of your jewelry before going into the pool! I was so overwhelmed by the mass nudity that I didn't think about it until I was out there. I had also neglected to put up my hair, and so had to wash and condition the ends, which had dragged into the briny water, very thoroughly. By the time I was ready to get dressed, most of the Germanic elderly women had already passed through, and I was able to pull on my clothes without fear of a moon landing.

Downstairs, I dropped my wet towel into one laundry bag, my wristband into another, and met Tony on the other side of the turnstile. And so it was that, our hair still dripping slightly, we walked hand-in-hand down between the lava formations to the road, where we would begin the next stage of our journey to The Netherlands.

In a few minutes our bus drove around yet another traffic circle, and all traces of the lagoon were gone; even the steam had been borne away with the wind.

The Layover: Reykjavik, Iceland

"Sun Voyager" sculpture on Reykjavik's waterfront

Reykjavik means "smoky cove" in Icelandic, and it certainly appeared smoky from the window as our jet soared down toward Keflavik International Airport. Being in the aisle seat my view downward was largely obscured by other passengers, but with the dreamy, evocative music of Sigur Ros playing in my ears, I could imagine the green and rocky land spread out below the fog.

It was early morning on Sunday, August 12, and I was looking ahead to 10 hours spent in Iceland before jetting off to meet friends in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

I was not sitting anywhere near my travel companion and boyfriend of over a year, Tony, on this flight, and so could not see him, though I'm sure he was smiling as we prepared to land. Last year he and his sister spent 10 days here, and he had fallen in love with the incredible natural beauty of Iceland and the warm people who inhabit this wild land. I knew he was glad to be back.

When we had landed I swung my backpack onto my back, zipped up my sister's borrowed North Face jacket, and slung my purse over my shoulder. When I emerged from the plane, Iceland woke me from my post-rock dream state with a literal slap; I disembarked into the open air, which was cold and blowing a stinging rain in my face. I took the stairs down from the aircraft carefully, then took my first steps on Icelandic soil at a run to for the cover of the airport, where Tony was waiting inside the door.

The unforgiving Icelandic terrain near Keflavik

"Welcome to Iceland!" he said brightly. We hadn't seen each other in over six hours.

After a short trip through border control, whose agents appeared stern but relaxed, we found ourselves in Keflavik's main terminal, where we used the startlingly clean facilities and retrieved Icelandic Krona from an ATM machine. Then it was downstairs past baggage (our bags were being shipped straight on to Amsterdam) to buy a ticket for the Flybus, which would take us 45 minutes away into Reykjavik. Reykjavik does have an airport of its own, but is only used for domestic travel and for shorter flights to Greenland and the nearby Faroe Islands; the rest of us must arrive in Keflavik.

The monitor in our coach bus informed us that it was just after 7:00 in the morning, and the temperature just over 50 degrees Fahrenheit; a far cry from the 90-degree temperatures we had left behind in the states barely seven hours before. Once the bus we full of other yawning passengers, we departed the airport via a dizzying succession of traffic circles and set out into a rocky, moss-covered landscape: the lava fields.

"There are no trees in this country," Tony whispered to me as we drove through the bleak-looking but surprisingly beautiful countryside. "They can't grow here. You barely see a bush out there. You would see some lavender," he said guiltily, "if the rain hadn't smashed it all down!"

Hallgrímskirkja, Iceland's largest church

By "out there" Tony means in the wilderness, which he spent several days driving through in his rented "super Jeep" last year. He and his sister climbed glaciers, napped on the banks a waterfall so impressive I was sure it could only exist in Middle Earth, stayed in a hostel owned by a sheep farmer, and got closer to active volcanoes than most people I know have ever been.

Once we entered into the suburbs of Reykjavik, though, I did spot some hardy-looking trees swaying in the wind, poking up from behind fenced-in yards and in parking lots. "Imported and planted," Tony assured me in response to my raised eyebrows. "Trust me, nothing like that grows out in the wild." This was the first time I had ever really seen a landscape without trees; as I hail from the sylvan lands of Maryland and Pennsylvania, I didn't quite know what to make of it.

It didn't seem as long as 45 minutes before suburbs began to creep upward out of the lava and we found ourselves approaching Reykjavik. Located at just over 64 degrees north, Reykjavik is the world's northernmost capital city. This capital city is located on the southern shore of Faxaflói Bay, in the southwest of Iceland. With just over 119,000 residents in the city, and with 200,000 in the greater area, Reykjavik is home to over one third of Iceland's total population. Iceland itself is a fraction of the size of the United States, roughly the size of the state of Kentucky.

It had stopped raining by the time we disembarked at the main bus terminal, and Tony and I hoisted our packs up onto our shoulders and set off for the center of town. We set our sights on the recognizable steeple of Hallgrímskirkja, the largest church in Iceland and the country's only cathedral. It also makes a convenient orientation point for figuring out where you are in the city. Walking toward it on well-trod garden paths and litter-free sidewalks, we passed neat-looking middle-class homes, all of them in shades of off-white; their inhabitants were presumably still asleep, as it was barely 8:00 in the morning. We didn't meet a soul, actually, until we were staring up at the impressive facade of the cathedral, where a woman was watching her granddaughter play at the base of an equally impressive statue of the great explorer, Lief Erickson. Behind Lief, the gray pillars covering the cathedral's sides and stretching into the sky are meant to look like the basalt columns that naturally occur in parts of the country.

Icelanders are an open, accepting people.

From the cathedral we made our way downhill to the water (passing a couple of tourists who still appeared drunk, stumbling down the street), where we encountered the famous Sun Voyager sculpture, and a cloud-obscured view of the Esja Mountains across the water. "Sun Voyager is much more impressive when there is actual sun," mumbled my apologetic boyfriend, who obviously thought the gloomy weather was having a negative impact on my first impressions of Iceland.

Tony remembered a favorite cafe in town from the year before, and we set about locating it to procure some breakfast. Along the way we trod on the remains of rain-sodden, multicolored confetti; apparently we had just missed Reykjavik's annual Gay Pride Parade, which had taken place even as we flew toward it. Nearly every storefront we passed displayed a rainbow flag or other sign of solidarity, and in one souvenir shop a stuffed reindeer showed support of the most blatant kind: a cardboard sign reading "I'm gay" had been balanced on his antlers. Farther along the same street, we found a storefront with a permanent message plastered onto one of the windows: "If you are racist, sexist, homophobic, or an asshole, don't come in." I decided right then and there that I liked Icelanders a lot.

Sun breaks on the Esja Mountains, near Reykjavik

We meandered past an array of sleepy buildings, many of them empty, some of them covered with vibrant graffiti (Iceland is still recovering from a financial crisis of its own),  and worked our way back uphill to the heart of town. We finally stumbled upon Cafe Babalu, but found it was closed until 11:00 in the morning. Our stomachs grumbling audibly, we made our way back to a bakery that we had passed earlier; inside we found an enticing array of still-warm loaves, still-sticky pastries, and sandwiches on freshly-baked rolls. After ordering easily with the blonde, blue-eyed baker (everyone here speaks English; they don't even expect tourists to attempt to speak any Icelandic), we settled into a corner table with sandwiches and small cups of strong, black coffee, and relaxed for a little while. Other tourists with backpacks filtered in and out, clearly illustrating that this was probably the only place in the city that was actually open so early on a Sunday morning. But our simple ham and cheese sandwiches on buttered, cloud-soft white rolls were more than satisfying.

After breakfast we wandered down over the ever-present confetti to the edge of the university neighborhood. There on the lake's edge, we found that even the ducks and pigeons were still asleep; everyone must gotten in late from the parade! This area is on the edge of the old town, where Nordic influence can still be seen in the architecture. After that we made a loop back around the water, past the concert hall/opera house, a modern, black building whose windows appear to change color as you pass by; then decided to make our way back to the bus station.

Before the bus station we made a pit stop; back at Hallgrímskirkja we found the doors of the church had been thrown open, and people were coming and going. Since it was Sunday morning we initially shrank back from the doors, thinking we did not want to disturb any worshipers; however, the two way traffic indicated that we were welcome, so we went in. I've been to a lot of cathedrals and churches in England, France, and Italy, but I had never seen one like this; the ceiling, many stories above us, was vaulted in smooth white, without any of the ornate designs of European cathedrals. In fact, I don't think I saw even a single cross. The interior was smooth, and clean, almost like newly fallen snow had settled over the arches. I huge pipe organ clung to the rear of the church over the doors, in a nest of dark wood that matched the pews. We didn't stay long, but it only took a few moments to absorb the beauty of the place.

Back outside, we listened to the church bells slowly toll ten times as the wind whistled around our shoulders and mussed our already messy hair.  We had already been in Iceland for more than four hours.

Back downhill we went, past the same houses we had passed hours before, but which looked no closer to waking up. As we passed through a small garden, a friendly cat approached us, meowing, and wound itself once around a cringing Tony's ankles before disappearing into the undergrowth. Back at the bus station, we settled into plastic seats while awaiting the bus that would take us to our next destination, and our way of killing time before the airport: the waters of The Blue Lagoon awaited us.