Iceland Day 5
Monday, 5 August 2024
Our last day in Iceland was relatively cruisy - we woke up at 7am to go for a run but it was so windy and wet it was hard to even get the front door open, so we went back to bed until 8 when we had another look - same - so we went back to bed again and got up for real at 9.30 and packed our running gear away (at least it was still dry!). After some leisurely packing we left Vik headed for Reykjavik in the still pouring rain. Vik seems to be in some weird constant rain shadow area as it always has the worst of the weather - after about 20 minutes it cleared up a lot. .jpg)
We didn't have any stops to do along the way so we arrived around 1pm and did a bit of a walking tour before going to our apartment. The city centre and old town are quite pretty and very busy with tourists. .jpg)
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There were heaps of souvenir shops in the town - my favourite by far was the one with the cat (with a sign next for it saying 'not for sale) .jpg)
It was nice to see a few other neighbourhood cats around too: .jpg) .jpg)
We stayed in a small ramshackle apartment very close to the centre - I chose it because I figured we'd need a washer and dryer at this stage (I was correct) but unfortunately it only had a washer as the dryer was in the 'other apartment' that's available. After much messaging with the owner we managed to get half our stuff into the basement dryer of the completely different house next door, but then of course the guy that enabled this went out - leaving us unable to get our gear from the locked place just as we were planning to head to our evening booking at the Blue Lagoon - so it was a bit of a hassle for a while - it's not the first time the washer or dryer hasn't really existed despite being on the ad. Anyway it all turned out ok - someone else turned up and let us get to it. After dinner we drove the 45 minutes out to the Blue Lagoon. We weren't sure we wanted to do this activity as it was pretty expensive but I'm really glad we did - it was really fun and we drifted about in the delightfully hot waste from the geothermal plant next door for a few hours - enjoying our free drink and facial scrub. .jpg)
We took the time to debrief a bit from the last four weeks and decided the following: Best countries we've experienced in order: - Sweden (mostly because O-ringen was so much fun but the weather was good, the forests and lakes were beautiful)
- Faroe Islands
- Scotland (WOC was great and I loved the Isle of Skye)
- Ireland/Iceland
- Northern Ireland
We're ranking the full experience we had - which puts Sweden above Faroe Islands but from a pure tourist perspective the Faroe Islands was the winner. Despite the amazing scenery Iceland ranks lower than we had expected because of the weather, the fact that things are actually a long way apart, and the expense. It was nice but it felt like we were on a tourist train from one site to the next - I think it would have been better to be here either just 3 nights (on the tourist train) or two weeks so there's time to do some long hikes and get into the mountains a bit more (but then of course the bad weather makes that less fun). Also Zali noted that our Faroe Islands photos don't do it justice, whereas the Iceland photos actually make it look better than it is. There's not a second spent on the Faroes where the views aren't breathtaking. Best city Worst city - a drawer between Dublin and Belfast - both really dirty and Belfast had a weird vibe.
And now it's on to Finland for 5 nights for the World Masters Orienteering Championships. It actually started a few days ago with the sprint races but we're just going for the forest ones as we wanted to fit in Faroes/Iceland. We'll arrive in Turku late this afternoon after losing 3 hours mid-flight due to the west-to-east time zone change. We had to get up at 4am this morning so hopefully the flight is restful! |