Welcome to Iceland

Monday, July 22, 2024

We discovered very quickly that it never gets dark at night this time of year in Iceland. So we have added another unanswerable questions to the list that includes "What is the meaning of Life?"  What is the exact time that dusk becomes dawn?

Five years ago  we took our children, Jil and Jeff, and their spouses, Rob and Heather on a cruise in the Caribbean to celebrate our 50th wedding anniversary.  Grandchildren were not included and our children were thrilled. They enjoyed so much that at the end of the cruise they asked if we could do it again for our 55th aniversary.  Last fall we told them our 55th was coming up so we needed to plan the next cruise and where we were going to go. They surprised us by quickly responding "Iceland".  So here we are.

We were scheduled to fy out of Detroit last Friday evening. Of course we woke up Friday morning to find the airline industry in chaos. When it was time to leave for the airport United Airlines still had our flight listed as leaving on time.  By the time we arrived at Detroit Metro our Chicago flight was now delayed 2 hours which was not a problem because our flight to Reykjavik was also delayed.  The only problem we faced was Tim and Lynda being re-introduced to the joys of flying in coach. Our last cruise in March had business class airfare included.  We finally boarded our ship about noon on Saturday.  We were lucky. We were told there were about 150 passengers who's flights had been canceled.  After lunch we spent the rest of the day unpacking, napping and exploring the ship.

We had an afternoon excursions scheduled, so Lynda, Tim, Jil and Rob, took the cruise schuttle bus into Reykjavik  to explore the old town section.  It was the only opportunity to see any of Reykjavik.  Sunday morning Jeff and Heather wanted to sleep in and enjoy their first morning without teenagers in the house. Our first stop was the beautiful and somewhat contemporary appearing Lutheran Cathedral. The outside facade was everything we expected and the interior was a very simple, but impressive design as one expects in a country with Scandinavian roots.  In front of the cathedral was a statue of Lief Ericksson that was given to Iceland by the United States in celebration of the 1000th anniversary of the Iceland parliment.  From the cathedral we were walking toward the main pedestrian shopping street of Reykjavik. Unfortunately Lynda became ill so Tim and Lynda found a taxi and returned to the ship.  Jil and Rob reported many interesting shops including a photographic art gallery where they bought a couple of impressive prints for their home.

Besides volcanos, Iceland is famous for the many geothermal hot springs that occur all over the country.   We were told that geothermal springs provide 90 percent of the energy for Iceland.  Our excursion on Sunday was to Sky Lagoon where a large pool built out of the lava stone is filled with water from one of these springs.  The pool is only 4 feet deep and has a long infinty wall right on the edge of the Atlantic Ocean.  The temperature is a toasty 100 degrees.  Convienently there is also a walk up (doggy paddled up?) bar.  The Lagoon also has a program called "The Ritual"  which we all took.  It starts with a plunge into a pool of cold water, followed by sitting in a sauna. We sat in the sauna for about 10 minutes and then went into a room called the "cold water mist" room. From there you picked up a bowl containg salt and essential oils and rubbed it all over your body, except your face and then went immediately into a steam room to melt the salt off of you and open your pores.  The last stop was the cold plunge again but I don't think any of us did. We spent some more time in the pool before we returned to the ship. We all felt very refreshed but also felt in need of a nap.

Sunday evening our ship left Reykjavik  and Monday morning we woke up  anchored in a fjord off of Isafjordur. Don't ask us to pronounce it.  It turns out that Isafjordur is a fishing village and is the worlds largest producer of medical grade fish skin. Fish skin has been found to significantly shorten the healing time after surgeries. We also visited Bolungarvik where we visited the Museum  of the fishing industry.  It basically was a group of old buildings and an old boat that was used for fishing in the time before the cumbustion engine. A young man did give an interesting and humorous brief lecture about what fishing was like back in the day. The other stop was at a small but beautiful waterfall cascading down a mountain.  Our guide had a plastic pitcher that he dipped into the stream and offered us a drink of the water.  It was cold, clear and delicious. Probably the highlight of todays excursion was the fantastic scenery we saw.

Due to technical issues beyond our understanding we are not posting pictures on the blog.  Go to Tim's Facebook page for pictures.