Flew to Reykjavik on 1 August my first ever flight all by myself, that was nothing to worry about until we started flying over iceland from the ocean... it looked like another planet?! There were just rocks everywhere and one windy dirt road, where the hell was I?? it was hard to tell how far above the ground we were until i spotted a lone car or a few 'outback shed' looking houses scattered here and there on the ground. Landed in Keflavik safely and met up with Toby (who I used to work at Belushi's with in Bris) and his mate Konni. The boys had visited me for a long weekend in london a couple of months earlier and told me i HAD to come to iceland for this national festival trip to Vestmann Island.
We had the day and night in Reykjavik where the boys live, and spent the day drinking coffee, sightseeing around town (forgot to take my camera though didn't i...doh!) and picked up supplies for our trip (camping mattresses and chairs...which got left behind, rain pants - you won't miss them in the photo's, and of course some form of fancy dress outfit - im sure you'll all love it) we went to a bar Konni works at that night to see none other than an Australian singer guy Toby Rant and also an Icelandic guy who were both in the Rockstar Supernova TV show competition, apparently the Icelandics were all mad for the show and every girl I met on my trip was in love with Toby (the famous one, not my mate toby) and all hoped that I was there because I was friends with him... sorry girls.
We were up earlish to get on the ferry to Vestmann Island the next day, a 3ish hour trip on the boat which thank god was smooth sailing instead of the 25-30knot winds they predicted, to top it off the sun was out so we had a perfect opportunity to sunbake (about the first chance i've had in almost a whole year!!).
Just before we got off the boat the captain told us it was highly recommended NOT to camp tonight as there were going to be 30m per second winds and a possible storm, instead we should all go to the sports hall 5 mins up the road from the campsite and stay there for the night.
But of course the boys being boys wanted to rough it and that was fine... while we were out half the night. But when we got back the rain and wind had picked up and started taking its toll on the tent, the 4 of us slept in the tent with konni and toby holding onto the poles for half the night, and well you'll see the photo of the aftermath, a few of the robes broke and most of the poles snapped somewhere. it wasn't so much fun at the time but once we all made it out alive and dry in the morning it was absolutley hillarious, plus for the rest of the week were known as 'those aussies who camped out on the first night' (even though me and toby made only 1.5 australian out of 4).
The rest of the week was spent waking up somewhere between 10am and 1pm depending how long we could stand the heat of the sun on the tent and how big of a night we'd had before hand (the sun was setting at about 11pm and rising at about 4am - beautiful!!)Once we were up we'd walk into town get a big brunch and booze for the day (or 2 days depending when the shops were going to be closed), run into people we'd met around the place and stop for a while on the footpath and drink with them for an hour or so, visit people staying at friends houses that lived around town, took showers at some point (all communal but i got used to that quickly enough, although i think ive now seen more naked women than any man could ever dream of) (there were a bunch of pools in the same building, one indoor, about 5 outdoor spas and one outdoor shallow pool just deep enough to lie down in where we spent one particularly hungover day). We'd eventually head back to the campsite and wander around the many gatherings going on until everyone would head to the hill for the nightly concerts that went til about 6am the next morning.
It was a long tiring trip but so so so much fun, drinks of choice were the lager brand lager (you'll see it in pretty much every photo) and the delicious appfel schnapps (later nicknamed shnake schnapps for the snake on the bottle) which i'm still having random cravings for 2 weeks later! we shared it around a fair bit but went through about 8 bottles of it on the island (i had to buy some on my home from duty free too of course).
The boat back to Reykjavik was again a smoooth trip, which im told is very unlikely, and none of us were sick or saw anyone in that state, but when walking around the boat you would think somebody had gassed the place, there were passed out bodies EVERYWHERE!!
Once we were back on land we dropped all our stuff back at Toby's house and headed out to the Blue Lagoon for a relaxing detox in the thermal heated pool, it was beautiful, smelt like egg from the sulphur but still so nice to just wade around in for a few hours and we all felt so much better for it. The heating and depth of the pool is all controlled at about 30 something dg's now because the temperature differed too much when it was natural, some spots went up to 80degrees! and there were big sudden deep spots and it was too dangerous. We headed home that night and i just stayed in loading up photos while the boys went to tell stories of the week at the pub.
On my second last day we drove out to the geysir's, the biggest active one shot up about 20 or 30m into the air for about 5ish seconds with only about 3 mins wait between each spurt! We were hoping to get to the golden falls but the weather had turned very grey and rainy so we just went home. The drive was beautiful though, there's just big rock cliffs everywhere, and rocks covered in moss all along the ground. We met some friendly (or stupid) black sheep along the way that were just standing in the middle of the road and also stopped off at the site where soemthing important in history happened [i'll checkup and get back to you on this one] but there was a great lookout and view from there too.
For my last night Toby, Konni and I had dinner down the road at Toby's sisters bar/restraunt where Toby is normally head chef. I had a raw meat thing (kinda like prosciutto but beef) with pamrasen cheese, basil and a scallop and then for main i had my first and the most delicious surf and turf in the world... lobster tails and lamb fillets, also with a big baked potato ooozing with butter YUM!! so delicious (first time i've had lobster and im hooked!!). After that we went to the bar upstairs and met up with a bunch of the boys friends that I'd met during the week.
Had a big sleep in the next day and headed out quickly to take photos of the huge church at Reykjavik then went off to the airport... had the Thurs & Fri back in London off work to recover and came back to some nice hot english weather, i just relaxed at home and sunbaked, but accidently fell asleep one day and my bum is just recovering from what has resembled something very similar to a baboon for the last 2 weeks!
5 stars for Iceland, and my wonderful hosts!! Will have to go back again sometime to see the falls, glaciers and old (fingers crossed) volcanoes.
ps. The computer is being horrid and I've only been able to upload a couple of photos, more to come!!
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