General: Iceland

Sunday
How do you define a day like Sunday? It’s like one of those days in which everything happens at once and it had the feel of an incredibly quickly flowing river, sweeping us along with it. We woke up at around seven and threw some clothes on and left at eight, when my dad drove us to Heathrow airport. We arrived at terminal one so early we went for breakfast in Café Rouge where I felt inclined to order our English breakfasts in French ...
...Tommy told me that I should have ordered in English because we’re in England and I told him that the menu shouldn’t have been in French, then. Anyway, we checked in watched sadly as our luggage slid off never to be seen again.

Watching the boards and killing time was actually quite fun. We went into WH Smith and didn’t really have a chance to get bored. I bought a map of Iceland and Reykjavík along with a very amusing diary for 2004. ... more

Sunday
How do you define a day like Sunday? It’s like one of those days in which everything happens at once and it had the feel of an incredibly quickly flowing river, sweeping us along with it. We woke up at around seven and threw some clothes on and left at eight, when my dad drove us to Heathrow airport. We arrived at terminal one so early we went for breakfast in Café Rouge where I felt inclined to order our English breakfasts in French because that’s how it was written on the menu. Tommy told me that I should have ordered in English because we’re in England and I told him that the menu shouldn’t have been in French, then. Anyway, we checked in watched sadly as our luggage slid off never to be seen again.

Watching the boards and killing time was actually quite fun. We went into WH Smith and didn’t really have a chance to get bored. I bought a map of Iceland and Reykjavík along with a very amusing diary for 2004.

A board told us to go to departures, and so we did. We’ve never flown before, so this was all very nerve-wracking for the pair of us. I went through the metal scanner thing and it went off. I thought it could possibly have been my rings, eyebrow ring or belt buckle, but Tommy has all of these things and he didn’t go ‘bing!’ I was most upset. Anyway, a scary security guard had a good feel around and we were let into the departures area.

People have said that Heathrow is huge and horrible. It is huge, but the whole experience was in no way unpleasant, though we decided this may be different if it weren’t a Sunday morning; perhaps Friday afternoon is more hectic.

As we passed into the departures lounge and waited for our gate number, I suddenly felt as though we were being moved from the less expensive shopping area into the higher price-ranged shops. There was a Harrods, for example…

We had an overpriced drink in the pub (two of those piddly little bottles of Coke for £2.70) then went back downstairs. When our flights appeared at gate 40 (where the check-in guy said it would be), we made our way there. I’d staked the area out earlier just to make sure I knew where we were going.

Waiting at the gate, we watched as plane after plane took off. We saw the pilot of our plane. “At least he looks sober,” said Tommy as he walked past us. He returned ten minutes later with a couple of bags.
“He’s got his booze now, he’s alright,” I said.

After we got settled in on the plane, it was very strange being driven around in a plane. It seemed a very ostentatious way of getting around. We kept suffering pangs of nervousness, followed by a sort of disappointed relief as, meandering around, we hadn’t actually started to take off yet.

Taking off was fun. We had a window-seat by the wing and I watched as the ground fell away. It’s strange how quickly you ascend in a plane. Well, I’m sure it’s not unusual, it’s just that I’ve never experienced it before, so it interested me.

The flight was pleasant and we ate a bit of chicken, some vegetables and a lump of something that Tommy decided was probably cauliflower cheese. We listened to music and I read some of the diary I’d bought in the airport.

Two-and-a-half hours later we broke through the cloud and saw the shores of Iceland; we’d arrived. The land was dark brown with rock, littered with a dusting of snow. The light was dying and it was only about 4pm.

Waiting for the luggage to come around on that belt thing is scary, isn’t it? Is that my bag? Is this my bag? Where’s my bag? Why hasn’t my bag come out yet? Ah, here it is! Oh no, that’s not it. That’s hers. Is this it? Where is it? Why have they stopped putting bags on now? There are big gaps now. Where’s my bag? …and so on. Anyway, we did get the bags and then went to declare our wine, but they told us to bugger off through the nothing to declare hole, so we did.

We’d made a car rental reservation with Avis and, upon finding the desk, we got the keys and were told where to find it. We poked around and found it. It wasn’t what either of us was expecting. I thought we’d get a ten-year-old Skoda Refrigerator. Tommy figured the same because of his age and because of insurance purposes, however the car in front of us defied our expectations totally: It was a metallic light green five-door Hyundai Getz with remote central locking, electric windows, power steering and a jolly good CD player stereo.

We drove out and Tommy was shitting a brick. He’s never driven on the opposite side of the road before and it was terrifying for him, bless his thermals. He did well and we left Keflavík airport and found ourselves driving through a dark and barren environment on the way to Reykjavík.

We got parked somewhere and I had to go and seek the hotel. I went and got some money out because Tommy was parked at a meter and asked a nice young lady in a hot dog booth if she spoke English and was met with a “sure.” I got some change and eventually, after passing Café Cozy (a gay-friendly establishment, which seemed to do exactly what it said on the tin) I got back to the car and we found Ránargata, the road along which the hotel was situated.

We checked in and changed rooms (I can’t be doing with two single beds at opposite sides of the room) and got settled in. We became hungry and so ventured out into the streets of Reykjavík. We had a burger and chips from a kebab house and continued walking.

It was sodding cold, I don’t mind telling you. Cold and dark, but dry. I hadn’t put my hat on, but Tommy had his and we were just getting a feel for the city at night. It struck me as terribly strange that Reykjavík, the world’s most northern capital city, was virtually deserted at, say, eight thirty at night on a Sunday. Consider London, with its 24-hour bustle and buzz. Reykjavík was like Eastbourne on a Tuesday evening.

We walked street after twinkling street, past big windows with this and that, past restaurants and bars, cafés and shops all with one thing in common: Lights. Twinkling in innumerable colours, the lights made the place look so magical.

We found our way to Hallgrímskirkja, the tallest structure in Reykjavík. It’s a massive church given to Iceland by the USA, with a columnar design and a clock on each side with lights as the hands. It became an invaluable landmark for us because, though it was a fair way from the hotel, we knew where we were with it.

We walked back down the hill and found a music shop in what touted itself as being the main shopping street. We poked around and compared prices (their DVDs were quite cheap at about £7.00) and then made our way back to the hotel via the bay where Tommy jumped around on icy grass and we both slid around on a shiny marble plinth that houses a sculpture.
Back in the hotel, we flaked out and went to bed.

Monday
Tommy woke up just before eight and, being reluctant to surface, I didn’t until Tommy had had his shower. The room smelled of rotten eggs. That’ll be the sulphur in the hot water, then. I found it nice to shower in, though; it’s probably marvellous for the skin.

We went for breakfast, which had mostly been eaten by the other guests, but I had a few crackers with butter and cheese, a glass or three of orange juice and Tommy had a bowl of… little round things and a cup of tea.

Afterwards we went back upstairs and dropped off again because it’s just too dark for half-nine in the morning.

When we woke up again it was light at about half-eleven, but raining. Tommy had hoped that it would be snowing but it wasn’t so. We ventured out and found the church again, but there was nobody to buy tickets from to be able to go up into the tower.

As we wandered around we found the lake we were sort-of looking for, called Tjörnin. It was frozen over and quite thick in the middle, probably. It looked really nice, actually. There was a tree over the other side, covered with lights that reflected off the frozen surface. Made a good picture. The end nearest all the shops is festooned with birdlife of varying size, all honking for food.

We stopped into a café on the way back and had a hot drink with a pastry. It was good to stop and relax, watch the world outside drift by. People seem very friendly in Reykjavík. The guy who served us was talking to us about things to see and do in the country and told us to take it easy when we left. The people do seem very relaxed and friendly; it was something of a far cry from the impolite, cold and abrasive welcome we’ve received in some restaurants, naming no names, Wimpy in Ashford.

We went for a drive in the afternoon before it got dark because we’d decided to go to see the glacial lagoon the following day so we needed to find out how to get onto route 1, the ring road that encompasses the country.

We didn’t, however, find route 1, but Tommy got a touch stressed with the driving. We found a good spot with a dusting of snow and toddled around there for a while, taking a few pictures. It all looks so desolate. So empty and barren. That’s perhaps what makes it so intriguing, because it doesn’t look like the same planet we’re familiar with.

In the evening, we decided to go out to the supermarket, called 10•11 and get some bits for the following day. We’d decided to go to the glacial lagoon in the south-east of the country. It looks incredibly beautiful in the guide books and is approximately 230 miles away from Reykjavík going anti-clockwise on the route 1. It’s called Jökulsárlón and is Iceland’s most photographed site, but it promises to be so very cold and we sincerely doubted if anyone would be capitalist enough to spoil such a spot of ineffable beauty by plonking a MacDonalds next to it, so we’d have to stock up on high-calorie foods to help keep us warm.

We bought a couple of rolls, bananas, Coke, cookies, those marshmallow-snowball things, Pringles, raisins, chocolate things and other such healthy foodstuffs. Then, when we got back to the hotel, Tommy read the weather and decided that since it was meant to be snowing in Reykjavík, we wouldn’t go to Jökulsárlón on Tuesday after all, we’d leave it until Wednesday and bum around Reykjavík instead, waiting for the snow.

We munched on some snack food and I read my book whilst Tommy fell asleep.

Tommy woke up later on and we watched the end of a movie before getting ready for bed and listening to the radio. Icelandic is a strange language that makes its speakers sound as if they’re speaking English in reverse. Strange but true. I imagine that if you were to record an Icelander speaking and play it backwards, it would come out as something like this: “I pity the sad bastard who is listening to me backwards, what a full and interesting life you must clearly lead.”

Or something.

In the shadows, a song we’d heard whilst driving from Keflavík airport came on the radio. Tommy decided that tomorrow, we’d look for it in the shops.

Tuesday
I just couldn’t get up today. I was sluggish and reluctant to surface and only when Tommy threatened to bugger off to breakfast without me did I rise and throw some clothes on.

We ate and went back into the room to sleep a while longer to wait for the sun to come up and when it did we left the nest with a great deal of glee for in spite of the weather forecast, the sky was a brilliant clear blue and, as we rounded the corner past the Esso garage that reveals the mountains across the bay, brilliant sunlight was illuminating the clouds, making them shine a pale pink as they hung around the peaks.

We took picture after picture and I realised that Iceland may well be even more beautiful in the summer with daylight for twenty-four hours every day.

Tommy stamped on the frozen puddles and slipped on the solid stuff as we made our way around taking pictures at almost every juncture.

We walked up and down the main shopping street poking our heads around a few doors to see what was what. We arrived at Tjörnin and took some more pictures of the geese, swans, ducks and pigeons that flock there.

We stopped on the way back to the hotel (for we needed to thaw out) in a café and had some hot food. It was traditional Icelandic fish stew and when it arrived on our table it was accompanied by the most peculiar ammonium smell that made me think that perhaps I wasn’t going to enjoy this meal. With the stew, Tommy and I both had a Coke to quench our thirst and coffee to warm our bits. The stew looked like over thick wallpaper paste with a sprinkling of pepper. It tasted not like wallpaper paste, but instead like fish stew and it was really very pleasant. I munched away and we received a few free refills of coffee before settling the bill (which came to around £22) and trundling off back to the hotel.

Looking through the photos was great, especially from the warmth and comfort of the hotel room. I started typing this lot when Tommy suggested that we go to The Blue Lagoon. I was quite ready to say no and just sit on the bed, typing away as he got bored shitless, but we went in the end.

The Blue Lagoon (or Bláa Loníð) is located in Grindavík, near Keflavík and on the way it began to look as if it had snowed recently. Looking out as we drove through the lava fields, they were all dusted with snow. Then they became coated with snow. Then, it began to snow and hard. We pulled over and got out to take a few pictures. I ended up looking like a snowman and it was just so surreal and quiet, the muted sound of snowflakes falling on more snow didn’t exactly echo around but that’s all that was audible.

We drove on and found The Blue Lagoon and thought, here we go, then… We paid our entrance fee (about a tenner a head) and got into the changing rooms. When we were undressed and showered (you have to do it naked but it’s okay, there are curtains) we went off to the indoor entrance to the lagoon.

The water is an off-white colour. Not creamy coloured, but a bluey-off-white. We took our first steps into the water and both expected it to be warm, but a lukewarm reminiscent of the seawater in the Spanish Costas or something like that. As our feet entered the water it was like getting into a bath you’ve just taken three hours to get to the right temperature. It was a great temperature and it was so comfortable.

We went through the gate into the lagoon proper and it was like wading onto another planet. It was dark above and the water was vast and milky. Lamps around the lagoon illuminated one of the place’s main features: the steam. Because the water is hot and the air is, of course cold (it had just been snowing, remember) and the surface of the lagoon continuously gives off shitloads of steam. So much so, in fact that you can’t really see the outer confines of the lagoon and it gives the surrounding area its other-worldly feel.

We swam around and found little alcoves where you could sit down (should you overcome the somewhat annoying effects of the buoyancy) and have the waters of the lagoon lap over your shoulders. Along with the luxury of the water, there are also wooden boxes with buckets of white slush that greatly resemble the traditional Icelandic fish stew we had eaten but a few hours ago. The idea is that you smother yourself with traditional Icelandic fish stew and it exfoliates and invigorates your skin greatly. We did this and it was great fun and it really did feel great.

We explored around and if there was anything bad to say about The Blue Lagoon it’s that in places it’s really, really fucking hot. Far too hot in fact. In other places, it’s refreshingly cool and I really didn’t expect that; the temperature variance. I thought it was going to be a standard regulated temperature throughout, but no. It’s not so.

As some dodgy celebrity once said in a hair advert, here comes the science. Iceland makes electricity by way of the relatively-inexhaustible resource of geothermal energy. It’s situated near a fault line and is incredibly volcanic. They don’t have to pay for heating or anything like that, they let the volcanoes do it for them. This is the idea behind The Blue Lagoon. It’s just a money-spinning by-product of a many-hyphened sentence. Uh, no, a by-product of a geothermal power station and it’s really, good for you, too. Truly marvellous! What was also truly marvellous (see the way I link these events, it’s not just thrown together, this, you know) is that it began to snow around us. According to the big temperature board, it was 40°c in the water and 0°c outside of the water. Does that compute to you? No, me neither. At one point, Tommy went to take some pictures of this unearthly landscape and was walking barefoot on snow as I was floating around in mineral-laden water, sweating buckets, probably.

There were very few people in with us until quite late on when a load of English blokes came in and started saying how it was ‘proper toasty’. There was an Australian with them as well and he’d clearly been here before. I wanted to speak to them because it was a nice thing to do but I didn’t because I really couldn’t think of anything to say that didn’t make me sound like a prick. “Warm, isn’t it?” Perhaps not.

We left and checked out the prices in the restaurant but ran like hell because it was the most expensive I’d seen thus far.

We drove back without event and reviewed the pictures in the room. Some of them are startlingly beautiful with the near-white out that surrounded us on the way down. Snowflakes littered the frames and when we were the subjects of the photos, we looked as cold as the landscape around us. The snow seemed to be never-ending. After texting my mum about it, she replied “I’ve got the feeling that u r overawed by the beauty of this place.” She was right. In a way the country conforms totally to my expectations because I expected it not to be anything like anything I could have expected.

The beauty of the sunlight mountains was somewhat topped by the bleak cold and desolate feeling of isolation we experienced driving through the snow-frosted lava fields. That was topped by the snowstorm we drove through and the white-out that we experienced and that was topped by the three-hour swim around The Blue Lagoon.

I sat there, ready to type again and Tommy gazed out of the window, looking for the snow he’d been anticipating all afternoon. The skies were still quite clear, but Tommy noticed something as I sat typing away. A cloud; a tall cloud… A tall, green cloud. Was it what he thought it was? He called me over and I took a look. It could have been, but it might have just been a cloud. Was it…?

We made for the car and drove along the sea route just out of the city and found that the cloud was precisely what we both had hoped it was: The northern lights.

The northern lights are a display of swirling streams of light which result from the massive amounts of electromagnetically radioactive gas that explode from the surface of the sun and hurtle their way towards us. The gas hits the protective particles and ions in the upper reaches of our atmosphere and explodes and the light from the streams of gas are drawn towards the magnetic poles of the planet. In the northern hemisphere the lights are known as the aurora borealis and in the southern hemisphere, they’re called the aurora australis, or southern lights.

Generally, the lights are green apparently, but they can also be yellow, red or purple. As we came to a stand high on a hill by the bay with the wind howling around us, the lights dipped below the cloud across the bay and shone a brilliant purple.

To describe the lights is to describe something which is more than just looking at a light show. Anyone can describe a light show, but the northern lights are something totally different; something which would affect me in a different way to how it would affect you. I felt as though I was watching something more than just gas hitting the atmosphere. It was deeper and more spiritual than that just plain science and if you let yourself go, I imagine you could end up growing a beard and long hair.

The lights shift and move in a very ghostly and spooky fashion. They appear to have a purpose and seem to move with a design. They come down and point with fingers of green that are tinged with pink at the ends, they form circles and straight lines, then slowly and silently, they shift away, growing dimmer, then gently glowing brighter.

It’s the total opposite to lightning. Lightning is greatly defined, harsh bright lines that come and go in a blink, followed by the thunder which shakes the very walls between which you cower. You don’t need to go out to find lightning, wait long enough and the odds are that a thunderstorm will come for you.

The aurora are totally different. They’re not gone in a blink, they last for quite a while, but come and go as they please. They’re not greatly defined harsh lines but are instead misty ethereal strokes of light, almost whimsical in their direction. They’re not noisy and this is what really makes them totally different to lightning. You expect them to make sounds, but they don’t. I fancied that they would make a noise like a lightsabre, but nothing, like the sound of snow that isn’t really there, it’s totally silent.

We filmed for a while before retreating to the car and warming up. The wind was bitterly cold and I had very quickly developed a headache in it. There we stayed for a while, commenting on the day’s events and talking about the fantastic display before us and occasionally we leapt out to capture it some more. Eventually, all that was left was a vague band of eerie green light that highlighted the cloud in front of it and a few shimmering flecks that slowly disbanded.

We left and got some petrol which, for about a quarter of a tank, cost about £13 and, finally, we stopped off in the little corner shop for four bottles of Coke and two rolls for tomorrow (for we are going to Jökulsárlón, the glacial lagoon) which also set us back around £13.

We reviewed the digital camera picture of the aurora which was just a load of black, unfortunately. I sat down and typed the events of the day and Tommy had a shower. It’s now eleven minutes past midnight and I’m going to have a shower.

I’ve had my shower now. It smelled of rotten eggs again, but it was really quite lovely. Tommy has read through this very text and I’ve changed a few things as a result – the in-flight meal had, for example cauliflower cheese, not cottage cheese and I spelled cloud with an extra ‘L’ at one point. And now I’m going to sleep.

Wednesday
Today, today, today. How to start… The beginning seems a fairly appropriate plaice. No, that’s a fish. We woke up at about quarter to seven in the pitch black morning with the intention of wrapping up bloody warm and going to see Jökulsárlón, the glacial lagoon in the south east of the country. Bearing in mind that Reykjavík is in the west, that’s actually quite some distance.

After donning our thermals (long johns are such ugly garments) and scarves and collecting our packed lunches, we climbed aboard the car and set off, at which point we promptly got lost. It was stressful for a while and Tommy and I suffered disagreements that sprang forth from his firm belief that I’m capable of reading a map in the dark and that I am, in fact fully conversant with every street in the city. We resolved the problem by finding that we’d missed the turning for route 1.

It was dark and, upon leaving town, we discovered that the windscreen squirters had frozen up and the spray from oncoming cars was freezing causing a visual obstruction, a problem we overcame curiously by buying six bottles of water.

Anyway, the first event of the day was rounding the corner and finding that we were driving through tall, dark, snow-covered mountains. They were sitting, broodily either side of route 1 as we descended. The moon wasn’t visible and so the surrounding area was very dark, but you could easily make out the mountains against the slow Icelandic dawn.

When the sky brightened we saw how very cold it was. The roadside was richly frosted with ice and snow, sparkling in the mandatory-during-all-hours headlights and the roadside streams were encrusted with ice.

The sun eventually made an appearance at around half eleven and it’s around that time that we spotted something that looked to be a waterfall. We drove onward toward our actual destination, but something in us told us we had to look at this waterfall so we drove up close to it and parked in an adjacent gravel car park. There were picnic benches here and there so in the summer, I concluded, it was probably quite a lovely spot to have lunch and lose your children. We got kitted up with cameras galore and went to have a poke about.

It was just so cold outside of the car. On a thermometer in Reykjavík, it had registered -3°c. The waterfall was beautiful as it cascaded down into the pool that ran off as a stream towards route 1. It was probably about forty feet high, the fall and Tommy went off to take pictures. As I approached, I noticed that the grass was getting a little tough to walk on. What had happened was the spray from the waterfall hitting the pool had landed and frozen, then more spray had landed and frozen, then more and more and more, leading to the total mummification of grass, twigs and stones. Everything was encased in ice and it was like walking on slippery marbles and, given that I am as good on my feet as, say… a dead person, I was very cautious. We took pictures and I ended up with the camcorder and I filmed the water running over the edge and falling with such grace and smashing against the pool below when the sound of the water was overshadowed by a blood curdling scream.

The next thing you see on the video is Tommy laying on the floor yelling at me to turn the camcorder off as his clothing soaks up the water.

Tommy driving in long johns is something interesting to see. He regretted not changing his shoes from his slippery trainers to his boots, but he doesn’t regret stopping at the waterfall and, looking at the pictures, neither do I.

We drove through a town or two and the landscape was reminiscent of, as Tommy puts it, Nevada. There were rocky outcrops and sheer rock faces that were simply huge. With the low sun shining on the rocks, it looked golden and very American. In the distance we could see snowy mountains, it was so picturesque.

Route 1 is the road that encircles Iceland and driving on it gives you something of a tour of the country, after all, if you’re not on the ring road, you’re in the middle of nowhere. Iceland’s population is 300,000. That’s not a lot of people for a lot of space, so it’s not terribly surprising that as we went, we saw very few cars.

The road curved around one rocky outcrop and as we followed this curve, the rock revealed a solid white mountain of vast proportions. We’d already stopped in various other places to take photos of the distant mountains, but this was huge. This was Skaftafellsjökull, a glacial finger of Iceland’s largest icecap, Vatnajökull, which takes up about one twelfth of the country, making it the largest glacier in all of the non-polar world.

We restrained ourselves enough to not stop at Skaftafell National Park to have a poke around. We were worried that it wouldn’t be light by the time we arrived at Jökulsárlón.

When we saw the glacial flow of Svínafellsjökull, the next glacier of the vast Vatnajökull, we took the turn down a very difficult road and took some pictures. We were slightly disappointed that we couldn’t make it all the way along to be able to set foot on the glacier, but it was deceptively far away, like everything in the country.

A few pictures later, we were back on our way and over an hour of beautiful views passed before we saw a suspension bridge. Just before that there was a turning to the left totally devoid of any signage. Between the hills, I caught a glimpse of blue on water, “is that it?”
Tommy looked and said, “yeah, it is… well done!”

We parked up and as Tommy was pretty much getting dressed I approached Jökulsárlón, the glacial lagoon. The lagoon is seawater that, due to the movement of the land, became trapped and as the glacier of Breiðamerkurjökull (also part of Vatnajökull) came rolling down the mountain. The temperature of the water melts huge chunks of ice off the glacier which, being less dense than the water, slowly dance around the surface of the large lagoon. The ice is old and thick and heavy, it’s literally a load of icebergs floating around a lake and that’s what I saw as I approached the edge of the hill.

The water reflected the grey sky as much as it did the intense light blue of the ice and, when Tommy had joined me, we made our way to the shore.

The shimmering water hazily mirrored the angular structures of the deep blue ice whilst we took picture after picture, the cold nibbling at our faces. We had been joined by a seal who bobbed his head up and swiftly and almost silently slipped beneath the surface again.

Tommy and I walked the shore to get different angles on the lagoon which was simply beautiful. To describe it is only to suggest at what was actually seen, but the feel of the place was one of wonder. It awed me to set eyes on the frozen shapes on the water, the glacier pushing down the mountain from the other side and the seal was a bizarre touch. It playfully followed us as we walked up the shore.

We spent over an hour on the lagoon, taking pictures and testing various areas of ice for thickness and resistance to different sized stones (which were all frozen to the ground) and it was all such an amazing experience it was a shame that the cameras were running low on pictures and the light was fading.

We got back to the car and ate our packed lunches and began the long, long drive home.

On the way back, the sky lit up green. A stream of shimmering light stretched from the moon and bisected the night’s sky forming this shape and that in its ever-shifting quest to astound its viewers, which it did. We were fixated from within the car. Tommy drifted to the British side of the road a few times and had to avoid stationary objects because of the distraction that flared about the heavens. I filmed it and it was so bright it came out rather well. It was a display superior to that of the previous night and really added some excellent entertainment during what has proven to be the best day of the holiday to date… I know, you thought yesterday was good! …Tommy drove for fourteen hours today. If he were a trucker, he’d be sacked for excessive hours, but he’s not. He’s just my companion in this holiday, this life, this existence, and I strive to let him know how much that means to me. What a fucking trooper; fourteen hours of driving on the wrong side of the road, going the wrong way round roundabouts in an unfamiliar land…

“I’ve had one hell of a day,” said Tommy as he sipped the last of his wine in the hotel room. I sat beside him typing these very words as he went to check the skies for lights or snow. He simply closed the curtains, belched and got ready for bed. Today had been one hell of a day and I echo his sentiments when he says, “I’m never going to forget that …for as long as I live.”

Thursday
Reluctant to rise again, I drifted with Tommy down to breakfast where I had more bloody crackers. There’s nothing much to breakfast in the hotel. Some cold meats, some cheese, crackers, bread and butter, jam and marmalade and some cereals, but I was sort of hoping for sausages. I love sausages. We had tea and went back upstairs where we slept for a couple more hours.

When the skies had brightened, we went out and found to our distinct surprise that it was cold. Yeah it’s Iceland, I’ll give you that, but it was bitterly cold and my face swiftly went numb. It had snowed last night, so Tommy was vaguely happy about that. We stopped in a shop where I bought a map of the country on CD ROM and Tommy spent the equivalent of twenty pounds on postcards, a small paper flag, a calendar and a fridge magnet. That’s a lot of money for not a lot of stuff, but then that does appear to be a running theme in the country.

We stopped in the restaurant we’d been in a couple of days ago and had the traditional fish stew again and chatted. For some reason, we started to test out our telepath 

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