Iceland XI: Marathon Day, Reykjavik fun and home
Nancy got up early to go to her marathon; Rich helpfully picked her up on the way to drop off Linda at the local sports centre, where a shuttle ran to the starting point downtown. I slept in and decided to do a hike that we had cut the day before due to time (and Nancy not wanting to do anything strenuous before her race). I, after all, had five hours to kill until Nancy finished.
This was Glymur, which was about an hour away from the city to the north. I had debated doing this or going on a more relaxed walk to a hot thermal river located east of the city. The weather was a cold and foggy and on my drive to my hike, I almost thought about turning around and changing plans as it had been a long trip and a lounge in the river sounded pretty good. But I carried on and the hike was spectacular, one of my top three things in the country. A well-marked trail led through a canyon and up, up, up to Iceland's second-highest waterfall. There was one big group on the trail but once I passed them, it was easy. Best of all, it was a loop, though I had to cross a freezing river in barefeet in order to get to it! (I watched others first as I was not sure where the crossing was).
The weather miraculously improved as a drew nearer to the starting point, which I took as a good sign. I did not need a jacket until I was at the very top. It was another of those Iceland sights that just looks like a fairytale.
We went back to the apartment and she had a shower. The marathon happens on Culture Day so there were lots of activities happening around the old downtown. We drove to the shuttle location again where it took us to the famous Hallgrimskirka church. There was an organ marathon recital happening, so we caught a little of that. I bought a ticket to go up the tower for views, though they were less than spectacular owing to the weather.
We met up with Linda's family and walked around for a bit, then went for dinner at a fish and chips restaurant. After that, we walked around a little more, but they had already seen a lot of things so headed back to the apartment. Nancy and I were looking for, and finally found, the settlement museum, which was free for the day and had interesting displays on the early settlement of Iceland around 900, and the evolution of the population to the present day. It was pretty well done.
The trip into the volcano is a seven-minute elevator ride with all kinds of interesting rock formations all round. Once down, we had a half-hour to wander around and look at the great colours, from the floor all the way to the narrow entrance 120m up in the air.
Nearby was a bookstore but it was Sunday and we forgot that still means something here, so it was closed. Instead we walked to a popular nearby ice cream bar and had a s'more-flavoured ice cream sundae thing.
It wasn't really convenient but I did want to try the Blue Lagoon even though it was out of the way and expensive. After our ice cream, we drove out near the airport. The lagoon is heated by effectively used water from the nearby geothermal power plant. It was busy, but we were able to find some quieter spots and the lagoon is quite large with several pools, saunas and steam rooms. We enjoyed our included drink and relaxed in some of the warmer spots in the pool before heading back for our flight the next day.
We finished up our groceries and woke up at 4:30 AM to make sure we had lots of time to get to the airport and drop off the car for our 9 AM flight. We had heard a lot of horror stories about long lines at the airport and while lines were long, we were through security and baggage check pretty quickly. We did some shopping and bought a photo book in the duty-free, then went for our flight to Calgary, then a long layover, then to Edmonton, where AJ picked us up. We dropped off AJ in the parking lot at the airport where Mom and Dad were waiting to whisk her home, and headed home ourselves.