Why is the gym scanning my retinas?

From the small sample I have seen, gyms in Iceland are pretty cool.  After doing some frustrating Internet research, I headed out for a jog in the direction of one of the gyms that I was interested in.  I had never seen such a large, modern, clean gym before.  It featured three, maybe four levels, two outdoor hot tubs (one fresh water, one salt water), every type of equipment you could imagine, large rooms for yoga, pilates, and the like, giant locker rooms, and even a motivational weight room that had a giant traffic light on the wall that lit up to tell people to do another set of reps.  I was not ready to sign up at that time, thinking I would wait until Siobhan was back in town, but they gave me a paper to hold onto which entitled us to a one-month price of about $60 per person.

A few days later, while walking to the grocery store I realized that I had been passing another nearby gym.  I stopped in to explore and found that it was much closer to what I am used to at home, and was still partially under construction.  After looking around on my own, the person at the front desk told me there was a special open until the end of the week of about $15 for a one-month membership due to the construction.  I signed up on the spot.  After handing over my cash (in Icelandic króna), they told me I would need to do a retina scan, which would be used for check-in purposes.  (On account of Craig and Ali mentioning this possibility, I was not surprised.)  I leaned into a little window, and a robotic, female voice directed me (in English) on how to align my face for the scan.  That being completed I left the gym, but returned later that day for my first workout.

Hopefully we will be able to figure out a way to get Siobhan into the gym too, but with there still being three weeks until she would be ready to think about that, I could not pass up the opportunity to join.  Perhaps we will decide to sign up for one month at the first gym in October.  Until then, I am a member here:  http://www.worldclass.is/.

Reykjavik's Nightlife: Ruffies & Ghostbusters until 6am

On Wednesday morning, September 8, Siobhan left for her volunteer camp in the Westfjords of Iceland, where she will spend two weeks cleaning up the area and prepping it for winter after the busy summer tourist season.  She was nervous about heading out there without knowing anyone, and unsure of what to expect, but got ready and headed out nonetheless.  That morning we said goodbye as she departed to meet her group, and I settled into the reality of two weeks on my own.

(I will spare everyone the suspense about her volunteer camp.  She has been able to send a couple of emails, and it's very clear that she is having a wonderful time out there.  The people in her group are all very nice, and as the only native English speaker, she has been doing a lot of translating.  From what I can gather, her group members have come from different parts of Asia and Europe, and she has a Swedish roommate.  Their group has been doing a lot of painting and cleaning, but they have also had free time for hiking, horseback riding, and relaxing in the hot baths, among other things.  She said that the food is amazing, some of the best she has ever had, and she will be trying to get some recipes.  On Tuesday night she saw a wonderful display of the northern lights, and has promised a lot of pictures.  We will be sure to have a blog entry detailing her experiences once she has returned and had the time to organize.)

That same Wednesday night, I heard from my suite mate, Anca, that the University was having a discount student night at a bar in town.  I joined her and her friend Tom, who is from England and appears to be her boyfriend as far as I can tell, and we headed out to join the party.  At the bar I met a lot of her student friends, who were all pretty nice and talkative.  There seemed to be a particularly large German and British population in the student group, and someone told me that I was the first American they had met.  I was impressed/surprised with everyone's knowledge and enthusiasm for American music.  Practically all the songs the DJ played that night were from America, yet everyone knew all the words and even the dances.  My personal favorite was the Ghostbusters theme song, which received a mixed reaction from the crowd, but certainly loosened up my dancing.  Everything seemed fine that night, but I found out the next day that someone had put ruffies (or something similar) in Anca's drink.  She made it home safely with Tom, but felt pretty ill for the next couple of days.  Evidently even in a (relatively) smaller city like Reykjavik, and in a country with a reputation for safety, you still have to be careful.

On Friday night I spent some time with my other suite mate, Andy, and three of his friends, who are all Canadian.  They are all in Iceland to study various aspects of Icelandic literature and language, and the four of them comprise the entire graduate department at the University in that area of study.  Everything happens late in Reykjavik on the weekends, so after spending some time at our apartment we headed to the downtown area around 11:00 or so.  We went to a few different bars, and by 3:00 in the morning I was the only one ready to head home.  They did not stay out much longer, but many bars in Reykjavik stay open until 6:00 AM, some even 7:00 AM, on weekend nights.  As expected the streets of the city are deserted on Saturday and Sunday mornings, and most establishments do not open until 10:00, at the earliest.

Roadtrip! Volcanoes, glaciers, icebergs, and geothermal waters.

On Sunday morning Jesse and Vanessa picked us up and we headed southeast. Our destination that night was the small town of Höfn in the southeast part of Iceland, but we had many things to see along the way. The landscape changed dramatically once we exited the city; trees were few, mountains were plentiful, and rugged terrain was everywhere. Driving on the Ring Road (which encircles Iceland along its outer edges because the center of the country is isolated, desolate and harsh) we made good time and made two early stops to see waterfalls. We could walk behind and around the first waterfall, and the second one had a nice rainbow and short hike to its top.

Both of these waterfalls stem from glacial melting and runoff from around the summit of Eyjafjallajökull, the volcano made (in)famous by its lengthy, flight-grounding eruption earlier this year. From the road and below there was no discernible peak or caldera, but on our return trip to Reykjavik the area to the east of the volcano was engulfed in a hazy, dark sky from ash that it was spewing that day.

Driving through the south-central part of Iceland we came to our first glaciers and the Skaftafell National Park, home to Vatnajökull, the largest glacier in Europe.  Knowing we would visit on our return trip, we moved on to our primary target for the day, Jökulsárlón. Jökulsárlón is the name of a glacial lake which is full of giant (and sometimes bright blue) iceberg chunks that have broken off the Breiðamerkurjökull glacier and are stuck there until they melt or slide out to sea.  After snapping some photos, we took an amphibious vehicle (a functioning boat and land vehicle) out into the water to see them up close in a steady rain.  We learned that some of the icebergs take seven years to melt, and bit off pieces of a small iceberg chunk that was over 1,000 years old; the oldest thing we'll ever eat.  Some smaller icebergs that were slipping out to sea had been beached by the tide, which gave us the opportunity to carefully climb on them.  Several films have had scenes shot at Jökulsárlón, including Die Another Day, Tomb Raider, and Batman Begins.

  The next morning we returned to Skaftafell to see part of the glacier up-close and to hike to a mountain waterfall.  We approached the glacier after parking are car and found a place to stand on its edge.  It is not recommended to walk far on glaciers, and with good reason.  There are dangerous fissures that can break open; even standing on the very end it was very slippery and muddy.  Arriving at the visitors' center at the park we found our hiking trail and proceeded up to two more waterfalls, the second one complete with beautiful rock columns.  Late that afternoon we arrived in the small town of Vik for dinner, and that night bathed in the outdoor geothermal hot tubs at the hotel where Jesse and Vanessa were staying.

After breakfast on Tuesday morning we hiked up to the mountain range above Vik to get a view of the surrounding beaches and countryside.  The hike would have been nice, were it not for the brutal, hurricane-strength winds at the top.  At first it was fun and we took some pictures jumping with the wind at our backs.  But as we walked along the exposed ridge, there were sustained winds of probably 70 miles per hour, with gusts even stronger than that.  Going with the wind we were sometimes forced to run not to fall forward, and going into the wind was a slow, challenging ordeal; it was so strong that it even knocked Vanessa from the path at one point.

Tired from the hike, we headed back toward Reykjavik in search of geothermal baths along the way.  Our first stop was a failure, though it turned out to be a funny one.  When we arrived at the baths we read about in our guide book, we found that they were closed and quite muddy.  After looking around, we started investigating some abandoned farm equipment.  At that point a local appeared and we deciphered through his body language, and his use of a small surgical mask, that the area had some dangerous fumes.

Fortunately our final stop was very successful.  We parked our car near the town of Selfoss and did a hike up the mountain ridge and into a valley.  Along the way up we encountered bubbling hot water and mud springs, and a lot of steam.  On the top of the ridge we overlooked a beautiful canyon and waterfall, but our destination was the mountain stream heated by geothermal waters.  We found a suitable spot and lay in the running water, which was warm and pleasant, especially considering the cool outdoor air.  The spot we chose was just below where two streams combine, one too hot and the other too cold for swimming.  However, once the two streams collide and mix, the water becomes the perfect temperature.  After a long soak in the stream, we hiked out and returned to our apartment in Reykjavik.

Overall it was a great, activity-filled road trip and a lot of fun.  We got along great with Jesse and Vanessa, and enjoyed a lot of good meals, sights, and conversations together.  The next day they flew home to the United States, as Siobhan embarked on her journey to the Westfjords.