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Well here we are, just a short 2 hour flight from Dublin to LAND 3 of our 4 LAND adventure, Iceland.
Arriving mid afternoon under cloudy skies and a light misty rain, what better time to catch up on our washing than with a trip to the laundromat. Not only did we do our washing, but we also spent an hour or so meeting other laundromatees and swapping stories with them about our travels.
The stoicism of Australians prepared to travel “ all that way and for so long” in order to come to Europe never fails to impress.
Washing done and it was that time of day, so what better way to recharge and prepare for tomorrow than a bowl of pasta and a glass, or two, of Chianti.
Today we woke to a clearing sky with nothing more to do than to explore Reykjavik. Not such a big task as the principle places of interest were all within a reasonably small area and the streets are relatively quiet. The central city district consists of two main shopping streets each with a collection of older buildings, one or two storeys and of course newer buildings such as hotels and department stores.
The older buildings are clad in vertical corrugated iron sheets, mostly brightly painted, with the same material used for the roofing., again, in many cases painted in a variety of bright colours.
As we expected, the cost of food in AUD is, to our standard, very high. Coffee around $9, pizza, a bowl of pasta around $40-$50. Fish and red meat, upwards of $60-70 and it’s not all silver service and linen tablecloths. One of Jean’s “must do” was a home based bakery where we kindly offered to taste test their cinnamon buns, something that we are prepared to do at every opportunity. But, there’s no denying, despite the cost, the food that we have had was very good, so no dieting just yet.
Later in the morning, the skies cleared and the sun was decidedly hot, but the wind, even though quite light, was icy cold making getting the clothing right a somewhat hit and miss job. The locals, on the other hand were out in shorts and tee shirts.
This afternoon there was another lava eruption down in the south near the Blue Lagoon area, which no doubt would have made the news at home. A sheet of lava up to 50m high according to local news here but well away from where we are now, or will be going tomorrow.
So that was the highlight of our day in Reykjavik. Tomorrow we pick up our car and head off into the wilds of Iceland where, I have read, fermented shark and pickled whale meat are the local delicacies.
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