Iceland is a big country with the smallest population – 103,000 km2 and 320,000 people. That’s 1/5th of Malaysia and 1/90th of our population. I’ve always wanted to go to the Blue Lagoon ever since I knew of its existence, its steamy waters being part of a lava formation. As we almost reached the entrance, we saw the mesmerizing light blue river cutting across the jagged volcanic black land covered with green moss. I immediately fell in love. Papa paid 20 Euros for me and an astounding 7 Euros for himself which he got because of his disabled card and my very long awaited destination was right in front of my eyes.
I quickly changed and headed for the lagoon which is located in a lava field in Grindavik. It was basically an outdoor onsen/hot spring with the mountains as the backdrop, and the warm blue water couldn’t have been more appealing in the cold summer. After taking pictures, I went in for a long dip. And so I was told that the real temperature of the natural hot spring is about 136 Celsius but they have cooled it down to 38 degrees so that it can serve its purpose for us mankind.
The lagoon’s warm waters are rich in minerals like silica and sulfur thus bathing in the Blue Lagoon is reputed to help people suffering from skin diseases. We applied the white silica mud which was meant to be good for your skin all over our body and went into the steam bath house which was really fun. The sweet smelling wood that was burnt in the sauna was very special however it was too hot and proved to be impossible for me to handle.
After going round the whole lagoon, we decided it was time to leave and head back to Reykjavik to check out the parade or whatever that’s going on in the city in conjunction with the National Day.
We made a quick detour to Grindavik, a fishing village which unfortunately was NOTHING like Marsaxlokk in Malta which I absolutely loved. We didn’t really see any sign of life at the village and I was especially disappointed that there weren’t the Marsaxlokk type of restaurants by the sea. I fell asleep on the way back to Reykjavik. The onsens in Japan didn’t have that effect on me, but Blue Lagoon totally did.
Once we parked the car and left our things in our room, we immediately headed out for Reykjavik’s High Street. It was AWESOME. We took pictures with two women wearing their national costumes, I got a brilliant picture of a weird street act running around in blue, red and white costumes chirping some kind of maybe puffin sound, listened to a band playing amazing Icelandic music and just immersed ourselves in the energy of the crowd. We couldn’t have been in Iceland at a better time.
We went back to the hotel, had some rest and went out again for a drive around the capital by the coast. There was also some kind of a lake, a really nice area, some parks, a small airport in the middle of the city and our best find was the place where we stopped for our very late dinner. We had something we couldn’t have eaten elsewhere: grilled minke whale, cod and halibut + lobster soup.
The texture of minke whale is just like beef but I thought it tasted a bit like chicken’s liver which made me not want to continue eating it once I realized that. The lobster soup immediately warmed me up, kind of reminded me of the nabe we had at Kariya Sensei’s apartment. I need to go back to Japan and EAT and EAT and EAT. In Dori’s tune: Just keep eating, eating, eating :p
