Iceland Day 9 - A Change Of Pace

Laundry was far more of an adventure than I had ever expected. Aside from not having a clue how to operate the machinery, I ended up setting off the smoke alarm as well. After almost 2 hours of not drying and trying various settings that I wrote down and then translated online I finally went up to check on the laundry, deciding if it wasn't dry I would just hang it up all over the room. What I found when I entered the tiny laundry room were walls dripping with condensation and the fire alarm blaring because the steam had set it off. And the clothes were still wet. Hot, but wet. I threw all my clothes into my bag, took a detour on my way to my room to let the front desk know that I was trying to burn the place down and then draped my clothes off of anything I could find. The room has two radiators that soon were covered in socks and underwear while shirts and pants hung from cabinet knobs, lamps, doors, and curtains. By this point it was almost 4am, the dance club across the street was still bumping (at one point there were easily 50 people lined up outside waiting to get in) so I plugged my ear holes and slept until noon.

I woke up groggy, cranky, and hungry to a cloudy and rainy day. I've come to terms with walking around Reykjavik in the snow, but the cold rain is just more than I'm willing to endure for the sake of being a tourist. As a result I resumed my coffee shop migration, hopping from Kaffibarinn to Kaffitar to Glætan and finally to the book store Mál og Menning at the ground level of the hotel (which is supposedly one of the 12 best bookstores in the world, though I'm not sure who that's according to). I also did some research and thinking on the rest of my trip and after consulting Iceland's equivalent of the Department of Transportation, which has comprehensive and up to date maps with current road conditions, it seemed like I was playing Russian Roulette with a road trip. If I were willing to pay the exorbitant rates for a 4x4 (which would run about $1000 for 4 days) and were more familiar with the roads I would have gone ahead, but I didn't want to get stuck on an icy road in a Suzuki Swift (which is only marginally larger than a Mini). Instead I've opted for a very truncated tour of northern Iceland and the Westfjords by taking a flight to Akureyri tomorrow afternoon (assuming I can fix a screw up I made in booking the flight), then to Ísafjörður on Tuesday (same assumption), and back to Reykjavik on Wednesday (which I didn't book in case my previous two assumptions are wrong). I can do all this flying for the same price as renting a miniscule car. It's not the whirlwind roadtrip around the island I had envisioned, but I have to admit two cities in two days is doing more justice to Iceland than trying to do the entire country in 3 or 4 days.

I feel like there's a whole other country hiding under all this ice and snow that is equally worth exploring during the summer months and I already have the urge to return without even having left yet. It hasn't been the fast paced adventure I had imagined when I first decided to come here, some of that being my own lapses in research and insistence of coming despite knowing it was still winter here, but it's been far more relaxing and reflective experience than I imagined. I've gotten a far better feel for the people and the country in my people watching, TV watching (right now I'm watching some local documentary about Wiccans or Druids that have popped up around the glacier-volcano Snæfellsjökull) , and aimless wandering than I ever would have if I had kept a full schedule while in Reykjavik and done the roadtrip I had planned. Things not working out has been a bit of serendipity as I'm getting to do a rare thing on vacation – relax and enjoy myself. Tomorrow, however, the pace picks up a little bit, so...until then.