Iceland
Posted on April 4, 2015
THE NORTHERN LIGHTS
Wednesday, Dec 28, 2006
I start the day with a tour of the city. I had thought about canceling this tour and spending the day on my own, exploring the area around my hotel. But i know myself too well. The cold would discouraged me from venturing out on my own. This would have been a wasted day for me.
So I get up by nine, just in time for breakfast, after that take a quick nap, get up again and shower and pick up the tour bus at 11:30 just as the sun is dimly rising for the day. These shorten days really distort my already low energy level.
I really enjoy the tour. Our guide, a blonde haired woman in her fifties, is delightful. She sings the national anthem for us because she is so sure we are all interested in hearing the Icelandic language. She sits in the front seat of the bus and she sings with the enthusiasm of someone trying out for a star search performance. When she finishes, we break out in a robust round of applause. She blushes and bows her head with a personal and national pride. She lets out a deep sigh of breathe and then continues with her dialogue about the country of Iceland.
We stop at cathedrals, museums, the harbor, a thermal water plant, the university, government buildings, and their industrial park. This is the first city tour I have ever taken that brought us right through the industries, the shopping malls, the public thermal pool baths and the specialty shops. We see it all today.
Back at the hotel, I gather my things and hop a cab to the local thermal pool. For 250K (about $3.00) I have unlimited access to an Olympic sized pool, a regular pool with a huge water slide, a hot tub, basketball courts, steam rooms (which I couldn’t find), massage options, a restaurant, post card shop and much much more that I didn’t discover.
I walk in to the locker room and am instantly surrounded by more naked woman than I have ever seen. There are fat ones, skinny ones, tall ones, and short ones. They are full breasted, small breasted, with and without pubic hairs, tattooed woman, wrinkled woman, young girls on the verge of womanhood. And no one is modest. They shower, shampoo and buff themselves as if they are in the privacy of their own homes. No one is shy.
This place is filled with loud families having fun together, friends getting together after work and older community members who are here as part of their daily exercise routine. I jump in and out of the hot tub and the warm pool. Then the sun went down around 4PM. I get out. shower, bundle up and waddled back to my hotel.
When I get back, I am told that the northern lights trip is finally on for this evening. I am to meet the bus at 8PM. So I started getting ready for the event by 7PM. I was determined not to feel a moment of cold and discomfort. I had my neoprene boots, neoprene pants, a body glove shirt, a neck gaiter, thermal top, hat, gloves, regular pants, a wind shirt, a bulky coat and other clothing to spare, just in case I need them.
Conditions to see the lights must be just perfect. It needs to be cold and the skies need to be clear. Anything less than that and the lights are not visible. Because the trip had been postponed for several days, there were now three full buses of tourists. We pull out of the bus station and the snow starts coming down. There is a little panic is our guide’s voice as he announces to us that we may not see anything after all. The conditions are now off just enough to ruin the night. The guide is in a real dilemma. But we are all on the bus so we just kept heading up to the hilltop on the outskirts of the town.
We come to a plateau and the driver parks the bus but keeps it running on idle so that we can have heat. We stay put in our seats while our guide jumps in and out of the bus to give us updates on the sky’s condition. It is very cold and now the snow is heavy. So is our optimism.
After a while it stops snowing and the skies clear up, and a large green streak appear out of nowhere. Everyone is thrilled with excitement and cameras click as if we ware at a Hollywood event. But this excitement pales next to all the excitement that erupts with the distribution of the hot chocolate and donuts.
We watch for the better part of a very cold hour. Streaks of green lights fade in and out around us. We ooh and ahh. Then slowly we, individually, or in small groups, wander back to the warmth of the bus. No one calls us back in. But we have all reached a common point of saturation. When the bus is full again, the driver pulls out and we head back to the city.
And so ends my trip to Iceland.
Memoirs of an Ordinary Woman 