In the past few days Iceland has been on its best behaviour and shown its beautiful sides. On Wednesday I had the great pleasure of seeing the Icelandic musician Ásgeir Trausti live for free in a bar in Reykjavík. I really like his music and right now he wasn't supposed to have any concerts in Iceland for the whole spring but he was suddenly here! Why? Don't know! One of my housemate's girlfriend just send me a message suddenly about it during the day and we left with the whole gang from the house in the evening. It was a beautiful small concert (not many people and lasted only 30min) and great seeing the artist from so close by. And yes, he really can sing like you hear him on the CDs. :) And I didn't scream like a stupid fangirl, I'm very proud of myself!
On Friday night I was on a pubcrawl but ended up admiring suddenly the northern lights over the town. Seeing them for the second time in my life and first time in Iceland. I was chasing them with one of my housemates first down to the harbour (too much light) and then back up a few hills. They were pretty though not always that clearly visible. I'm actually going to try to see them again tonight. :)
It seems like I don't really get to sleep in here on the weekends because we had another trip! This time it was hiking in the Þingvellir National Park. In Þingvellir we have the first and oldest parliament, Alþingi, of the world. There the Vikings gathered, discussed, quarrelled and chopped each others heads off. There was also a little pond between the stone walls and apparently women who were unfaithful were drowned there, last one in 1746 I think..... At this place Iceland declared independence too from Denmark in 1944, so throughout history it has been an important place for the Icelanders. It's also a village. It has a church and 5 houses. We got incredibly lucky with the weather. It was around +2°C, clear blue sky and hardly any wind. The nice lady at the visitor center gave us a free map of the main hiking trails since we were the only idiots hiking there in the winter season it seems. She probably didn't want to feel responsible in case we would have gotten lost. The trails were party frozen or covered in snow but then we just walked right next to them, so no bigger problem at all (except on the way back...there was a lot of ice). It was just great hiking there, looking at the lake, the mountains the blue blue sky, feeling the sun on your skin. Untouched nature in its purest form. :)
At the end of our hiking trail we came to the old remains of a former farm. There were only rocks left anymore. But since there had been a farm once the grounds there were grass and it was just great lying on the hill, in the warm grass and letting the sun shine on your face. It felt like summer! I really wish we could have stayed there longer but our plan was to find Hrúnalaug, a natural thermal pool about 1 hour drive from the park. We did eventually find it after first thinking were lost after finding ourselves in the middle of nowhere surrounded by really shabby looking Icelandic farms. But we didn't give up and found it! There were a bunch of Icelandic teenagers fixing to leave the pool when we got there so we got a free show off an Icelandic teenage boy running around completely naked around the pool! For whatever reason! They finally left, we got changed into our bathing suits and I believe the expression of pure joy on our faces when entering the water was priceless. It felt like heaven, sitting in the warm water, watching the sun go down over you, no other souls around (except for the hidden people) and just relaxing. :)
Getting out of the water into the cold was then again a pain in the ass....
In case you are wondering how my lopapeysa (sweater) is going: I bought the wool for the body today! And practiced the basic knitting again, so next week I'll get down to business. Pictures to proof the ordeal will be uploaded of course.
And to make people happy, I've been having my personal little party all day with this song:
No comments:
Post a Comment