Iceland

On the 7th of January, i made a spur of the moment decision to go to Iceland to attempt to see the northern lights a week later. This would be my first trip completely by myself and to be honest I was quite nervous and this was not a place i had psyched myself up to going to, especially in the middle of winter, but nevertheless something i had been dreaming of seeing for a few years now.

I arrived into Reflyvik at 4:30 in the afternoon and caught a bus to my hotel, Hotel Cabin. The name of this hotel did spark a thought of some small cabins out in the wilderness but was quite a nice budget hotel. On the way to the hotel, the surroundings made me feel like I was on another plane with flat rocky land covered with moss and snow. I opted for an easy option of going across the road to eat Subway for dinner as I had no idea of my way around, and the hotel was about a 30 minute walk to downtown.

The next day I spent half of it exploring downtown, walking on ice the whole way to the main street made my trip quite a slow and steady one, basically ice-skating in my shoes the whole way. I found a nice little café with free wifi so I enjoyed a hot chocolate (I now find myself a connoisseur of these now).

I headed back to the hotel and went went on the bus about an hour to the ‘Blue Lagoon’. This place is a huge lagoon of salt water which is thermally heated and is over two tectonic plates. The water looks like watered down milk with algae on the bottom, so I opted out of putting my feet down. I had a strong reminder that I am in Europe with public nudity in the shower room as you are required to wash before going into the water. It was about 4 degrees outside. Your toes tingle after walking on the cold ground and hopping into the 37 degree water. Included in my package I got a face scrub of volanic rock. I swim up to the stand and got given my volcanic rock scrub. The size of a squash ball, I had to rub the rock on my face, which eventually dissolved. The lagoon is big enough that you have a lot of space to swim around and have your own space. It was surreal being in there, surrounded by volcanic rock, outside in the middle of winter, in Iceland. My skin has never felt so soft! I had an amazing time, although It would have been nice to share the experience with someone. 

I decided to go on another tour, called ‘The Golden Circle’. This tour takes you to Gullfoss Waterfall, Geysir and Thingvellier National Park. The weather was horrible, with rain, which made driving conditions not ideal and quite scary, with 90% of the way was driving on roads covered in ice. A bus full of people, we first arrived at Gullfoss. These magnificent waterfalls were difficult to get to. Walking on wet ice on a slope doesn’t end well and I am so incredibly lucky to have not fallen on my bum! The roar of the water is impressive with ice surrounding the waters to make for incredible photos which don’t quite catch what you are actually seeing. We continued onto the Geysir. This is a field full of holes in the ground filled with thermally heated water which is bubbling from the heat underground . The one that is the big draw card for this area is the Geysir Hot Spring. This one erupts every 5 minutes or so and the water goes down and up as if it’s breathing before making a huge aqua bubble which then erupts water and steam 30 meters into the air. A visit to a small educational area was included so I went in and was quite impressed with it, with a section of the floor you can stand on that simulates a 5.1 earthquake every few minutes. Speaking of earthquakes, I was looking up the weather and on the website it had a page for earthquakes, now I knew that Iceland is covered in volcanos so there was bound to be a few. However, I was shocked to see that there had been about 10 earthquakes in the last 48 hours. These are only small but an earthquake nonetheless. We were about 60km away from Eyjafjallajokull (Try saying that!). The volcano that caused all the problems last year with ash. In this museum they have a huge pile of ash that you can touch (I even found bottles of it for sale in the shop, they will do anything for money these days!) We departed and went onto Thingvellier National Park. This area is where you stand on the American tectonic plate and you can see the rift in between the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates. Here, it is quite common to get earthquakes, lucky for me I didn’t feel any! It was spitting rain, grey skies and I walked up to the lookout, a wooden platform. It was absolutely freezing. It was blowing a gale with sleet and I am sure it was about -10. I took a couple of photos and briskly walked back to the bus as quickly as I could on the ice. On the way back we stopped at a lake which you could go swimming in if you want and are brave enough. 3 quarters of the lake is frozen on the top and the quarter you can swim in is thermally heated and although you would think it to be hot, I stuck my hand in and although it wasn’t freezing, I certainly wouldn’t be brave enough to hop in. Driving back to the city I really enjoyed the scenery and although there are no big mountains or many trees, there is a certain beauty to the rocky landscape covered in snow with Icelandic horses roaming the area. I had planned on doing a Northern Lights tour but with the horrible weather it would have been impossible and not worth it, so all tour companies cancelled their tours.

The next day I decided that I would just explore. Like I have said before, it is awesome to just walk without looking at a map, just going with your gut instinct on which feels the best way to go really helps. Mid morning, I had a hot chocolate and when I looked out the window it was snowing like no tomorrow! I decided to walk to a shopping centre I had heard about. I admit I did play in the snow for a little but it didn’t take me long to get sick of it. I had a wander around the shops got warm before walking back downtown which was about a half hour walk. It was absolutely freezing! I popped into the office of the tour organisers for the ‘Northern Lights’ tour. Due to the snow, the tour was cancelled again. This tour really is based on luck and chance but I felt so defeated when the second night I was there they had perfect weather with the best lights in over 3 weeks. I dragged my feet around trying to find something to eat that was more traditional. Looking at menus at different restaurants the main delicacy is whale and puffin. I am pretty adventurous and am willing to try most things but I refused to try these. I ended up trying ‘Icelandic Pancakes’ which were delicious!

On my final day I decided to wake up early and go to one of the thermal pools just down the road. It was still snowing and was pitch black still. I went for a few laps in the 50m pool and looked up at the temperature outside. -1 degrees and it was snowing, I must be crazy. Needless to say I didn’t spend too long in there.I had a spa and then walked my half an hour to the main street in downtown and got a hot chocolate while relaxing reading my book before another walk back to the hotel where I got picked up to go to the airport.

Iceland was such an amazing surreal experience that I would recommend to everyone. Despite the fact that I didn’t get to see the lights, I got to experience something I never thought I would. I will most certainly go back sometime in the future.

 

 

 

Birmingham and Kent

This blog is about my time in England with Dan and Claire and their families from the 29th of December 2011 to the 14th of January 2012.

Sitting on my easyjet flight back to Birmingham, England i was trying to decide if i have a favourite place, everyones favourite question to ask me. To be honest, i don't really have 1 favourite place so far, each place has had its own personality, its own magical element where no matter how long or detailed my blog is, can't be expressed. I would love to go back to beautiful Budapest (pronounced Budapesh) and its history and charming surroundings. It has a compeltely different feel at night where the city takes on a completely different personality with its illuminations of historic buildings along the Danube. The lead up to Christmas is just amazing in Europe. It gives you a feeling you just cant describe. They certainly know how to do christmas decorations and i suppose it helps with the cold weather/snow to make it feel even more magical. Seville, Spain is another on my list with its young, vibrant, equisite and charming people, buildings and food. Eating tapas and seeing flamenco gave this city a certain feel. Anyways, enough with the reflection, onto the blog.

I arrived into Birmingham Airport to see Claire standing there with open arms. I met Claire at a work karaoke evening through her boyfriend Dan whom i worked with at Movieworld. I'd noticed she was a good singer so i asked her to join my choir (Dan and Claire were both in Australia for 8 months on a working holiday). We arrived at Claire's parents house in Rowley Regis, had some lunch and relaxed, which might have involved watching the Disney movie Tangled (So good!) and just chilling, waiting for Dan to come home from work. I met Claire's parents and their cat 'Noah'aka Freak who loves coming in to your bed to get warm at night. A lovely family who couldnt do enough to make sure i was happy and comfortable. 

New Years Eve, Claire and i got to work baking cupcakes, muffins and cookies for 7 hours. This was to be snacks for our little New Years party we were having at the house which was only Claires parents, Dan, Claire and myself, but we wanted to make it special. It hit midnight and we watched the fireworks from Big Ben live on the tellie before running upstairs to watch the local fireworks from all over the city going off, as well as a few chinese lanterns. We were all in bed by 12:45am and had a nice sleep in.  New Years Day, Dan and I went to Dudley Zoo, unfortunately Claire wasn't feeling too well so she couldn't make it. Expecting a few people there, we were so shocked to find that it was basically empty, only seeing 3 other groups the whole time we were there! This was an experience and a half. The weather started off fine and because of the quiet day, the animals were taking quite an interest in us. We walked up to a Chimpanzee enclosure and one was playing with a milk crate, as soon as he saw us he threw the crate away and came and sat up against the window looking at us. It was such a surreal experience, Dan and i made the most of it and sat down on the ledge with him for a little.  It was like this the whole day, with us getting close ups of monkeys, snow leopards and many more animals. This zoo was built around a castle which is now in ruins but you can climb a little bit of it and over look the city. Such a cool idea! It's not everyday you can do this! It started raining quite heavy about half way through, no umbrellas so we got a little wet but it kind of made the experience more memorable.

Claire and i decided to visit Dan at work in Solihull. A half hour adventure to a shopping Centre (thank god it was inside, it was raining and windy!) We popped into him and then went and had a hot chocolate and cupcake at a tea room which was lovely.

Stratford upon Avon was next on the list of the cultural experiences Dan and Claire had planned for me. It was just Dan and I today, Claire decided to relax at home. Dan and I headed straight for a witch and wizard shop which was quite Harry Potter themed, this is where i had my first experience of drinking butterbeer (Harry Potter fans will know this) It was delicious and i was certainly in my element! We then went to Shakespeare’s birthplace and house in which he grew up in. You can pay for entrance which included a walkthrough with different videos explaining things he achieved which was interesting and then you go into his house where people are dressed up and give explanations of different things. It wasn’t all about Shakespear with a detailed explanation of the saying ‘good night, sleep tight’ which comes from the 1900’s. I only studied Romeo and Juliet in school and never realised the quotes and impact that Shakespear had on the world that still continues today. Dan and I wandered around this beautiful little town which I highly recommend everyone to visit if you are over this way. Food is always on my mind so we stopped by a small pub/café which had the most amazing looking pies and scones. This scone was huge! I had a beef and red wine pie which was delicious and a scone of course! Yes, it is no doubt why I am putting on weight! Haha. The weather looked horrible but luckily it held off for us!

The final night I was at Claire’s parent house we went out to a cavery. We fed our faces with beef, lamb and turkey with massive fresh yorkshire pudding . The kindness of people has really come to light this trip and I can’t thank Claire’s parents enough for allowing me to stay with them and for looking after me.

Dan, Claire and I had decided to do a roadtrip down to Kent, more specifically Canterbury and Ramsgate. Dan had work during the day and Claire and I made the most of this and caught the train into central Birmingham to the Marriot where we had a spa day. We vegged out in the pool, spa and steam room and both had a swedish massage as it was buy one get one free! Relaxed, we caught another train to Dan and hopped in his car. A 3 ½ hour journey which wasn’t too painful to our travelodge accomodation just outside of Canterbury.  We just hit the sack as soon as we got to the hotel.

Our time in Birmingham saw us visiting Dan’s family who are all so lovely and basically accepted me into the family as if I was one of them straight away. All of us went to Wetherspoons for dinner and I enjoyed every minute of it. We also spent a day in Canterbury going into the Cathedral where you see gravestones from the 1800’s. This kind of history just boggles your mind when you come from Australia. This day we also went to a Pantomime. This experience is probably the one thing that will clearly stick out as being a highlight of this part of my trip. The panto was Cinderella and featured a few stars from England including a Eastenders star. Two ugly sisters who were men dressed up in drag. I don’t just mean any drag, I mean like Priscilla type drag with outragious outfits and glitter lips. It is so difficult to explain the way this is done but it is the audience participation that makes this show so memorable and the jokes that go over kids heads. Dan even got a shout out during the show because he is friends with Ian, one of the guys who played an ugly sister. We had a drink with him after the show before he had to rush off to the night performance. If you come to England in December/ January you must go to a panto. They are in different towns and quite common. These 4 nights were jam packed but so much fun and I’ve met some lovely people.

Another chapter over in this adventure. I am now onto Iceland for 4 nights before going to the family I am staying with in London for 2 months where I shall continue to attempt to find a job. Wish me luck!