Sundays.: Iceland Part One.

We decided to celebrate our two year anniversary with a trip to Iceland. Possibly buying too much into the idea that the snowy, natural hot pooled laden country was romantic, what with the impossibly beautiful Aurora lights dancing across a dark sky and all. When in actual fact, Iceland, is a beast; a wild and wonderful, brutal and sharp beast.

We took our opportunity to get off work over Easter and woke bright and early..... or should I say dark and early, to catch our flight into the capital of Reykjavik where we were greeted with rain and ice rather then mountains of puffy snow. After a brief lesson on how exactly to say "Reykjavik" (Rek-la-vick) we hired a car from a locally run family company and after a little down time snoozing and scoffing easter eggs in our lush hotel room, we gotsa exploring.

Starting with the local town. Reykjavik was instantly and very obviously an art strewn, style studded hub of activity and delicious dimly lit cafes. The boutique homeware stores, local designer clothing range and art galleries send me swooning. After pacing the high streets calculating a list of "must haves" in my head, I was rudely brought back down to earth, once converting it to the pound and left feeling gibbed with an albeit funky, lousy postcard (which I later found out converted to 8 pound!!?? Ouch). From here we checked out the misfits, vintage apparel, knock off goodies and fish markets (where you could also purchase shark meat), all under one roof at the weekend Flea Market down by the harbour. By then James had had enough, time to get out of the town, and by that he meant shopping, and start on the golden circle.

The golden circle is the THE tourist route about town. You can take, slightly over prices tours there, or in our case drive the 300km loop yourself and have a lot more freedom. It consists of a number of landmarks and naturals wonders. We made it to the Thingvellir National Park's rift valley, which is essentially a rather impressively rough and wild park in which you walk over constantly moving tectonic plates and through the space the past earthquakes and shift has left behind in the cliff face. From here we moved on to the huge and mostly frozen Gulfoss waterfall and then onto the Strokkur geyser. Strokkur is a geothermal geyser set amongst smaller bubbling mud pools and craters. Every 4-8 minutes with almighty power she erupts up to 40meters high sending out a rather delightfully hot mist if standing nearby which tingles your numb hands into a false sense of security.

By this point the weather had turned WILD. we scrambled, saturated back to our little bug of a car and stripped down our freezing layers, hanging in front of the car heater near naked, desperate to get a little warmth back in our bones.

We had booked (which is recommended if going at a peak time of year) into a session at the infamous Blue Lagoon. One of the many geothermal swimming holes around the country. We lost ourselves in the unruly and wonderful gigantic countryside of Iceland, eventually weaving our way down along the coast line and back up to the lagoon, arriving two hours later and just in time for our slot. The lagoon, strangely situated right next to smoking factories, is a luxurious feeling retreat from the cold. The ice melting around the rocky exterior and blackened country side seems polar opposite to the light turquoise natural and soothing tones of the bubbling hot water you immerse yourself into. Here there is a bar so you can enjoy a drink whilst floating away as well as a high end restaurant and gift shop. Around the outsides of the pool is free samples of their expensive and world wide acclaimed natural silica mud mask which comes from the silt from the Blue Lagoon. So with a white mud mask face and a drink in hand we sunk into the heat and let the day of ice cold exploring come to a beautiful end.