Thursday, September 18, 2008

"ah! the famous maddie barton!"

i made it! to Iceland! without turning into a goose!

although, if i was a goose, then perhaps the flight would have been nicer. most turbulent thing ever. reason being Iceland has caught the tail end of a hurricane. which means the weather is beautiful. raining and pouring and windy. 


it´s awesome. absolutely awesome. 

i arrived at Þórgnýr's at midnightish, after nearly having been blown back to Aus. a considerable achievement on the weathers part, considering my pack weighs nineteen point seven kilos at the moment. He and his cat Freyja greeted me with "Ah! The famous Maddie Barton!" I gave the famous Maddie Barton response "um, hello?" Turns out some French guy who wanted to couch surf with Þórgnýr thinks I'm famous. Am I? 

Today I've pottered around Reykjavik, booked a horse riding tour for Friday, seen some of the original Saga manuscripts and drunk lots of coffee. And had Icelandic food - Þógnýr seemed rather upset he couldn't find any shark to give me, but we had Plokkfiskur, which is spuds and fish mashed up in white sauce with onions, and really really scrumptious. After that we caught the bus to Laugardalslaug swimmingpoolcentrethingymabob. Where I finally finally got to defrost my ears! It's not swimming my mother would approve of - no hard laps done while being chased by sting rays, rather floating in tubs of varying temperatures - we started in one that was 36 degrees c, then 42- which was toasty, then 44 degrees. which was bearable for about 30 seconds. i know i'm from a hot climate, but still. 44 degrees is a bit painful! (i'm a wuss)

Þórgnýr just told me that water is 800 times more conductive than air. So therefore, I'm not a wuss! Hurrah! 

The salt tub was probably the best - it was like being at South West Rocks on a summers evening...only it was 8 degrees out of the water, raining and windy. And no dolphins. 

So Iceland is living up to the hype, which you're all glad about after i ranted for all those years about running away here. bet you're all wishing you were here. 

(i think this might be one of my more positive posts....hrmm)

2 comments:

Chris Stokes said...

Congrats on making it! I DO wish I was there. Iceland has always looked amazing. Please, if you come across any throat singers, please blog about that!

Anonymous said...

Now would be the time that we tell you that for the past twenty years, we've been capturing all of your movements on tape in a Truman Show type situation and releasing them on the interweb for the entire world to see.

How do you pronounce Þórgný?

:)