It Begins

A bridge...there must be intelligent life on this planet. (Click to view the gallery)My flight arrived safely to Keflavik at about 6:30 am Iceland time (UTC, or GMT, for those who are curious). Other than not being able to sleep very well on the plane, I have no complaints about the flight. Wouldn't you know—the one time that I actually remember to keep a pen handy on an international flight—there was no customs form to complete. Speaking of customs…clearing customs in Iceland was a breeze. I budgeted at least an hour to get my bags and go through passport control/customs. IT TOOK TEN MINUTES, including baggage claim. The terminal is named Leifur Eiriksson International Air Terminal. Yes, THIS guy. If there is a more badass name for an airport terminal, I'd like to know what it is.

For some reason, I was a little more nervous than expected upon entry into the country. Perhaps it was lack of sleep or a relative lack of planning for this trip…who knows? I cleared customs at 7 am and my bus to Blue Lagoon was not scheduled until 9:30 am. This turned out to be a good thing because it gave me the chance to have breakfast and go through some photos that were long overdue. This quieted my spirit quite a bit—still no sleep, though.

The bus left right around 9:45, before sunrise. It was a pretty cold (6° C or ~43° F) and rainy morning, but not uncomfortable. As the daylight slowly filtered through the overcast sky, I began to get my first peeks of the Icelandic landscape. It was just as I'd expected and hoped, black oceanic crust covered in colorful moss and lichen.

Blue Lagoon was impossible to miss. As we approached, you could see massive amounts of steam billowing from the countryside. After stowing my luggage in the storage house, I walked down a path cut out of the rock to the spa. The facilities were beautiful (more on that later, hopefully) and the water was surreal. The entire place has a haunting beauty that makes you feel as if you are on a different planet. I traded my ticket for a bracelet and towel and then headed to the locker room. After showering and changing, I chatted with the Scottish locker room valet, who was quite friendly and pointed me to "the warm way" and "the cold way" to the lagoon. I chose "the cold way": out the door, across the patio, and down the stairs. It was very much the opposite of diving in the springs of Florida, moving from frigid air to nice, warm water. I much prefer this.

The lagoon is surrounded by the dark volcanic rock, but the bed is covered with a glossy, almost pearlescent, white mineral deposit. I heard some people wondering what it was. I had to resist going into ultra-nerdy-geoscientist-geek-out mode and giving them the beginner's course in geological processes. They emphasize the therapeutic qualities of the silica mud that gives the lagoon its milky appearance. There are buckets of the mud strategically located around the lagoon for rubbing onto your skin, letting dry for about 10 minutes, and then washing off. I partook of this ritual, but cannot say for sure if it made my skin any more lovely and kissable—granted, it is hard to make my skin MORE lovely and kissable than it already is. (Editor's note: Stop this…NOW!)

The water was an opaque, fluorescent blue tinted, milky white with a blanket of steam covering it like a down blanket. The haze of the steam made it very easy to lose yourself in the midst of the other swimmers, seeing only their faint silhouettes drifting about in the distance. It may have surpassed the ghostly calm of my trip in the Arctic as the most surreal visual experience of my life.

After an hour of soaking, I left the water, showered, and changed. This left just enough time for some photos before my bus to Reykjavik. These cell phone photos don't quite do proper justice to Blue Lagoon's dream-like beauty, but they should at least convey some of its appeal. I've read, and can 100% verify, that this is a must do for anyone not only traveling to Iceland but also for anyone with a long layover at Keflavik International Airport (KEF). There are several tour companies that operate buses both ways from the airport and Reykjavik to the spa. I used Reykjavik Excursions and it was a pretty frictionless process, which is the best compliment that one can give a bus service.

I arrived at my hotel in Reykjavik at about 2 pm and decided to take a nap before going out on the town. That didn't work. Jet lag had set in and I was out for the count. "That's OK, I'll wake up at 6 and have some breakfast." I told myself when I briefly woke up at 10pm. That's a story for another day.