Iceland

Wednesday I landed on a very windy Keflavik airport (Did you know they pronounce it Keplavik?). Hulda picked me up in her adorable white, little VW Polo, and we drove the 45 minutes to her place in Seltjarnarnes (20 min. from Reykjavik city). And what a place. Her house was big, spacious, original, and homey, and her family were some of the nicest people I've met, going out of their way to make me feel welcome. We went on the typical touristic round, the "golden circle", on Thursday. We saw þingvellir, Geysir, Gullfoss and Kerið. Lucky that these places are pretty high up, and that Thursday was the most windy day this year, haha. But it was all breathtakingly beautiful. Waterfalls and mountains, horses and sheep, old volcanoes and lava rocks. Beautiful. We ended the day going out for a few drinks with one of her friends, and had a blast.

þingvellir

Gullfoss
Geysir


On Friday we went to the local pool. This is very interesting. Icelandic people go swimming in outdoor pools, all year around. The water is heated, from about 35 to 40°c, and sun, rain or snow, you can relax and hang out in the shallow pools outside. So relaxing, and I have no idea why we haven't thought about that here in Norway. The rest of the day we went shopping in the two big malls close to the city. I got to spend some thousand Icelandic kroner, before we finished the evening with a restaurant dinner and relaxing with a couple of movies. We saw 7 pounds with Will Smith. I liked it.

Saturday was the big Reykjavik city sightseeing and shopping day. We started with the big flea market down by the harbour. It was gigantic, and I was extatic to find a pair of barely used adorable shoes, and got a real bargain. The flea market is open every weekend, and I strongly recommend stopping by, you can find just about anything for a good price, some really old stuff, and some not so old stuff. In the city we walked the main street, where it seemed every other store was second hand and vintage. I found a beaauuutiful dress in one of them. In Naked Ape boutique you can find cool Icelandic design. They also have a bunch of souvenir shops, with trolls and vikings, just like ours. But I bought a cool T-shirt that says: Ég tala ekki íslensku. (I don't speak Icelandic). After 5 days I'm even more convinced that Icelandic is the coolest language ever. Too bad foreigners don't have a shot in hell of ever speaking it perfectly. That night we saw the eurovision finals (Yeah!!!! WOooohOOHooo!! and all of that..), and then we went to a house party before hitting the town. Eurovision is a reaaaally big deal in iceland, so if you take saturday night + 2. place in Eurovision + the first warm, sunny weekend of the year, it adds up to an incredibly crowded Reykjavik city. The bars don't close before 5-6am, and at 5am the street was full of people singing and yelling in the morning sunlight.

Afters a few hours of sleep, we drove the half hour to the Blue Lagoon. In fine weather that's a really good place to be hungover. So relaxing. So beautiful. But expensive though, you don't go there everyday. But we chose a good day, the weather was amazing, and we even got a tan. After that we had a good dinner, Huldas mom is a great cook. And then, just like that, my long weekend in Iceland were coming to an end, and I had to start packing. And here I am, on my couch back in Norway, missing it all. So a big thanks to Hulda and her family, I had a great time! :)

Me and Hulda at the Blue Lagoon


PS: More photos on facebook for those who're interested.

First impressions

Ok. I've been in Iceland about one hour, and so far this is what I've gathered:
Iceland has a lot of old lava.
Iceland is windy.
Icelandic is the coolest language in the world.
Hulda is great, her family is great, and their house is beautiful.

Packing

Am I the only person convinced that suitcases actually defy every known law of physics, and are in fact able to shrink as soon as you put stuff into them?

I'm not homeless! Woopdidoo!

I spent 5 days in Trondheim. They were mostly filled with warm days, blue skies, happy people, bbq-ing in the park, shopping, ice cream, one good and two bad movies, walking, talking, laughing. The good stuff you often do when you go to a great city visiting someone you haven't seen in a while. Who cares if the last two days were cloudy/rainy, and included an 8 hour bus ride home. Not only did I enjoy myself immensely, find two new dresses for the summer and read a good book. In these 5 days I also decided where I'll be spending the most part of the next 5 years. I've known it would have to be Trondheim for quite some time, but this weekend made me even more certain in my choice. I love this city. I love how it's big, but still kind of small. I love how they've kept a lot of the old buildings, and I love the gorgeous cathedral and the univeristy. I love how almost half of everyone living here are students, and I love how I'm gonna be one of them. On Sunday I signed the contract on my very first appartment (not counting the one in Barcelona. That was vacation.). The 1st of July I move in to my not-so-big, but pretty cheap and oh-how-incredibly-well-located appartment, and I'm happy.