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13.

Trip to Iceland, August 2008 – day 8

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Category: Iceland

13.08.08 Isafjordur
by Garik and Lena

Despite the fact that we slept in all our clothes on us, the night was cold. Yet we were tired enough to take a nap till late hours of the morning. We decided to do this day the easy way… For breakfast we ate tomato soup with croutons, bread and sausages.

We took a city walk first, saw the jaw of the whale (was written in LP as must) but the jaw made no impression on us. We continued to the folk museum, the museum exhibit is about fishermen life, timeline that begins a century ago or even earlier and ends in the late 80’s or so. On our way there we saw another strange fishermen monument near the local library, but didn’t understand what it symbolized. We were amazed to see a small carriage for babies towed by bicycle, with a baby inside, it was so cute!… There were many of them, all around the streets of the town!

When we done with the museum, it was lunch time, so we took a break and ate at a local cafe-restaurant Icelandic asparagus soup, self served (I really liked that way of eating out) with salad, olives, dried tomatoes, bread and butter, and some french fries with cheese toast as a dessert. The whole lunch for both of us cost about 2000 ISK.

Full and happy we started to walk a head to a valley that promised a great view over the fjord, it is called Naustahvilft. We didn’t think about stoping and asking about it at the local info center… So after an hour or so of walking out of the city we realized that we have no clue about where is this valley. LP’s map was too poor to understand where to go, saying the valley is located about 1Km away above the fjord, but here everywhere is above the fjord!!! We didn’t have local map , we didn’t even see the camping zone outside the city… From now on I don’t believe LP, it says that Bonus supermarket is 1Km away from the city, ha!… maybe 4Km… We did visit Bonus on our way, (our only visit to Bonus, except the last day at Reykjavik), bought food (tea, chocolate, salad and dried figs) for about 1000 ISK. Unlike in Israel, here in Iceland for a plastic bag with a logo you have to pay… 15 ISK for one bag! We kept walking but not for too long, we didn’t find the valley. We did find some lost sheep, scared them, I took a picture of Lena with them and then we turn back to the camp. We barely made it, our feet were like pita, we took towels and walked to the local pool. It was the first time for us. We followed Israely’s guy suggestion from yesterday, we had to try it out!

The pool is a story by itself, for a first time visitors there should be a manual! You must take off your shoes as you enter the sport center, there are hundreds of shoes there. Then you pay entry fee, leave all your valuable stuff in a reception (in case there are no lockers there) and only after that, you may go change (remember you took your shoes off already but it’s too cold to go barefoot, so you enter the shower rooms with socks on your feet). In the shower room you MUST take off all of your clothes, and take a good shower. There is a sign pointing you the MOST important places to wash with big red crosses… So next time you see a sign in a shower with a man illustrated naked, and a red cross over his private part plz note, you DO have to wash it! Another issue are sandals. May I or may not wear my Crocs… I saw one American guy there in the shower, he was with his sandals on, so am I! After all this, you may enter the swimming pool. The local pool was kinda poor as LP mentioned, with jacuzzi in a corner for four people. Some kids were playing in a pool with inflatable balls, and a group of four Americans took the jacuzzi. So me and Lena had to spend 15 minutes in cold pool water, playing with red and yellow balls. When we saw that the jacuzzi is free we jumped in! Two American girls that just made room for us in the jacuzzi and went swimming in the pool, came back from the pool few minutes after, they were cold… Half an hour and we were out. Lena took the time to clean herself and enjoy a decent shower, me?… I spent 10 minutes in sauna, it was heaven!

On our way back to camp, we bought more food (ravioli, bread, butter and some other stuff for tomorrow) for about 1300 ISK, including caviar, 100 gram for 200 ISK!!! Lena didn’t liked the caviar though, but we must admit that eating caviar with a plastic spoon, while sleeping in a tent and taking a showers in local pools is something you don’t do every day!!! Maybe we’ll bring couple of jars like these home with us?… Maybe red caviar? The caviar we ate was lump fish caviar, what is lump fish?…

The gas balloon is empty right on time, tomorrow we have a flight. It was a little rainy in the evening, and we were happy to have two great days in Isafjordur! Tomorrow is a big day!