Iceland day 4: East Fjords

How windy is it? Bringing coffee back to our room, the wind blew 1/3 of George’s coffee right out if his cup!

Next stop...soak with the locals! Every village, and I do mean every, has a pool....with hot tubs, steam baths, and waterslides and kiddie pool. No cameras are allowed, so here’s the last shot I could get.

You leave your shoes just past the entrance, go to the locker  room, get naked, go take a thorough cleansing shower, put on your suit, leave your towel in a different area, go swim/soak, come out, put your suit in the spinner, shower again, dry in the drying room, then out to the locker area to dress. It involves quite a bit of nakedness, so you get to know your neighbors pretty well! Anyway, we’re toasty warm now!

Ok, ‘on the road again (que Willie)! 

We were hoping this cotton picking wind was mainly a plains phenomenon....boy, was that wrong! As we srarted up the Eastern side of the island towards the fjords, we hit the real thing. The kind that shakes our car and elicits lots of small shrieks from me...and gives George some two handed white knuckle driving!

I completely do NOT like this kind of wind. Not only does it tax our nerves, it gives me a headache! After a couple hours of this, I’m feeling kind of anxious...almost like claustrophobia. Must. Get. Out. Of. Wind. 

Fortunately, as we round a few bends, whe wind settles back to it’s normal velocity...which is still pretty respectable, it’s just not threating to throw our little car over a cliff!

This East side of Iceland is remote! Roads sometimes turn to gravel. This, mind you, is the main road... the Iceland equivalent to our I-5!

We stop for a destressing  breather to bid Northern Norway a Giday (good day)! As we were here, a big 4x4 pulled up next to us, then, suddenly, drove over what appeared to us the cliff. I hope it was really a road...in any case, he didn’t come back up! 

So...bathrooms in this area are pretty hard to come by. At one point, George goes behind a big rock. I have to wait. In one of the 4 fjords, we stop in a small village for a break, and have a dessert so we can take advantage of their facilities. They had a little store, so I checked out some prices. This is probably a 24 oz box of Cheerios...for about $7.50 US. 


 Between our 4th and 5th fjord we went through a really long tunnel, pretty much from the inside of one to the inside of the next one. I’m thinking the locals had enough of fjords at the same time we did, and would rather dig through the mountain then drive around...again. Yey, them!

Now we’re headed up over a pass, the temp on top is 1 degree C...

And, we hit our hotel in record time, 2:30!  It’s not very inspiring weather, so we’ll take a bit of a breather and decide if we want to venture out more. There’s a huge lake right behind us that can be explored, or there’s a supposed cute town down the next fjord...we’ll see. 

Our hotel is quite lovely. Tucked into a forest, with it’s own 40 degree hot tub and a really cute MCM lounge upstairs, we’re pretty comfortable here!