Iceland: KEFLAVIK

Long silences can mean many things, good or bad. The most usual reason is the fact that the day has only 24 hours and that we wish to utilize those in too many ways. Having traveled for the most of this Fall I have collected way too many images from July, the date of my last entry. Now it is hard to figure where to start again.  
So, why not to jump into sharing our newly gained experiences.Lets move up to the 66th parallel. This will be a joined international effort and many photos will be taken by other members of our 2-men / 2- women team, some from an airplane, some from a speeding car and some from a wildly bouncing boat! Too bad this blog does not have an audio - you would hear me chuckle.

A fairytale called Iceland

A photo of a map displayed in Reykjavik harbor shows the nature of the island: the dots along the shores are sunken ships.So glad that we chose to arrive by air!

We arrived from Canada via New York, USA to meet my brother and sister in law.  

Stan and Lucia arrived shortly after 1 a.m. (WOW) from Italy. 

While they slept in Keflavik we were watching our first (and only!!!!) Aurora Borealis from the board of our Delta carrier.

At 9:20 a.m. this was our first view of Iceland

The rocks and lichens in the foreground are an excellent indication of the things to come.

It was August 28th when we all met in  Keflavík, the main entry to the island on 66th parallel.


Iceland.

Wind attacked us without a delay, and having just left the hot summer days several thousand K behind, 12 degrees Celsius meant shock to the system. 
Never mind. The Icelanders made sure that people like us could feel right at home: 
next to the airport they erected a colourful rainbow of respectable size!

How is that for imagination?

Rainbow or not, the clouds were gathering momentum as Iceland was ready to welcome us with rain.

Keflavík is a small city of about nine thousand souls. The reason for it to have such a large airport is quite logical: it was built during the WWII when US entered the war. It was a good location for refueling the airplanes flying from North America to Europe.

 And when the Cold War broke out at the end of the 40's Keflavík, being in a strategic location for monitoring the northern seas, became an important NATO base. It did have a large airport already! The runways that were built later on became large enough to accommodate big overseas planes. As I found somewhere in the nooks of  the www the runways could nowadays handle even a landing space shuttle. 
Not bad for a town of 9,000.


The base was in service until 2006 but with the collapse of the Berlin Wall and subsequently the Soviet Union the base closed.
(would my grand kids ask 
"the collapse of WHAT?") 


The buildings will be utilized for municipal and other purposes.

Stan booked our accommodation in Keflavik at B&B Guesthouse and while we plunged into their soft beds, he and Lucia (somewhat rested) went for their first exploratory walk. 

Keflavik was founded by enterprising sea faring Scotts who found their way to the island, built a thriving fishing community and a fish processing plant. It is hard to imagine the travel by these people and the risks they took. 

At the end of a nice harbour walkway Lucia and Stan discovered a large, black lava cave.

.It was anything but empty! A mighty Giantess lurked from the darkness, chair, table, bed and all. 
It has been  living there since 2008, entertaining tourists and, above all, their kids.



















We spent a couple of days in this town while exploring the Reykjanes Peninsula on which it is located. It was also our last stop before our departure back home since almost all international air traffic comes and leaves from here. The capitol Reykjavik is only some 50 km away but its airport is designated for the domestic flights. As there are always exceptions to a rule, Reykjavik also handles flights to Greenland and some nearby islands. 

But for everything else - there is Keflavik.

Here is another indication of Icelandic creativity: the bookstore shopping window is painted with giant book titles.
Next to it is a wall with (what we can only imagine) are the book genres in Icelandic. (???)

A tongue-breaking language of the Vikings, thousand of years old and little changed by now!
Thankfully, everyone here seemed to be fluent in English! 

By the end of our first day we were able to declare our first linguistic success! 
We already learned, understood and used  two icelandic words.

The first one was  "gull" which means "gold" as everyone can tell by looking at the Icelandic beer (named Gull).
The second one was  "vik" meaning a bay or an inlet.




Thus Keflavík, Reykjavik, Husavik .... and many other wonderful "viks" on this island.

Keflavík means Driftwood Bay.

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Itinerary: Day 1

What to do with a jetlagged crew that arrived to Keflavík in the early morning? Take them out to Blue Lagoon, that's what! 

People at our B&B Guesthouse were extremely helpful and efficient - by early afternoon there was a rented car at the door, papers, insurance and all. By three o'clock we hopped in and took our very first Icelandic trip. Between a good driver and an excellent navigator finding the Blue Lagoon was a piece of cake.  Stay tuned ....