Derby and Donuts: an Icelandic Tale

Clearly it's been a awhile since our last post. We're in England now. We've rented a...well, they call it a campervan but really it's a minivan with an itty-bitty mattress you can set up in the back on which to sleep while touring the countryside. But more on that in another post. I still have to finish up with Iceland! As you might imagine, internet is scarce while camping, hence the lack of posting. I've realized how spoiled I'd become with 4G internet access everywhere with a smartphone. You never have to be far from Google ever! But now our phones have switched to 2G internationally. That really shouldn't be a thing....

Anyway, Iceland. Seriously, it's an incredible place. We were actually pretty sad to leave. And our first week in England, we kept trying to say 'thank you' in Icelandic. Which wouldn't make a whole lot of sense here. Obvi.

We finished up our time in the Arctic with a visit to Blue Lagoon, a geothermal spa located on a lava field outside of Reykjavik.  (I was totally going to impress you and write the name out in Icelandic, but Google isn't giving it to me to copy and paste. Just pretend you're amazed with the vast amount of Icelandic language that I picked up in our short time there.) It's a major tourist attraction but it's amazing! It's a gigantic natural hot-tub set against the incredibly gorgeous and mountainous landscape that's misty, eerie and kind of otherworldly. You buy a ticket and can pretty much just stay as long as you like, floating, swimming, relaxing, being an idiot tourist teenager (sometimes I'm not very patient with humans...). They give you two different face masks, mud and algae respectively. That makes it even creepier, what with white or green faced people emerging from the mist. It can be a little 'Night of the Living Dead'-ish. I think my mom (who watches too many zombie movies) would die of fright (love you mom).

I really need a haircut

This is only a very small part of it. It's quite large. And a camera phone doesn't really do it justice. The water is like a baby blue color.

On Friday and Saturday I went to CrossFit Reykjavik which is the home Box (CrossFitter's fancy term for Gym) of Annie Thorisdottir, who has been the Fittest Woman on Earth. Twice. *Fangirl squee!!* The coaches were all tall and blonde and fierce but I was quite relieved to realize that the people WODing alongside me were pretty normal. I got to do the 16.4 Open workout with a bunch of Icelanders. That felt like quite the privilege :)

CFReyk

Note that the post-WOD position is pretty universal

K-Starr is universal too!  His wise words are emblazoned on CFReyk in their stretching area :)

On our second day walking around the city, we stopped in at a cafe and saw a poster for a roller derby tournament taking place on Saturday so we decided to go to that over the weekend. We took  a taxi to get there (my first taxi ride!!!!!!!!!! Like a said, I'm a country girl and I've been waiting my whole life to take a taxi!) It was Finland's team, The Dirty River Roller Girls, versus Iceland's Ragnarok. We rooted hard for Iceland but they lost, rather abysmally. In their defense, they are a much newer team, circa 2011 than Finland's. It was pretty awesome to watch. Neither of us had been to a roller derby match before. The closest we came was watching Whip It (good movie by the way).

Iceland's team, Ragnarok

Set up and awaiting the whistle

The wolf is one of two of the Ragnarok's team mascots

The Ram. The other team mascot. Both mascots were teenage girls with spunk and cartwheels to spare. Please try to imagine  a ram doing a cartwheel. You won't regret it.

It was about 6:30pm when the derby ended and we didn't really know how to get back. Our taxi was obviously gone and it's far enough out of the city that there aren't taxi's waiting anywhere. Josh suggested walking until we found a taxi. We didn't find a taxi. And way past feeding time. It was three miles back. Three. No snacks. Clearly an end-of-the-world scenario for me. But wonder of wonders, I survived and we made it to dinner at around 8:30 or 9 that night. And actually, the walk back was along the coast which is simply stunning and once we got back into the city, we got to see even more murals and graffiti. So the walk was actually pretty nice. I just had to learn to control the hangry monster within.

An owl, I think. Really great rich color, whatever it is.

Ibiza of the North. That made me chuckle.

We originally thought this was a dracula-esq depiction but Josh looked it up later and discovered it's actually a reference to an Icelandic saga. It means something along the lines of "The one that I've treated the worst is the one I loved most". Truer words unfortunately sometimes...

This is my favorite piece. It spans three separate surfaces and angles of the same building. It's lovely and romantic. I imagine them as French...

An ancient boat up on blocks that has a great mural on the front corner that you can't really see in the picture. It's a woman-monster-thing clawing her way out of the boat. And then an underwater scene behind it.

It really is a fun-looking city. No beige and taupe to be found. It's all so colorful and vibrant!

We ended our time in Reykjavik with one last stroll through the city and a final trip to the donut truck. Serious foodgasm. 

This is mostly for my dad. The vanity plate reads ND4SPD. Excellent.

The sign on the gate isn't legible in the picture, but it says "Single Gloves" and then it has a whole lotta phone numbers on it. Guess it's kind of like a singles mixer? 

The donut truck that helpfully parks just outside our flat.

Josh bid farewell to this lovely island with a bit of art. He took a 500 krona painted a cityscape on the back in watercolors. We bought our donuts with it so it's back in circulation.