To the Lighthouse, With Apologies to Virginia Woolf

The first of the day's lighthouses.

I went with the more dignified of the two possible titles for today's post. The alternate was "We Were Pining for the Fjords." We drove through? around? the eastern fjords of Iceland today. We stopped at several lighthouses, all overlooking black sand beaches. I don't think there's any other kind of beach in Iceland, since the whole country is made of up basalt, which is black. The novelty did not wear off. I grew up with Jones Beach, Rye Beach, and the Jersey Shore. I do not expect beaches to be black.

Black sand dunes.

This was our longest drive so far; we spent more than four hours in the car, breaking up the trip with stops at three lighthouses and a few vista points. The vistas were stunning.

David's suggestion for Iceland's tourist slogan: The scenery doesn't suck.

He's not wrong.

Lighthouses in Iceland don't look like lighthouses in the US. They don't all like alike, either. Here are the other two we saw today. 

I call this one "Bauhaus Meets Lighthouse."

And this is "Brutalist Comes to Iceland."

We stopped for lunch in a small fishing village where we saw groups of kids in costume going around town. Google tells me that in Iceland, Ash Wednesday is "celebrated mainly by children," who dress up in costume and go from house to house singing, and are rewarded with treats. In this town they also go to the restaurants - at least to the one we were visiting. We saw three groups of kids; costumes ranged from little ones in princess and Minecraft get-ups to older kids dressed as devils and Vikings to teenagers dressed as cows, cats, and one memorable inflatable penis. This does not jibe with my understanding of Ash Wednesday.

I had fish and chips; the batter had curry mixed in and was surprisingly flavorful. And, again, the scenery doesn't suck.

From the window of the café.

After lunch we continued to drive around the fjords. We ran into the first precipitation of the trip, which started as rain and rapidly turned to snow. Some of the roads were snow-covered to start with. We were glad to have all-wheel drive and studded snow tires. We saw more wildlife today than we have all trip, mostly birds. We identified several different kinds of ducks. I also saw a reindeer. It's kind of like Yellowstone; I spotted the reindeer because someone else had pulled off to the side of the road and was pointing a camera into the field.

We took a walk around town to stretch our legs after we checked into the hotel, avoided falling one the ice (I had one spectacular slide with a last-minute rescue that rated a 9.5 on average, with a 6 from the Russian judge), visited a couple of local handcraft galleries, and stopped in the grocery store to replenish our store of car snacks. We were intrigued by the menu at the hotel restaurant, so we ate here. I had langoustine (lobster) soup and David had reindeer steak.

The hotel does have decaf coffee, but it's instant. I passed.

Random Iceland note: almost all the bridges are narrow, allowing only one car at a time to cross. We've seen this sign a lot, and you don't have to understand Icelandic to know what it means.

Kol ha'olam kudlo...geshar tzar me'od....

One of the longer bridges had a pull-off halfway across so people wouldn't have to reverse all the way back. Even fairly major roads have these narrow bridges.

On tap for tomorrow: more waterfalls, a natural hot springs, and mud pots.