Day 5 - Renewal Day at the Blue Lagoon... aka the WORST SUNBURN EVER!

After days of being pretty much everywhere, we needed a day of relaxation and pampering. Knowing this, we scheduled a visit to the Blue Lagoon for the mid-point of our trip. The Blue Lagoon is a geothermal spa where the water has "healing properties." The silt has is silica based and is great for the skin (not so much for the hair), the algae is detoxifying, the perfectly heated water... blah blah blah... whatever, I don't care how it works so long as it's relaxing.

It's really hard to capture the beautiful opalescent color of the water.

Turg and I arrived a little after 10am, and immediately changed and went for a dip. The water is really wonderful. There is something to being in a hot spring on a 60 degree day... you go in, warm up, come out, cool down, repeat...

Ahhh... so relaxing...

For Turg too...

After our morning dip, we robed up and went to the Lava Restaurant for a buffet lunch. The buffet was traditional Icelandic cuisine - meat (lamb) soup, different fishes, whale, etc... and it was really quite good. There really is something luxurious about sitting in a fancy restaurant, in a bath robe, at the spa.

Enjoying my whale sashimi... that's right, I said whale SASHIMI

After lunch, it was back in the lagoon. I partook of the silt to become a "mud person," refreshingly exfoliating my face -

Aren't I attractive?

Turg very much enjoyed the waterfall, which is used to massage your neck and back-

Looks relaxed already, doesn't he?

We also got ourselves some massages in the lagoon (pampering at it's best), where we floated on these mats on the water while beautifully tanned men and women massaged us into relaxation... A massage that I can say was very unique and absolutely enjoyable.

There was one unfortunate part of the day. See, the weather was quite perfect out - clear skies and sun, and about 60 degrees. Why is this unfortunate? Not because it ruined the day at all... quite the contrary. We stayed outside nearly the entire time. The problem was, since the air temperature was quite cool, we were both getting really sunburnt and didn't realize it until it was FAR too late. And I mean SUNBURNT. Probably some of the worst sunburn that either of us has experienced, perhaps ever... Go figger, we come to Iceland and get sunburned.

After we returned to Reykjavik, we went out for a nice relaxing dinner at Icelandic Fish and Chips, followed by a walk back to the hotel. The sun was still out and strong, so the walk was really lovely. We stopped to take a photo of the viking ship on the coast...

Just to give you an idea of how much light there is, it's about 10pm in this photo.

Dispite the sunburn, it was a wonderful day. Next up on our adventure - the 14 hour bus tour