I found the warm overalls downstairs in the engine room and spent many happy hours on deck while watching others shiver. Sure I might have looked rediculous, like a rather badly bruised michelin man, but I was warm as toast and my wife got a good giggle at my getup.

Now I’m not one to complain so I’ll keep this short but I think it’s a little dear to charge 45 dollars for a 3 hour activity where there is the very great possibility you may not see anything at all. Granted the company offers a free “do-over” but do I really want to sit on the boat again for 3 hours with no guarantee? I think they could cut the price in half and have a lot more happy customers… just a thought.

Then again, would I pay 45 dollars for a 3 hour opera where all I get to hear is one person sing for 3 minutes and the rest be an empty stage with some kid kicking the back of my seat? I leave the answering up to you dear reader?

Upon our return to land we stopped in a seafood restaurant on the main road and found they were serving Mink Whale skewers. The meat was raw and you gave them the skewers to cook for you. We chose a scallop skewer to go along with our Lobster soup but I couldn’t help finding the experience rather nauseating. Whale meat is purple and apparently if cooked too long get’s a livery taste.. We met several folks who love the stuff and say it’s more tender than the finest steak you’d ever have.

I don’t know why I have such an aversion to the idea of eating whale. It probably has everything to do with the science project I did when I was 13, where I spent two weeks drawing every member of the cetacean family (whales & dolphins) by hand. I drew the outlines so perfectly in pen, coloring in and being careful not to go over the lines. I had such pride in that project and such respect for those animals that I know it affected me to my core. I regularly catch one of those high drama confrontations on the discovery channel between green peace and Japanese whalers and I always, unabashedly so, root for green peace. I’m pretty sure my love of these majestic underwater mammals led me to my obsession with holding my breath. Whales are known to hold their breath for thirty minutes at a time. Blue Whales even longer. This was staggering to my 13 year old brain and many long summer days were spent with me, floating at the bottom of our pool, holding my breath. (Funny enough, I have spent much of this honeymoon holding my breath.… at the bottom of pools…).

After our return to land, we both lazed around downtown Reykjavik, wandering past the storefronts and restaurants of the main shopping boulevard. Everything shuts here at 6pm so the downtown became quickly quiet despite the sunlight still pouring across the rooftops. We both realized we were very high in the hemisphere when the sun didn’t lip the horizon until 9 that night. Reykjavik was proving to be more than quaint.

First stop was a thermal power station, drawing it’s heat and energy directly from the steam and hot water rising naturally from the ground below. We learnt that Iceland is entirely powered off thermal energy drawn from the pressure the two tectonic plates create by fusing through the middle of Iceland. Iceland is unique in that it sits on both the North American and European Tectonic plates with a 7km rift between the two that is constantly expanding 2 cm every year. Hot water rises from deep within the earths crust at a temperature of 83 degrees and is pumped to Reykjavik several kilometers away without losing more than 2 degrees so efficient is the system of pipes. Additionally, rising steam provides steam pressure to drive huge turbines that power the nation. What a dream to have your country’s energy needs met in a green earth friendly way, using the earth’s natural renewable resources to great effect.

Next stop was a rift cut through the earth by the constant melting flow of Iceland’s second largest glacier. The land out here is flat for miles, until it hits the base of the distant mountains and the Glacier beyond. As we disembarked the bus there was the distinct rumble of a distant river, though the ground around us was flat and undisturbed. Shirin and I walked around the Visitor’s Center and down a pathway towards the noise when the shadow in the distance rapidly grew into a Grand Canyon like chasm cut in the earth. The work of a Glacier melt river slicing down through the bedrock like a knife through butter.

At this point in the river, the land had fought back and won, forming a vast waterfall several hundred feet across and a hundred feet high. The sound was deafening, the water boiling as it tumbled to the rocks below. Shirin and I walked out to where the waterfall tipped over the edge and took pictures. She got worried and vocalized loudly as I bent down to touch the freezing glacier melt. “Don’t” she cried, terrified I’d lose my footing and fall in. 6 months ago I wouldn’t have thought a moment about climbing down those rocks to touch the freezing water, but my new wife had a point. I am not to think of myself anymore, but my family. We worked our way back along the ridge and up the staircase to the waiting bus. Apparently the Icelanding government had wanted to harness the power of the waterfall for a hydroelectric plant but a woman had petitioned for it to remain in it’s natural state as a symbol of Iceland’s natural wonders and she had won. Thank God she had. What a fantastic splendor to witness out in the middle of nowhere.

Next the bus swung deep into the heart of Iceland where the greatest show awaited. As the bus pulled to a stop the distant geyser gave a show, exploding water 40 feet into the air. We would stop here for a while affording us time for pictures and a spot of lunch. Shirin and I went straight for the geyser and stood fascinated as the water seemingly boiled up out of the ground and bubbled over the edge of the geyser pool. Steam rolled out and away, like some witches brew and bubbling water spilled through a cut in the stone, running in rivulets down the hill towards a field dotted with plumes of steam and bubbling ponds. Suddenly the geyser pond blistered like a balloon expanding releasing in a sudden burst an explosion of water and steam shooting into the sky. So sudden was the explosion I nearly fell over, having preoccupied myself with the study of a bumble bee bathing itself in the runoff. We stayed for 3 more explosions, the earth sending forth another torrent every five minutes or so. Sometimes there’d be a tremor following the first eruption and a second would follow in quick suit. Sometimes the water would boil as if to burst, only to build the tension that much more as the bubble subsided into the pond. The surface water seemed to bubble and retreat, almost as if the ground, the very earth was breathing.

Our final stop was the actual location of the world’s first parliament. A raised slope at the base of the wall where the North American Tectonic plate rises out of the ground like a 5 story granite wall. It is immense and dramatic and a fine place for the seat of so important an institution. Fascinatingly, Iceland’s disparate chiefs gathered together in the early 1200’s to form the world’s first parliament. A means of unifying laws and practices for various peoples of Iceland at that time. The power of the hill was put in the hands of one man, the law speaker, who would dictate the laws as passed down through oral tradition. For many years the laws were not written as there was no literacy so all history was an oral or pictorial history. Parliament meetings would take days if not weeks to complete and all in attendance would set up shop making good use of the captive audience.

Back in Barcelona, we weren’t so lucky to stop at Barcelona Sants, where Hotel Barcelo awaited. Instead we worked our way down stairs and up escalators, on trains and off till we were again sitting in the lobby of the Hotel. Oh, and we didn’t have a room yet, so we sat in the lobby, used their free wifi and booked it there and then. That’s just the kind of bad ass travellers we’ve become. We have learned to make our reality no matter where we are and what we want. This is a skill I know we will make great use of back in the states.

We leave for Prague tomorrow, early. There is a train that leaves from the terminal downstairs so again, thank God for the convenience of this hotel. Highly recommended.

I swam out a ways and floated in the Med. Even a hundred yards off the coast I could still stand, despite not being able to see my feet. We have been spoiled with warm and beautifully clear water on this trip so Valencia had a pretty impossible standard to live up to. All the same I enjoyed the frolic and the cool down.

We spent the rest of the day shopping in the downtown area. We crossed a huge bridge that looked like a whale bone reaching into the night sky, past the brand new and extravagant Natural & Science Museum. The row of buildings are all architectural marvels and well worth the study should this sort of thing catch your interest.