However. As the plane descended through the clouds and the lava-encrusted southern coast of Iceland spread out below my window like a fantastical 3D puzzle, all my qualms vanished like Icelandic darkness in July. There were mountains, volcanoes, crazy cloud and shadow formations, crevices, wave-studded shores, and a kind of flat emptiness that was wilder that any landscape I'd yet encountered. My baby camera couldn't do it justice and I couldn't wait to land.
Upon landing in Keflavik and discovering that, yes, Iceland did actually exist, I took out some pretty new play money from the ATM and got myself on a bus to Reykjavik. I could almost feel the other passengers around me drawing back in discomfort as my drool trickled down the window for the entirety of the 45 minute trip through dramatically creviced lava fields on the way to the city. I don't think that window had ever been so clean as when I left it.
When the bus arrived at the central bus terminal in Reykjavik, I was taken aback by how small the city was. I don't know why I expected a city of only 120,000 inhabitants to look like a booming European metropolis (though my recent visits to places such as, oh, Istanbul, might have had something to do with it), but my preconceptions were pleasantly jumbled. Part of this pleasantness was due to the fact that my route to the guesthouse which had looked long on paper was actually quite short and painless (except that it was all uphill, a fact that the paper version ignored). I checked in without trouble, made myself ready for exploration and headed out into the early evening light. To my delight, the largest building in Reykjavik, the Hallgrímskirkja cathedral, was only a three minute walk away. This meant that it was pretty impossible to get lost.
This church seemed very out-of-place amongst the memories of the lava-cut landscape still in my mind and the colorful little Scandinavian streets. Later on, Sarah and I concluded that it looked like it came straight out of the set of Metropolis or from a bleached-out version of the Emerald City. It was one of the barest churches I had ever seen, with virtually no decoration so that the eye was drawn to the sweeping high arches of the ceiling or blue sky out of the simply sophisticated windows. The main feature of the church was a giant organ in back, which was being played by an incredibly talented student. The sound of the minor tones falling swiftly over one another filled up the great room like a booming waterfall of noise. All I could do was sit there and watch the student's back as she flailed and twisted to reach all the little black notes in time, throwing herself back as the final chord echoed through the space. No one clapped.
I snuck out once she had finished and wandered down a cute shopping area toward the downtown, until I was distracted by a glimpse of mountains (better photos later) and ended up at the harbor, where I stayed for the next several hours as the light and sky shifted in various new ways that expanded and glorified my sunsetty ideals of beauty.
At this point it was about 10.30pm. The sun was still high enough to provide full light, but low enough that it threw shadows out that almost created another dimension. For example, you can see the perfect shadow of a motorcyclist zooming by on this boat. It reminded me of Peter Pan's shadow.
A rainbow on the far side of the harbor painted the sky for about an hour straight. There must be some sort of record for that.
The best place I found to watch the sun actually set some time later was in an old junkyard that didn't look like it had once been touched by a tourist's flipflop.
The light, the light, the light.
It was only as the fiery hues became softening pastels that I headed back to the guesthouse to crash after a couple jam-packed weeks of packing and traveling, as well as an exhilarating photographic spree. As much as I couldn't wait to sleep, I also couldn't wait to wake up the next morning for more exploration and for the late-afternoon arrival of my travel buddy.
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