Beds are soft and warm and comfortable and awesome.
The cliffs of Arnarstapi were roamed all night under the midnight sun. Seabird colonies are generally noisy, chaotic places, so it was almost otherworldly to see all of the birds quiet and either resting or calmly staring back at me. The Arctic fox made a brief (although un-photographable) reappearance, and the twilight painted magic through the evening.
I set off towards Reykjavik at 4:30 a bit sleepy but more peaceful than anything else. A day earlier I had been thinking that the one photograph I most wished I had gotten was a good shot of the whooper swans, who in general have been so wary that they swim away at the first glimpse of a person; it seems I did something right in a past life, because at 5:30 a family of swans was sitting in a pond next to the road, posing for pictures. Shortly thereafter the little guys in the brain signalled that if there wasn’t at least a couple of hours of sleep that they would go on strike, and since that’s generally a bad thing while driving I pulled over and let the neurons rest.
Once back in Reykjavik I roamed all over looking for the delicious cafe that the Skipper and I ate at two weeks ago, and of course finally found it a block away from my parking spot. After lunch I returned to the cathedral for another obligatory photo of the Leifur Eriksson statue, and finally came back to find a parking ticket on the Wondermobile – apparently being able to read the small print (in Icelandic) under the giant “P” sign would have been helpful. After returning the Wondermobile and catching the bus to Keflavik there was much sleeping, showering, and trimming of hair and beard. Today it’s off to the airport and a flight to Boston, and after that the great Iceland Adventure of 2008 comes to its end.
