Iceland in 56 Hours

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Next, I boarded a bus full of mostly American tourists for the "Golden Circle" tour of the most striking natural wonders near Reykjavík. I despise escorted tours, but I hadn't wanted to go to hassle with renting a car, especially given that I didn't know what the road conditions, the other drivers, and the weather would be like. After going through the tour, though, I think it would be very easy to drive yourself, and next time, I'll rent a car. It was frustrating to adhere to the bus' schedule and priorities.

First stop: Þingvellir National Park. This contains, among other features, the site of the Alþing, the world's oldest parliament, where Icelanders first congregated in 930 AD. We stopped only on a cliff overlooking the valley in which the Alþing's meeting place is located. Driving through the valley after our stop, the bus did not even slow down for us to get a better look at the Alþing site. We likewise trundled right over what our guide quaintly referred to as "The Big Splitting": the chasm where the North American and European tectonic plates are pulling apart. I would think a visible geologic event and the site of the world's oldest representative legislature would be reason to pull over, but evidently the tour company doesn't agree.

We went on to Geysir, site of a group of geysers (geysers were named after Geysir, not the other way around). You wouldn't even slow down for this place if you were in Yellowstone. The Great Geysir is the largest and most famous, but it erupts unpredictably and, at most, once a day. More reliable is Strokkur, which erupts every few minutes. It's pretty cool -- you can see the water start to rise and fall about 30 seconds before an eruption, and a big bubble forms just before the water shoots out.

From there, on to Gullfoss, a massive waterfall that was partially frozen when I saw it. It's absolutely breathtaking and the highlight of the tour.

The final stop of the day was the most irritating: a greenhouse called the Garden of Eden in the little town of Hveragerði. Nothing of interest here: it was a pure tourist trap. It would have been annoying enough to waste time at this pointless visit, but I was even more irked because of the other places we'd seen where I would rather have spent the time.

I highly recommend the Golden Circle tour, but try to do it on your own instead of with a tour.

I had been wary of going to the Blue Lagoon. It sounded like a tourist trap to me; plus, I don't really care for hot springs. The lagoon was a pleasant surprise. It was created accidentally when a nearby plant that pumped from a geothermal spring allowed excess water to spill onto the lava. Over time, the minerals in the water sealed the lava and created a pool, and the story goes that a worker at the plant bathed in the pool one day and found that it helped his eczema. Since then, it's become a renowned spa.

The water is actually bath-water warm, not boiling, and the sulfur smell is minimal. We were the first people there, so we had the whole lagoon to ourselves. The water is an ethereal blue and so opaque that you can't see more than an inch or so into it. As you move around the lagoon, you find vents where hotter water is flowing in. Parts of the bottom are sand, parts are mud, and most is mineral-coated lava (meaning that you frequently get large rocks jutting up unexpectedly). It was very cool to be in such a natural setting; the buildings around the lagoon are small and unobtrusive, and the pool is ringed by rugged, moss-covered lava rocks. Beyond the pool you can see the industrial plant that provides the water, which definitely gives the experience an offbeat vibe. The day I was there, the wind was blowing so strongly that it created choppy waves in the lagoon and sent the copious steam skimming across the surface. The lagoon is very shallow, meaning that to keep your entire body submerged -- and believe me, with the icy wind and the below-freezing temperatures, you will want to -- you have to scuttle along like a crab.

After the Blue Lagoon, we drove down the peninsula, which is completely flat and consists entirely of lava, some of which is covered with moss, much of which is bare. NASA trained its moon-bound astronauts in this area, and it's easy to see why. It's desolate, rugged, mostly devoid of vegetation, and has nothing to stop the wind that howls in from the North Atlantic. The weather grew noticeably harsher on the peninsula; it got cloudy, colder, and much windier than Reykjavík.

My favorite stop of the day was at the very tip of the peninsula, where the ocean crashed against lava cliffs. Looking straight ahead, the next piece of land you'd come to is Antarctica. I love that kind of landscape, and the barren rocks seemed especially fitting here against the sea. The guide told me that they had just finished filming a movie called "Monster" here, directed by Hal Hartley.

The "scientific" side has 100 "penises and penile parts" from Icelandic mammals (no human specimens yet, although three are pledged, and one future donor thoughtfully included a cast of his donation for display). Many of them are so decomposed that they're barely recognizable. Others -- like the whale penises mounted on the wall -- are downright scary in their extreme pointiness. The museum's brochure mystifyingly notes that "phallology is an ancient science which, until recent years, has received very little attention in Iceland, except as a borderline field of study in other academic disciplines such as history, art, psychology, literature, and other artistic fields like music and ballet." Phallology is a field of study in ballet?

Visitor tip: Certainly a worthwhile stop, especially since it will take you about 15 minutes to view the entire collection, and that's if you read all the little identifying cards. Besides, telling people you've been to the penis museum generates envy and amazement the likes of which few other attractions can provoke, except possibly South of the Border.

Though I held out little hope that anything the rest of this trip could top the penis museum, I continued to the downtown area. Reykjavík is a very walkable city. Not only do they provide walking paths everywhere, even along highways, but it's on a small, intimate scale. Plus, when you push the button at a traffic light that triggers the "walk" sign, it changes almost immediately. People I'd spoken to made it sound as though my hotel was miles away from downtown, but I walked there in about 20 minutes. The city has a fine municipal bus system, which I rode frequently, but you really can walk everywhere. At first blush the city looks confusing, but it's quite easy to get your bearings.

Visitor tip: Stop by the tourist information center and buy a "Reykjavík card" -- it gives you free admission to most of the museums around town, plus free rides on the bus system.

Iceland's Government House (the prime minister's office), ridiculously small, sits across from the tourist information center. Further down the main road, Lækjargata, is the Tjörn, a small lake ("tjörn" is Icelandic for "lake") that the tourist brochure describes as "bird-infested," which I thought was a strong term until I actually saw the swarm of ducks, swans, and geese. The city hall is a modern building cantilevered over the north end of the lake. It was not open.

I walked down to the natural history museum. It was closed for renovations. Over to Norse House, a building designed by Alvar Aalto, meant to recall a Viking ship. Closed. On to the Árni Magnússon Institute, said to have an amazing collection of the ancient saga manuscripts. Closed 15 minutes before I got there.

Visitor tip: Get to all the museums you want to see before 4:00 p.m. Most places seem to be open 10:00 to 5:00 at the latest, at least during the off season.

So I headed up the hill to the Hallgrímskirka, the giant cathedral that dominates the city. It's meant to evoke the basaltic lava columns you can see all over the country, but it comes off a little too Albert Speer for my taste. Out front is a heroically posed statue of Leifur Eiríksson, who discovered (and, some claim, settled) North America centuries before Columbus. The elevator to the spire of the cathedral was -- you guessed it -- closed, but as I walked through the church, a wispy young woman in scruffy jeans started singing underneath the impressive organ pipes, played by her accompanist. She had an amazing voice, and it lent a marvelous atmosphere to the church.

I had more sunlight than I reckoned on. The sun came up around 7:00 a.m., and it stayed light until 8:30 p.m. or so. I was repeatedly told the fine weather -- cloudless skies, light though ever-present wind, and temperatures in the low 40s that felt warmer thanks to the brilliant sunshine -- was unusual for this time of year.

Because of the prevalence of hot springs all over the country, everything is heated geothermally (they even run hot-water pipes underneath the streets and sidewalks to keep them free of ice -- this means you frequently get whiffs of sulfur as you walk down the street), and nearly all their power comes from hydroelectricity or steam turbines. The bus system is terrific and the city seems to encourage walking (not that there aren't plenty of cars). The countryside has very few trees, because in medieval times, the Vikings cut down the birch forests and never replanted them. Now, planting trees is a popular activity for company picnics, family outings, and teenagers' public service projects.

Reykjavík's architecture is not especially... what's the word... good. Their primary building materials are corrugated tin and concrete. The corrugated tin that covers private houses and other small buildings can actually look pretty good (when it's not rusted through) -- they paint it in vibrant, saturated colors and add attractive trimmings. But the large buildings are godawfully ugly -- depressing, Soviet-style blocks with no character.

Finally, on your flights to and from Iceland, I recommend asking for a window seat. On the way over, I saw the aurora borealis for the first time, through the airplane window. On the way home, I saw stunning, rugged mountains and glaciers in southern Greenland and beautiful lakes and mountains in northern Canada.