Day 3 in Iceland

Monday was a Golden Circle Excursion extravaganza! Our guide was a retired US Air Force officer who trained on a three-year Iceland tour guide course...so he had to be good (and he was).
FYI: it takes way too long to upload photos to this site, so from now on I’ll put them up on Picasa and provide the address. It is: http://picasaweb.google.ca/1Aleesa/Iceland#
Our tour was packed full of interesting sights. The first stop was Þingvellir National Park [Þ=th] including the site of Iceland’s (and the world’s) first parliament, circa 930. It also had something creepy called the “drowning pool”. Eighteen women in the 1500-1600s were killed there for crimes of incest and fornication, drowned by being stuffed into sacks filled with rocks and thrown into the pool (their dead bodies were removed afterward for burial). [Men guilty of the same crimes were executed at another location.] Quite the capital punishment.
Next was the sight of an actual glacier! There are adventure tour companies that offer ski-dooing on the glaciers here, which I’d love to do if I had the time. Today we just looked.
For lunch another first: lamb soup. I haven’t yet come across an Icelandic food I dislike; mostly because I haven’t tried any of the traditional winter festival dishes like boiled sheep’s head (eyeballs and all) or fermented shark, eaten after months of burial in the ground. Have I mentioned how much I love summer??
Sylvia and I enjoyed a very leisurely lunch, including spending time at Gullfoss (or Golden Waterfall). It was so leisurely, in fact, that when we finally strolled into the parking lot, our bus was nowhere to be seen!
Thankfully it didn’t take long before we were redirected to another parking lot where we did find our bus...and 18 people wondering where we’d been and if we’d ever return. “Time runs slower in Canada, does it?” said one. [Hah.] Best not to both fall asleep when the tour guide gives helpful instructions on when and where to meet up!
The highlight of the trip was Geysir (pronounced gay-zer), the fourth-highest in the world. It was quite the kick to watch a pool of hot, bubbling water spontaneously erupt! It was also a kick to discover that there was another Torontonian on the tour...and not only that, he was Italian! How about that: a tour of Iceland's natural wonders and Italian speaking practice to boot. Thank you, Ottavio!
We also saw dormant volcanoes, solidified lava flows, and even an “implosion crater” (sinkhole). It’s wild to think there’s so much going on below the surface here.
We went back to church tonight for a YSA dinner and FHE. Although every Icelander in the room was fluent in English, they still held the meeting in Icelandic. I had a translator (thank you, Johannes). As he put it: “We’re proud Icelanders.” I understand that, also coming from a nation with a lot of land but not a lot of people; people who need to work to preserve their own identities and culture in the face of bigger, more powerful countries.
Speaking of Italian-Iceland connections, there’s a popular Italian-Icelandic singer here called Emiliana Torrini. Check out this video of her song “Jungle Drum”, which is a big hit right now.