That evening Thorunn, my Icelandic friend, picked me up with a car and together with a friend of hers, they took me around Reykjavik. It was interesting for me to notice that everybody was paying by credit card for even the smallest little things, even back in 2006. In my home country Greece cash was still king back then. After some dinner they took me to the cinema to watch “Fast and the Furious 3 : Tokyo Drift”. The cinema entry was 800isk, price of 2006. It was great that in they don’t dub, all movies play in English with Icelandic subtitles. After making a quick stop for icecream with chocolate pieces in (300isk) they took me to Seltjarnarnes.
Seltjarnarnes is a small town on the west of Reykjavik on the edge of the peninsula, it’s so close to the capital that I thought it was part of it! There is a little tided island named Grótta with a lighthouse which becomes an island during high tide. It looked beautiful but we couldn’t walk all the way there as around that period birds lay their eggs on the pathway, so access was forbidden. The time was 1:16am but there was daylight, the midnight sun was giving us a bit of twilight and that was as dark as it could get! Seltjarnarnes is the smallest Icelandic township by land (and the most dense with 2,300/km2) but amazingly it became the world’s first town where every citizen had access to fiber optics in 2007!
Next stop was at a beach on the south edge of the Reykjavik domestic airport and close to Perlan, Nautholsvik geothermal beach. We drove there just a bit before 2am and witnessed beautiful clouds and colors when the sun was preparing to come out again, still daylight though. Just because its geothermal it doesn’t mean the water is really warm, average temperatures were between 3°- 5°C in the winter and 12°- 15°C in the summer (in 2006). So I couldn’t believe it when I saw a completely naked guy bathing there at that time, while I was freezing! Nowadays warm excess water is heating the lagoon so the average temperature of the water during Summer has gone up to 15°-19°C.
The beach was constructed by importing golden sand and building seawalls to protect the man-made lagoon, which is heated with warm excess water. It is equipped with changing facilities, showers, steam-baths and hot tubs. The temperature of the hot tub is pretty consistent around 38.5°C with the second hot tub being a lot cooler. The operating hours are usually 10:00 – 19:00 and the entrance costs 920isk.
Last stop of the day (night actually) was Bessastaðir to have a look at the official residence of the president of Iceland. It’s about 15km from Reykjavik. What surprised me was the absolute lack of security. No guards, no walls or fences, no signs. Just a lovely modest house. Thorunn told me all kinds of interesting stuff about this place. That in the past when she was a child, she and her friends would go into the presidents house to ask him questions (!!??). That when the 42nd president of the USA Bill Clinton visited here in 2004, he went around without an escort. That the prison here is like a luxury hotel and some of the inmates in the end don’t want to leave!
After checking the numbers, Iceland has indeed one of the lowest criminal rates in the world. In 2006, the year I visited, the murder rate was 0%! That being said, crime has been on the rise since 2020 and onwards. According to the records, between 1999 and 2019 the murder rate in Iceland was on average 1.9%, climbing since 2020 to a staggering 4.6%.
The time was 2.30am and Thorunn suggested instead of sleeping at my camping to go at her family’s place in Hveragerði where they would host me for a few days. The people in Iceland are so hospitable! A bit further on the road after Bessastaðir we were stopped by the police for a polite check. I just showed them my passport. Thorunn told me it was her first time experiencing a police check like that. We went to my camping, I packed my stuff and tent as fast as I could and we finally reached Thorunn’s family home at around 3.00am.
*All photos taken with a Canon Powershot S1 IS, 3.2 megapixels, my 1st digital camera.
Additional information
GPS coordinates for places in this post, click on them to be redirected to the exact point in google maps Click on the names to be redirected to their official websites (if applicable).
Seltjarnarnes and Grótta island lighthouse: 64°09’53.0″N 22°01’18.2″W
Nauthólsvík Geothermal Beach: 64°07’17.1″N 21°55’46.2″W
Bessastaðir : 64°06’21.2″N 21°59’44.6″W
Click below to read the connected previous and next post:
Click on the categories at the top or at the tags below for more posts!
