03-09-16

Our last day in Iceland. I think we were all pretty sad to be going. But probably also quite tired and ready for a return to normality.

We enjoyed a simple, but pleasant breakfast at the hotel and then went for a quick walk to a shallow and wide river which ran close by. The boys seemed intent on letting off some steam play-fighting for a bit longer than I had patience for....

We took a bit of a drive along a track which would take us to some caves we could walk in, but the track was very bumpy and slow and I didn't know where I was going so we turned back and drove to Husafell Hotel where we'd be getting picked up for our last excursion - a trip into an ice cave on Langjökull glacier. I was relieved when the bus arrived because this was the last planned trip - I'd been concerned that we'd miss the pick up point for each one, but we hadn't - phew!

The bus (out of the 70's), made its bumpy way along the track which meandered  up to the glacier through Mars like slate grey boulder fields. We donned another set of thermal overalls and got into the ex-army people carrier which could drive onto the glacier.

We waited our turn for the tour of the Ice Cave, which was impressive, but as a man made construction, it left me feeling a bit cold (no pun intended). Overall it just failed to live up to some of the stuff that we'd done over the past 10 days.

When we got back to the car we went over to a small arts and crafts centre which Luca had seen in the distance and recognised as being somewhere that Muse had recently visited and shot a small video in - of them playing traditional instruments. Unfortunately it was closed and we were reduced to just looking through the windows.

We drove into Reyjavik and checked into the Hilton (usual thing really, it could have been anywhere in the world), and then walked through a cold and drizzly Reykjavik and had the least enjoyable meal of the holiday. Took some photos of the Viking Boat and returned to the hotel with a heavy heart readt for an early start in the morning and full of hopeful intentions of returning soon.