Easter On the Moon

I'm sitting here in our Icelandic apartment blogging and eating Easter dinner.  Normally, Easter dinner is eaten with my mom's side of the family around 3 or 4 p.m. and consists of salmon (thank you, Scandinavian heritage) and a wide array of family favorites as side dishes, including my step dad's famous deviled eggs.  Today, however, it's 6:40 (but really it's noon because of the time difference) and Easter dinner consists of soft tacos made of lettuce, mozzarella cheese (no cheddar - who would've guessed?), and some sort of ground meat that we're pretty sure was beef, but the package only had Icelandic writing so I really have no clue.  Our second guess is lamb.  We're just hoping for the best on that one :)
Anyway, my husband and I aren't really the biggest Easter participants anyway so it's not a huge deal that we're in Iceland today but it's definitely the most unique Easter I've ever had.  We left for Iceland yesterday at 4:30 in the afternoon and arrived seven hours later on a new day.  Considering we got here at 6:40 a.m. and it was 11:40 p.m. to us Seattlites, it's been a challenge to stay awake all day.  In fact, I haven't stayed awake the whole time, but who can resist a half-hour cat nap while waiting at the airport? 
After grabbing breakfast at the Keflavik International Airport and waiting around for the bus, we headed to what's known as the Blue Lagoon.  It was only a half hour away, but in that short time I felt like I'd somehow traveled to another planet.  Mars or the moon, most likely.  I could tell from the airport that Iceland was flat (at least by the coast), but as we drove away, the landscape was unbelievable.  We didn't see a single tree the entire half-hour drive.  Even weirder was the jagged earth that went on endlessly in all directions.  Volcanic rock covers Iceland like a densely-sprinkled doughnut.  Or maybe like an ice cream sundae covered in peanuts.  And rather than grass, because, seriously, how could grass grow around here, the ground - err...rock - was covered with a thick, rich green moss.  It was beautiful, and it covered so much of the rocks that you could hardly tell they were there if you weren't looking directly at them.

Moss-covered volcanic rock in Iceland.

Finally, we arrived at the Blue Lagoon.  Let's just say, if I'd thought I was on another planet prior to entering the Blue Lagoon, it was confirmed the second they tore my ticket and I headed to the main attraction.  The Blue Lagoon is basically a small man-made lake, except rather than what we're used to in Seattle, the lake they've made is filled with mineral-rich sea water pumped in many miles to process at a steam energy plant which is then pumped a quarter of a mile more to rest over a geothermal vents rising from deep in the earth's crust.  Since Iceland is so full of volcanic rock, the air pockets in the rock act as veins for the heat to rise straight to the surface, basically creating a giant hot tub.  Some spots were even too hot to stand in! 
The water is also a milky-whitish-turquoise.  Swimmers can't see more than two inches into the pool and the minerals in the water make it feel like you're swimming through thinned-out body wash.  It's not uncommon to see swimmers with mud-masked faces, either.  Swimmers will cover their face with a muddy white paste made of silica (yes, I did this too) that's supposed to revitalize your skin.  I'm not sure if it revitalized anything, but we all got a laugh at how goofy we looked with the white paste dripping from our eyebrows, chins and noses!  Or maybe it was funny because we'd been up for 18 hours and our bodies desperately wanted to be asleep.  Either way, my stomach got a workout from laughing.
After a few hours of relaxing at the lagoon, we hopped back on a bus and headed to Reykjavik, Iceland's capital, to settle in to our hotel.  We're actually staying in a short-term apartment.  We have a little kitchen and a little living room where Petra will sleep (she's Ben's little sister - we kind of brought her here for her senior trip [she's in high school]).  The kitchen has a refrigerator and a stove and oven, as well as a dishwasher, dishes, pots and pans, and the whole shebang.  We were pretty excited to find such a well-equipped place to stay, considering food around here is two to three times more expensive than at home.  If we had to eat out throughout our entire stay, we'd be bankrupt!  Anyway, that brings me back to the beginning.  Here I am, sitting in our little apartment - I've finished my soft taco already - just blogging away about my first day on the moon.  Wait, did I say that?  I mean Iceland.  My first day on Iceland.  It's only 7:e0 as I finish this entry, but I've been up for 29 hours at this point, and after a long, hot shower, I'm ready to head for bed.  I'm excited to see what else this crazy place has to offer tomorrow :)  Happy Easter, everyone!