Iceland to Paris

Bonjour! Nous sommes en Paris avec l'amie de Jeremiah, qui s'appelle "Thomas."

We arrived here yesterday after two days in Iceland and now we will reside here for 6 days.
We did a quick tour of Paris yestday and saw la cathedral de Notre Dame, la tour Eiffel, et beaucoup de cafes and persons Francais.
It was strange because so many of the signs, stores, and shops are American. Starbucks, Gap, Clinique (just kidding).


But posts about France will have to wait while we show you a bit of Iceland.

We arrived in Iceland at 630am. Our first order of business was to eat breakfast at a cute little Icelandic cafe in the airport.


After breakfast we waited for a bus that would take us to Reykjavik, the capital. The airport is in Keflavik, about 40 minutes from Reykjavik.

The bus that travels between the two cities stops at The Blue Lagoon, which is a geothermal seawater fed spa. The water is loaded with silica, microorganisms (including algae and bacteria) and is therefore very therapeutic for your body.
(You can check out the link below for more information.)
The Blue Lagoon
The bacteria that live in the blue lagoon are known as "extremophiles" because they are found in extreme environments. These types of microbes live in areas that are super salty, very hot, acidic and or basic. These particular microbes (in the Blue Lagoon) survive well at high heat and high salt concentrations, but the bacteria that cause most infectious diseases prefer body temperature conditions and also low salt concentrations. Because pathogenic bacteria can not survive in these types of conditions, the Blue Lagoon does not have any chlorine in the water, just hot and salty.
As you walk into the spa there are volcanic rocks everywhere.

The water is milky and blue. Our pictures do not do the lagoon any justice, but the picture on the website are fantastic.

While at the spa one can put on a silica mud mask that purifies the skin, you can sit in a steam and or sauna room, and if you wish to pay extra you can get a massage.
It's a great way to unwind after a flight when it's early in the morning and you can't check into your hotel room until 230pm.
After getting our money's worth at the Blue Lagoon we boarded the bus to Reykjavik. When we arrived it was still too early to check into our hotel room so we found a sweet little cafe where we could eat some lunch and stow our bags. Icelandic meat stew amd rye bread with lamb paté is the traditional lunch in Iceland and it was quite good. Their rye bread is sort of like that canned brown bread we have in the states. It's very tasty.

Below are pictures of our hotel. The proprietor was exceptionally rude to us and to all the other guests. I'm not sure why someone who is so negative and clearly annoyed with all humans would enter a field like "hospitality" but the hotel was clean, in a good location, and the right price, so we put up with him.


I have pictures of our hotel room that I have to find.
I imagine they are on our other camera.
I'll leave you with a few more pictures of Iceland.