We’ve been getting a bit of good-natured flack from some friends for a bit of wording on our invitations. We called a visit to one of Iceland’s geothermal pools “the most quintessential of Icelandic activities,” an admitted bit of lingual flourish in an invitation which otherwise just includes information like, "The cocktail hour starts at 5pm." But, having now visited those pools and seen them with my own eyes, I have to say I stand by that wording. They don't have outdoor geothermal volcanic hot tubs on Long Island.
Having arrived on two separate red eyes first thing on Friday morning, Tracie and I experienced the customary nine-or-so minutes of sleep one manages to cobble together when trying to curl up for the night on an airplane. Icelandair is a great airline, but there was a strange feeling of party-like raucousness I haven’t experienced on any red eye I’ve taken between New York and LA. There were numerous beverage offers, snack services, and I swear I remember waking up in the middle of the night and seeing a cart of gaudy Skymall-type merchandise on a cart rolling down the aisle, replete with a huge blond wig on a mannequin head. For Tracie’s part, she swears she woke up in the night on her flight with a tray of cookies under her nose and a flight attendant demanding in a thick Icelandic accent, “YOU WANT SOME COOKIES.” She did not. And I didn't want all of these seat back TVs on all night, either. I didn’t fly into the Arctic Circle so I could watch everyone around me watching ten year old episodes of “Family Guy.”
Anyway, all that this “blah blah blah airplane peanuts” rant boils down to is that we were DAMN tired when we landed in Reykjavik at around 7am. (Though, interesting side note: within seconds of meeting one another in a foreign country we’d never been in before, the very first thing Tracie and I did was start talking about Burlesque.) We spent the day meeting with Anna, seeing the hotel, meeting with the lady priestess who will perform our ceremony, eating twee Icelandic lunches and drinking strong Icelandic coffee. But it was just after dark (y'know, at 3:30) that we decided to embark upon the most mysterious errand on our itinerary, where we hoped we could relax away the flight we'd still yet to wash off us: the geothermal pools.
Because, seriously, what the hell? I mean, lots of towns have community pools, but these places are all over the city and they are a daily part of life for many people in the country. On Friday night, people of all ages were there -- families, couples, groups of all ages -- hanging out in heated pools while the outside temperature hovered around twenty degrees. It’s crazy. There are pools for lap swimming. There are four hot tubs. There’s a water slide in the summer. And because Iceland is not a warm country (duh forever), people do not just walk around all Frenchie and topless or anything like that. It’s a family place!
Except for the time you have to be totally naked for a minute.
Because the water from these pools comes directly up from the center of the earth, they do not add chlorine, as it would dampen the deeply soul-restoring properties the water is supposed to contain. It’s filtered and circulated, sure, so that you’re not just sitting in a still petri pool of Icelandic germs, but the water lacks the harsh chemicals of your typical American pool. You pee in the geothermal pool? It’s part of their ecosystem now.
For this reason, right after one pays to enter the facility and right before one enters the pool area, one is expected to clean oneself thoroughly in the showers. The locker rooms are not coed, and there are individual changing rooms, so there is a certain modicum of privacy afforded...except in the actual showers. There are stalls -- kind of -- but the walls do not extend out far enough to block every part of you from the person next to you, which means vice versa. But then, after like nine seconds, you finish showering, you put your bathing suit back on, you leave the locker room, you race through the dark, icy night (if you're there in December), and you sit comfortably for hours enjoying a weather/water paradox that will make you reflexively refer to Skandinavian types as “hearty” for the rest of your life.
If you can be naked in front of your friends for about thirty seconds.
No comments:
Post a Comment