So these last couple of days I've seen two equally impressive wonders of the modern world with two equally difficult names: aurora borealis and Benedict Cumberbatch. I'll tell you about both encounters, as well as the stuff I did in between.
Picking up where I left off on my last blog post, I went out to dinner with Laurie on the 16th. We got soaked looking for a place to eat (it actually started hailing at some point) but we ended up in a nice restaurant called Gamla Vinhusid where I ordered the exotic sounding Tröllaborgari, or Troll's burger (basically just a huge hamburger, as far as I know no trolls were harmed). It was really nice to actually go out to a restaurant and talk and drink good wine and have fun.
We got back to the hostel right in time for the shuttle to pick us up. We'd asked about the northern lights tour and it wasn't cancelled that day, so we were really excited. The bus got there and Laurie got on it, but when I showed the driver my itinerary he told me I wasn't supposed to be on his bus. A little indignant and very confused I went back to the hostel desk but they couldn't really help me either.
I spent a couple of minutes standing outside the hostel, trying to think of what to do. A part of me wanted to give up and just go back inside, but another part of me was determined to see those northern lights. It had been on my bucket list for years, and this was my chance!
My itinerary clearly said that I was supposed to be coming on a tour operated by the company whose logo had been on the side of the pick-up shuttle. I remembered walking past their sales office in town earlier - it was only about a 10-minute walk from the hostel. I made up my mind - I had about 15 minutes before the tour would depart and I was pretty sure it would depart from the parking lot next to the sales office - so I ran.
When I arrived at the sales office, out of breath and sweating all over the place, I saw Laurie getting on the bus. I went into the office to get my ticket. The woman behind the counter explained that yes, I was indeed supposed to go on this tour, and that something must've gone wrong with the list of people to pick up. Or something. I didn't really care. I got my ticket. I was going to see the northern lights.
I didn't get on the same bus as Laurie did but when we arrived at the very tip of the Reykjanes peninsula, where we would try our luck at seeing aurora borealis, I found her soon enough. After all the crap I'd been through to see the northern lights, they were quite eager to show themselves, and within the first 15 minutes we saw an amazing spectacle of slowly dancing ribbons of pale light across the sky. It was an incredible sight.
It's funny - the actual northern lights are so different from all the pictures. They're not nearly as green and definitely not as bright. A camera picks up a lot more light, especially when you leave the shutter open for a longer time. Some people got really spectacular pictures. Laurie took some as well, and I'm curious to see how they turned out. I couldn't get my camera to behave so I settled for just looking up at the sky, which was fine by me.
Apart from the northern lights we also saw a lot of stars, even the Milky Way. I saw Jupiter, and Orion, and the Big Dipper, and even a falling star at some point. I couldn't stop smiling. Stargazing is so awesome.
I got back to the hostel pretty late that night and had to get up again relatively early on the 17th because I was going on a full day tour around the southern shore. Laurie was leaving for the Blue Lagoon and the airport that morning, so we exchanged email addresses and said goodbye. I had a really nice time with her.
The southern shore tour was long (around 11 hours) and rainy, but very much worth it. We stopped at the Sólheimajökull (a glacier that's part of the bigger Mýrdalsjökull glacier), the village of Vík including the black sand beach and the basalt formations, the village of Skógar with the Skógafoss waterfall, and the Seljalandsfoss waterfall.
On the way to Sólheimajökull we drove past the infamous Eyjafjallajökull, and the tour guide said it aloud so many times I'm pretty confident I can pronounce it the right way now.
It was a really nice day, and I took a LOT of pictures. The bus wasn't as crowded as the northern lights tour had been, which was nice. I was exhausted by the time we arrived back in Reykjavik though, which is why I took it easy today.
Today, the weather had finally cleared up a little - it only rained for about five minutes and the skies were mostly blue. I decided to walk down to the Höfði house, which is the building where Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev negotiated the terms on which to end the Cold War back in 1986. It's a gorgeous house, but you're not allowed to go inside, unfortunately.
After walking around the Höfði house I went back to downtown Reykjavik. After feeding the ducks at Tjörnin, I walked back up to Hallgrimskirkja to finally take pictures of the interior of the church. I strolled in and out of a couple of shops onthe way back to the hostel to have lunch.
It was at that point that I turned on my laptop and saw that Sandra had tweeted me a link to an article saying that they were going to be shooting scenes for the movie The Man Who Sold The World in downtown Reykjavik today. None other than Benedict Cumberbatch would star in said movie. As you can imagine I grabbed my camera, threw my coat back on and hurried back downtown to find the square in question.
The film set was there all right, and I joined a group of people watching what was happening. I tried to find Benedict but I failed - either they were filming a scene he wasn't in or my eyes were just being annoying. Either way, it took them a while to finish the shoot and when they did, everybody started to leave. The crew packed up their stuff and it was pretty clear they were done for the day.
That's when Mr Cumberbatch himself came out. He was wearing a huge winter coat with a large hood to cover most of his costume and make-up. He realised we were standing there and waved at us for a bit, before turning around and disappearing behind a truck. Some of the girls decided to follow him. Nobody stopped them so slowly but surely our group kind of awkwardly followed them, and there he was - behind the truck, talking to the first couple of girls.
He saw I was holding a big obnoxious camera and immediately asked me to not take any pictures - HE LOOKED RIGHT AT ME AND ASKED ME TO ‘PLEASE DON’T TAKE ANY PICTURES’. He told us he was working and that he was in character so he couldn’t take pictures with us, and that he didn’t have time to talk to us or do autographs. He looked both occupied and apologetic. He had to go so he waved at us again and went around the corner.
I still can't really believe I actually saw Benedict Cumberbatch in real life. It was a very surreal experience, but it totally made my day.
Another thing I can't believe is that I'm gonna be home in a couple of days. I'm going on another day tour tomorrow, to see geysers and geothermally active areas and a huge national park, but after tomorrow I haven't really got anything planned except getting ready for the final flight of this trip. I don't really want to think about packing my bags though, as that is going to be quite a challenge.
