Once again, I had an early morning excursion, this time to the Blue Lagoon. Keith left shortly after me on the Reykjavik Highlights tour, while the boys wandered around town.

The Blue Lagoon is a large, very clean facility, somewhat in the middle of nowhere, or so it seemed. In the lagoon, I was able to do a silica mud mask. It wasn’t as warm as the one yesterday, and it was also much colder outside with cloud cover. Disney brought four motor coaches here (240 guests), and there was another bus and a few cars when we arrived. The trip was about 45 minutes from the port. We had about 1.5 hours here too. The water is supposed to have healing powers with many minerals in the water. The water is a milky blue color, and you cannot see anything in the water. I enjoyed the lagoon but preferred the temperature and lack of crowds at the secret lagoon yesterday more. We were asked to remove jewelry as the minerals could damage it. They also suggested you put conditioner in your hair before going in too, as the water can make your hair very dry. Most of us just tried to keep it from getting in the water. They are building a new luxury hotel and expanding the size of the lagoon. If I were guessing, I would say there were close to 500 people here by 10:00 a.m. As we left at 10:15 the buses and cars were filling the parking lot – if you go, go early! I understand many people book layovers in Iceland when flying to Europe. They do offer day tours here directly from the airport. It was cold today, but tolerable when getting in and out of the building. When we arrived back to the ship, crew members were in the lobby handing out hot chocolate – a very nice touch.

Reykjavik is one of the largest cities in Iceland and the Highlights tour covered much of the area via bus.  One of the stops was at the home where Gorbachev and Reagan met to discuss the fall of the Berlin wall.  A portion of the wall is on site to commemorate the contribution of Iceland to this historic event.

The next stop was at a Lutheran Church.  In front was a statue of Leif Erikson sent by America to Iceland.

One of the stops was at a museum with a recreation of the helmet and armor of a Viking.  It weighs 12 kg (26.4 pounds).

Also at the museum was a statue uncovered in Iceland that may represent Thor (or Jesus).

Iceland has an abundance of geothermal energy and several water towers hold hot water for the city.  On top of these towers, they have built an observation platform providing commanding views of the city.

The final stop was at an outdoor museum holding many of the original structures from early days in Iceland.  These included a church and original homestead.

We were scheduled to leave port at 11:45 a.m. today, however, tours were still arriving back. The gangway was full with people getting back on the ship. We went down to Lumiere’s for lunch and found a long line. Our head server told us they typically serve 200-300 there for lunch – today may have been their biggest day ever at 600+.  They were filling every seat (putting together people who didn’t come in together) to try to accommodate everyone.

This afternoon, I did laundry, played trivia, and went to the evening adult shows with the boys. We saw Finding Dory in the Walt Disney Theater tonight too (a perk of Disney owning movies!). Tonight was another time change, moving forward one hour. Tomorrow we stop at our last port in Iceland, Akureyri.