On days like today, it's easy to recognize why I live where I do. I've been off work for a couple of days because of a really nasty cold and the early March weather has cooperated with the nasty temperament emanating from the runny nose, sneezing, and coughing. It has been gray as my mood. Today both the fever and weather broke. It turned sunny and the temperature rose to 60 degrees. The water in the lake is a lovely color of blue. The lakefront path is full of runners, bikers, walkers, and those just sitting around soaking it all up. Now, as I look at the yellowing rays of late afternoon sunlight on Navy Pier I realize why it is that people work their entire lives to get to a place like this.
You can't live every moment here though. It wouldn't resonate the same with you. It would begin to take on the aspect of the ordinary. You have to travel and see things, some of them pretty spectacular, so that you can come home again and really appreciate what you have. Know what I mean? Been away on a vacation, a very nice vacation, for a couple of weeks, but you've been sleeping in hotel rooms and eating restaurant meals for so long that when you get home and open that door you just breathe an audible Aaahhhh. Your own shower. Your own bed. Meals from your very own kitchen. And in my case, my very own views from the 14th floor.
The travel bug bit me but good a long time ago, and I have been a lot of places, some of them pretty nice, some not so nice. Every one of those experiences, though, are a part of who I am. They all have value, even the ratty little motels in the middle of nowhere that smell musty and bring to mind Norman Bates. Of the good places, I sometimes wonder which were really the best, which were my very favorite, and it's hard to pick them. Sometimes you try going back to the favorites and they aren't so nice anymore. You wonder why they appealed to you at the time. Good travel experiences sometimes lie at the intersection of place and time. Change the time, but go to the same place, and it ain't the same.
In the same place, different time category lies a hotel on the Left Bank in Paris. In 1988 Babs and I arrived in Paris without a hotel reservation and stumbled into a lovely little hotel with an elevator barely big enough to hold the two of us and our suitcase, The Hotel Claude-Bernard on Rue Des Ecoles. The clerk clucked at us when we told him we had no reservation, but found a room for us nevertheless. Two single beds were pulled together for us and made up as one double bed. The bathroom was almost bigger than the room. The windows looked out over the street and we had a birds eye view of a candlelight march of students from the Sorbonne. It was lovely really. Went back a few years later after we had become accustomed to travel and nicer things and the hotel seemed, how shall I say, ummm, a little on the seedy side.
Without going back to try to relive them, I do have a couple of favorites, however. One Christmas when we were on our way to Belgium for a visit, we got a great deal on airfare by flying Icelandic Airways. For the special fare, though, we had to stop over in Reykjavik for a couple of days. What can I say? The sun came up at about 10-10:30 in the morning and went down about 1:30-2 in the afternoon. Walking around at night (Night was most of the day as well.) we stumbled upon a small lake in the middle of town. Walking around the perimeter, we looked up and saw the oddest green lights that looked like something out of a laser show at a rock concert. I actually looked around for the source before realizing that I was looking at the Northern Lights up close and personal, so up close that they were directly over my head, not somewhere in the distant North. Kind of an Oh my god, factor there.
On that very same trip we signed on to take a day trip to the top of a glacier, an adventure quest. We headed off on our trip in a 4 wheel drive Nissan something or other with two other paying customers and a driver and navigator. We headed down a 2 lane blacktop through the moonscape that is rural Iceland. At some point we left the blacktop and headed down a gravel road. Then our driver pulled over at a gate leading into a field covered in snow and boulders. The navigator got out and opened the gate, and the driver got out and let some of the air out of the tires. It seems that with less air in the tires, you get more surface area and better traction. Off we headed over the snow and boulders to the foot of an immense ice and snow covered mountain. Duh! The glacier. Our guides stopped and got out again. This time they let out all of the air in the tires. Hike up a glacier? Whatever for? We drove up that sucker.
When we got to the top of the glacier we stopped. Time to get out and run around a bit. I have no idea how deep the snow we were walking on was, but the top layer we were walking on was made up of crunchy crystals that reminded me of quartz crystals I had found in creeks when hiking in Arkansas. We found ourselves looking over the edge of a big cone that was covered in ice, the top of a dormant volcano. The guides explained that the ice layer over the cone was about a mile thick. Looking to our north we could see the Arctic Ocean. Looking to our west we could see the North Atlantic. I was just hoping that frigging volcano didn't decide to get undormant all of a sudden.
When it came time to go back down again the driver didn't go back the way he came. He relied on his GPS to get us down another way and once or twice took a wrong turn, at which point he had to back up and turn right or left to avoid going off a cliff. All the while he was regaling us with the story of how his best friend had held his wedding on the top of this glacier. The guests arrived on Snowmobiles. A hearty outdoorsy wedding for a hearty outdoorsy group of native Icelanders. Anyway, we arrived at the bottom and got on a small dirt track through a farmer's fields.
At one point we crossed a small stream that was frozen over. We stopped and everyone got out. I believe it was at this point that the driver used an air compressor to refill the tires on the vehicle. Because there are volcanoes in Iceland, all the water is a little bit tainted with sulfur. Taking a bath or a shower is smelly. Because of the sulfur content in the water, when it freezes it sometimes forms what our guide called snow roses. Down on the surface of the ice on the little stream were the most exquisite little frozen formations that looked, for all the world, like little roses. Never seen anything like it before or since. The rest of the trip back to the hotel was pretty innocuous, and completed in the dark while driving along the edge of a fjord. The stay in Brussels with side trips to Waterloo, Brugge, and Antwerp was nice, but when we got home again, it was Iceland that really stuck out in our minds.
I hope you've enjoyed my little travelogue, but I'm just getting wound up. Tomorrow? Morocco and the Sahara Desert. If you're really nice, maybe the day after I'll get into the sea kayaking trip in Palau that led to Jellyfish Lake, and snorkeling with giant clams, and lion fish, and well let's just see where this thread takes us, shall we? Meanwhile, Reykjavik in winter is etched on my brain. Someday maybe I'll return at the solstice to see what it's like when the sun doesn't go down.
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