We both got up around 07:00.  Justin quickly got ready and left.  He drove about an hour northeast, on a slightly different route than we had taken yesterday coming to Reykjavik from Húsafell.  Instead of taking that tunnel and staying on the Ring Road, he turned onto Road 47 and went inland, with a fjord inlet on his left.  He went past where we’d be later today, and maybe 10-15 minutes after that he turned off onto a short gravel road that went to the parking lot for Glymur waterfall.

It was perfect hiking weather, about 16 degrees with light clouds and no wind.  He was only the second car in the parking lot, but two other cars showed up right after he arrived.  He played a bit of leapfrog with two French women and a family from Eastern Europe, who were the people in those two vehicles.  About 1/3 of the way up to the top, there was a river crossing, but there was a rope and a log to walk on, and he didn’t have any issues.  As he continued ascending, the waterfall revealed itself.  The only way to see the waterfall was by hiking or from a helicopter.  On that note, three times during the hike helicopters went by.

Glymur is the second tallest waterfall in Iceland.  It is a little taller than Háifoss, which we saw when we went into The Highlands.  The only taller waterfall is within some of the melting glaciers, and not really accessible (certainly not safely).  From the handful of viewpoints available to see the waterfall, there were two or three main streams that went almost straight down into a narrow ravine, and then the river just continued normally into the fjord that Justin had been driving by earlier.  

At the very top, there was an option to turn around and go back the same way, or to cross the river and go down a different way.  We’d read this yesterday, so Justin packed his hiking sandals (which we’d neglected to use at Landmannalaugar).  When he got to the river crossing, he took off his shoes and socks, put all the cameras, his phone, and the car keys in the waterproof backpack, and then crossed without incident.  One guy saw all of this, and apparently he didn’t have any hiking sandals and also didn’t want to go barefoot, so he just turned around.

Once across the river, it was a quick and easy (and pretty boring) 45 minutes back down to the car.  It was just under 2.5 hours total, including the photo stops and the costume changes.  As he was leaving, he saw the guy who turned around at the second river crossing, so apparently the way Justin came back was in fact quicker and easier.  He drove back the way he came, and got back to the hotel at 12:30.

While Justin was out on his hike, Crystal walked around downtown again, did puzzles, made tea and espresso in the room, and got ready slowly.  She went out and walked over to the church, stopping in several of the shops in the area.  She thought about going to the whale museum, but eventually decided against it.  She also did some reconnaissance for lunch, finding two possibilities for us.  When Justin got back, she told him the two options, and one had bottomless drinks, so he picked that one.  

Crystal took Justin over to the church (which he still hadn’t seen, two weeks into a trip to Iceland), and then we walked down the street with the rainbow pavement on the way to lunch at Duck & Rose.  Inside, we grabbed a table and checked out the menu.  Crystal ordered eggs Benedict with salmon and spinach, and Justin ordered duck confit and waffle.  We both got the bottomless drinks, where we could order among prosecco, mimosa, Moscow Mule, and a couple other things.  Justin ordered a mule, and Crystal prosecco.

While we were enjoying ourselves, Karen at the table next to us was stewing, literally asking to speak to the manager of the hotel she was on the phone with.  Best as we can tell, she was unhappy that her room wasn’t ready when she had arrived this morning, and didn’t want to be charged to use a day room.  We wanted to tell her that she could have just paid for a room for the night before and used that, but we didn’t want to engage.  Her issue is by no means an uncommon one.  Almost all the flights from the US are red-eyes that arrive in the early morning in Reykjavik.  There’s no way the hotel is going to have many, let alone all, of their rooms ready for guests showing up before noon, or probably before 15:00.

Anyway, she eventually left, we continued enjoying our food and beverages, and eventually we struck up a conversation with two Americans from Jacksonville.  We told them where to find the puffins in Borgarfjarðarhöfn, and we hoped they’d have as much luck there as we did.  A Kiwi lady who overheard our conversation, and heard that we’d visited the Westfjords, came over and told us about bicycling in the Westfjords.  We listened intently, and after she was out of earshot we told each other “there’s no way we’re doing that.”  Eventually our pancakes with berries came out, and after 2 hours (the time limit for the bottomless drinks) we called it a meal.  Booze in Iceland costs a ton, and we’d been paying through the nose for two weeks.  Today we got our revenge.  Sorry Duck & Rose.

We walked around a bit more, and stopped in Dillon Whiskey Bar for one drink.  They had a Happy Whiskey (of the day), and it was Four Roses, which is actually a Bourbon, but whatever, it was way cheaper and we like Four Roses.  There was a group of Americans to our right, and they kept asking for 2 for 1 specials - the bartender had to tell them several times that it was literally not legal in Iceland.  We went back to the room briefly to grab our swim trunks and a couple other things, and then we walked a couple blocks to a bus stop.  The bus took us a couple minutes to a larger bus station, where there was a board showing the schedule for buses out to several of the larger hot springs.

We were on a bus with 14 other people, and our driver was named Carlos.  He was from Argentina, and had a good sense of humor.  He was playing some good salsa music on the stereo, and we chatted a bit with him in Spanish.  The scenery didn’t resemble this morning, even though it was literally the same drive, it was very gray and intermittently misting or raining.  The hot springs had maybe 7 different pools, plus a cold plunge in the fjord that Justin had driven past this morning.  Once we were out of the changing rooms and in one of the pools, we chatted a bit with a couple from Washington state who had been sitting in front of us on the bus.  At different times, we each worked up the courage to do the cold plunge - it wasn’t so bad.

We were done around 20:00, and we came in.  By the time we were cleaned up and back in the bar/restaurant area, the restaurant had just closed.  Fortunately there was one extra serving of soup, so they just gave that to us, and we ordered some drinks.  We noted that the very first thing and the very last thing we did on this trip was go in the Arctic waters.  We got back in the van with Carlos at 21:00.  We could hear the wind through the windows, and feel the bus being moved around, so we were glad we weren’t driving.  We got back at 22:00, which is basically when 95% of the restaurants close (or at least have their kitchen close).  But that left 5%, and we grabbed some döner and some fries at Mandi.  We then walked the couple blocks back to the hotel and immediately crashed.