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Sunday 3rd August

Sunday 3rd August

Breakfast at Hotel Valholl was a disappointment, featuring the first truly bad, weak coffee I had yet been served in Iceland. There was no toaster, there was only a measly supply of boring bread and a miserable selection of other breakfast foodstuffs. It seemed as if providing breakfast for their guests was a chore rather than there for our pleasure and enjoyment as it had seemed at many other places.

We settled up (twin room £70 including breakfast) and headed off back to Reykjavik. It was raining quite heavily so, disinclined to do anything active or touristy, we decided to make a second trip to the Blue Lagoon before heading back to Reykjavik for our penultimate night. The journey to the Blue Lagoon (situated south east of Reykjavik) took a couple of hours, and by the time we arrived the wet weather had subsided in favour of grey skies and blustery showers. Despite this, the Lagoon was as welcoming as it had been a week earlier, although on our second visit the appeal of spending a longer time in the water declined and after about an hour we had had enough. By this stage we also felt that it was about time to go home we had reached "critical mass" having travelled about 2,000 kilometres around Iceland and seen so much it was time to get back to more familiar surroundings. We loved Iceland but now on the eleventh day we were beginning to miss the warmth and security of home, cooking for ourselves and the normal routine of life with all the little things one takes for granted until they are missing.

I was also tired having not slept very well at Hotel Valholl, such was my anger and distaste at the business of the suspected watered-down wine. We arrived at Hotel Island where we were to spend our last two nights in Iceland. Hotel Island is a pleasant, well-run large hotel and we were fortunate at this time to be given a vastly better room than before. It was huge, the first hotel room in Iceland we had encountered with a bath in it (most have just a shower cubicle). Feeling exhausted, we collapsed on the bed, watched cartoon network and ate chocolate bars for a while before showering briefly and ordering a cab into town for dinner. We decided to eat again at the Laekjarbrekka Restaurant as we had been so impressed at the quality of the food on our first visit.

This time I fortunately made a good choice for my first course which consisted of lobster tails served with scallops hidden in little mounds of flaky pastry in a creamy, lightly herby, salty sauce. The light flame barbecuing of the scallops and lobster tails had sealed the flavour in just right, resulting in a taste unlike anything I had ever tried before. This was perfection. The sauce, and the balance of the flavours, was exquisite: I ensured that it all got mopped up with quantities of stodgy bread, as it was so good. For my main course I had the broiled mountain lamb which had so impressed me before. They excelled themselves again, reproducing the dish only this time it seemed to have got even better! The serving style of the dish had changed slightly but the flavour was as exquisite as before. The only slight disappointment was an inkling that they may have used garlic powder in one of the dishes, as this always produces a distinctive aftertaste with me, which real garlic does not. The decor at Laekjarbrekka is delightful and worth a visit for the relaxing ambience alone, if you make sure you get a seat away from smoky Germans. (Iceland seems full of constantly smoking Germans - I'm sure a logical explanation will one day surface).

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