fh_trips | Lake Hotel Egilsstadir, Iceland

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spring break 2019: iceland

Lake Hotel Egilsstadir, Iceland

If you slept the rest of the way to the hotel after that hike, we don't blame you at all. We rest for the night at a country hotel close to Lake Lagarfljot (Lagarfljót). Supposedly the giant worm, Lagarfljotsormur, resides in the depths of the lake: Iceland’s version of the Loch Ness Monster. Maybe the northern lights will dance for us again tonight? On this tour our search for them never ends!

We're staying at Lake Hotel Egilsstadir, which has charming rooms--modern styled ones for the students, and antique-style for the teachers--and a renowned restaurant, noted for its innovative use of local ingredients. The town itself is mostly other hotels and guesthouses, but you can go for a wander and find a couple of different bistros, and some grocery stores if you need to stock up on bus snacks.

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It's got quite a view.

Enjoy these nice, warm rooms while you still can, kids...

[OOC: Assignments are here. NSFW goes in private journals.]

The restaurant serves all the slow-cooked beef and scallops you might want.

It is a little dark, but who knows: you might find the snake in the lake.

If you're rather less spot-a-monster inclined, but still like lakes.

Much as Sabine was loving this trip, all the driving and hiking did get tiring, and she didn't really feel like going out more tonight. So after checking with Mae, she sent a text to a couple people.

If you want to hang out, you can come to Room 10! We have some stuff here but if you want to eat or drink anything you might want to bring it.

At least she thought it went to a couple people. Blame the tired for why it somehow got sent to all the students.

[Sometimes you need a good old fashioned hotel room party. Open!]

It might not have been anything fancy, but date night was date night. Lexi had a babysitter for a while tonight, which left Clint and Kitty to be able to leave the group and get out for a while.

"Think we can go without checking up constantly this time?" Kitty asked once they'd gotten seats.

Mae was pretty used to spending her days running around, but usually not in the cold. And yeah, the minibuses were getting pretty old. So she was all in for low-key hanging out.

Currently she was sprawled on her bed, enjoying the coziness of the big fluffy comforter while she aired out her feet. She loved her boots, but damn it felt good to just pop them off and fling them across the room at the end of the day.

"So. How much do you wish you could just go to town on all these plain walls?"

"I could definitely make them more interesting," Sabine said, considering it. "Here, I more want to take a bunch of blues and greens and get at the ceiling."

If you didn't go out to the Northern Lights, might as well bring them indoors.

"That'd be cool," Mae said, nodding approvingly. "You could make it look like the inside of that ice cave!"

The ice cave had left quite the impression on Mae.

"Enjoyed that, huh?" Sabine smiled.

So maybe Keyleth wanted to be able to possibly add a giant lake snake to her wild shaping repertoire in the future. Or maybe she just wanted to see if she could spot a giant lake snake! You don't know.

It was probably both.

Anyway, that was where she'd be spending most of her evening, because darkvision was awesome.

Mae nodded. "Felt like I was in one of my grandpa's old stories. I bet they have the best Longest Night parties out there."

"Is that just a party for the longest night of the year?" she guessed.

Perhaps a slightly younger, more impulsive Sidon might have done something very stupid that night. As a matter of fact, this very version of Sidon actually had cobbled together a bit of a wild scheme regarding this mysterious creature within the depths; this very version of Sidon may have actually been ready to call up someone to help him enact that scheme. But the bracing cold cutting far too easily through his layers and the reminder that the water would be significantly colder and the fact that it was getting dark and he was not so blessed with things like darkvision and he was getting a little bit better about acknowledging that some ideas were worth reconsidering before going for them all with gusto and no reservations.

Jumping in the lake to seek out a giant lake serpent that might not even exist in the darkening evening was a bad idea, Sidon. But the fact that he was only going to the lake to try and spot it from the shore was an excellent sign of growth and restraint.

Even if he probably was just making it worse for himself. After all, if anyone could find the creature, it would be him, right?

He also wondered if he would win if he were to fight it. It really was a pity the monster wasn't terrorizing the town, because then he'd have no choice...!

But it was reassuring that, apparently, he wasn't the only one drawn in by the legend, and he nodded when he say Keyleth there, offering a smile. "Did you venture out this way with hopes to catch sight of the great serpent of the depths as well?"

"Oh! Yeah, I did," Keyleth said, flashing a quick smile and waving at him. "I couldn't not, when I heard about it, you know?"

Which was not to say that she hadn't also been entertaining notions of turning into a giant fish of some sort and diving into the lake to look for it herself. It was just that gills were another thing she was still trying to figure out.

"Do you think it's real? Stories like that don't come from nothing."

Why wouldn't it be real? Legendary creatures usually were, weren't they?

"Yes, precisely," said Sidon, brightly, with the sort of entusiasm that almost pushed all that nice common sense he'd managed to put together right into the water to follow up his statement with a declaration that he would prove it, too!

...almost. But, oh, wouldn't that be spectacularly dramatic?

"I haven't a doubt in my mind that it's real, though I may be willing to allow that this does not necessarily mean its reality extends to the current time. If the creature is down there now, then, I must admit, he is a very clever and patient beast to keep his presence relatively unknown. Or perhaps he is like some great slumbering creature that only need emerge every so often, and perhaps there are some lucky people who witness its awakening before it slinks back into its long sleep. But it could also be just a lingering figment of the past, something that had been here long, long ago, and though he himself does not remain, his spirit, his presence, his legend still does. Back in my homeworld, some claim that there are spirits of dragons that may still be seen in the skies overhead, though there have been no dragons in Hyrule for hundreds of years."

"It's not just a party," Mae said. It was basically her world's version of Christmas. "You don't have any big, like, 'yay, we're all surviving' holidays where you're from?"

"No," Sabine blinked. Mandalorians probably didn't need that. "That's what that is?"

Mae shrugged. "Sure. It's the longest, darkest night of the whole year, and when it's over, the sun still comes up. There's a whole church-y side about God saving the people or whatever, but mostly it's just 'hurray for being alive'."

"That doesn't sound so bad," Sabine considered. "Does it have something to do with caves normally?"

Far be it from Astrid to turn down an invitation text from Sabine, so there she was, knocking on the door of room 10, wondering if she should have brought something and trying to push the fact that she had so much work she wanted to do still out of her brain. She'd been stuck on all that for the whole trip so far; even her brain was agreeing that she should take a nice break tonight.

"With winter," Mae said. "Grandpa used to tell this story about an astronomer who set out on Longest Night to go find her dead wife's spirit at the Frozen Lake. I could totally see her, hunting for the Forest God in that cave. . . ."

Sabine might have called for whoever to come in, but she also didn't want to risk it being a teacher checking up or whatever. So she got up to get the door and let her in. "Welcome to our room, which is probably exactly like your room."

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Lake Hotel Egilsstadir, Iceland

HOTEL

Rooms

Restaurant

Lagarfljotsormur spotting

Exploring Lake Lagarfljot

OOC

Room 10

Salt Cafe and Bistro

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