laugardagur, 14 júlí 2007

We arrived at 07.00 and cleared customs very quickly. KEF aka the Leifur Eiriksson International Airport in Keflavík – is about an hour west of Reykjavík. After just a bit of orienting myself, I bought a one-way ticket to Reykjavík for 1,200 Icelandic kroner (Isk) with a credit card (one buys everything with plastic in Iceland) on the FlyBus. We drove past The Egg, a stainless sculpture just outside the terminal, past the Rainbow, a stained-glass sculpture in the parking lot, and past some indigo-hued clumps of lupines, and then headed across the Reykjanes peninsula.

This is where it hits you that you’re not in whatever your country of origin is anymore. Lava fields surround you and if you look south, you see a huge plume of steam coming from the area of the Blue Lagoon, a geothermal spa. And there are no trees, a bit shocking (although not unexpected) to someone from the Pacific Northwest, where tall trees rule. Just mountains, moss and lichen-covered lava, and the bay.

On arriving at the BSÍ, Reykjavík’s central bus station, I transferred to a taxi for a very pleasant and informative short ride to the Aurora Guesthouse, Freyjugata 24. What I learned on that leg of the trip was that you don’t tip anybody in Iceland. This was somewhat of a relief to me in a purely economic sense; not only is Iceland a fairly expensive place to travel, but the exchange rate of Icelandic kroner (Isk) doesn’t make Americans want to run out and buy a beer at the local tavern (especially since one costs anywhere from $10 - $16 a beer in a restaurant/bar). It was also a relief to my brain not to have to figure out any percentages after very little sleep and on New Place Overload!

I met Sigurður who not only allowed me to leave my luggage there while I wandered around the city until my room was ready, but later during our stay at the guesthouse tolerated and even responded to my attempts at Íslensku. My first stop was to pay homage to the statue of Leifur Eiriksson in front of Hallgrímskirkja, the amazing Lutheran church at the top of Skólavörðustigur. (Seattle has a very large statue of Leifur that was particularly difficult to move recently during a local renovation, so I had to see this one. Yes, there is a strong resemblance between the two!)

Hardly anyone was out and in fact I had to dodge the sidewalk-sized street sweeper that was quickly scrubbing the already-clean streets and sidewalks!

The local Kaffitár café was recommended to me and I settled in for my first skyr with lingonberries and a bottle of local water – both were exceptional. Here was my first experience with prams with babies in them being left outside while the parent goes inside for either an in-house meal or a to go snack (the parents are always within eyesight of the pram, though). The resident of this certain pram was about 18 months old and decided that he had to play peekaboo with me, and his 4 year old brother happily helped him out by covering him with a blanket and/or pulling thecover of the pram down over his younger sibling. We had a great time, lots of grins and giggles.

Now down the hill and towards the west I walked, stopping briefly at the Tourist Information Centre where it took me 30 minutes to send a short email b/c the keys kept sticking – strings of sssssssssssssssssssssssssss, @@@@@@@@@@, or wwwwwwwwwwww , really random. Since I didn’t want to give the recipients the impression that I was already drunk on Brennivín at 10.30 (or drunk on Brennivín at any time), it took awhile to clean up the email and send it off.

By this time, Tjörnin (The Pond) was beckoning with its sparkly water and many types of waterfowl, including 3 beautiful swans. An older gentleman was feeding the birds and we started up a conversation. Well, as much a conversation as someone who spoke little English and someone who’d been listening to Icelandic CDs for 2 months could muster, but we had a great little chat! In fact, I found that almost everyone under the age of 2 and over the age of 70 were quite willing to have a (limited but fun) conversation in Icelandic with me!

Back to the guesthouse to take a little nap and then off for more exploring of this very neat city.

Part Two

Ah, the world made a lot more sense after I woke up! Another language being spoken, buildings and houses with brightly-colored corrugated steel sides and roofs, narrow streets, statues of hexagonal basalt used as traffic medians – not a problem! Another walk found me downtown where 2 large vertical pipes expel steam to show how Reykjavík is heated, and this across from the Texas Hamborgerar joint.

The "Emmess Ís" (the nurse in me finds that name very amusing) ice cream stand where your ice cream cone can be dipped in burgundy, teal, green, yellow, orange, fuschia, or red candy coverings. Beautiful wool sweaters of various intricate Nordic designs in most store windows, cars maneuvering down one-way streets and through construction that was not easy to figure out, and many families out enjoying the clear blue skies and 65 degrees or so. Several locals taking pictures of a large motorcycle with the personalized plate “Max”, its leather-clad owner sitting on a nearby park bench, nonchalantly eating a teal-colored ice cream cone. The sun hadn’t seemed to have moved since I’d arrived, something that I never got used to the entire trip, and this added a touch of surrealism to the setting for me.

Back to the guesthouse where I met Simon, Sue and Andy, and Penny and Richard – they were also going on the tour. We discussed various sights we’d seen, talked about restaurants that looked good (and that we had 10% off coupons for), and decided to go out for dinner at Vegemot. I think we all had chicken in a lobster sauce and something else absolutely delicious, but we chalked it up to fortification for the upcoming 2 weeks of hiking and camping.

A short walk around downtown and then to sleep...as easily as I could for being in a place that was not going to get dark for 2 weeks!