Day 1: Monday, August 14, 2006

We left Boston around 9:30pm on Sunday night, and tried to go to sleep. After napping on and off uncomfortably for 4 and a half hours, we opened our eyes and it was daylight!

We arrived at Keflavík airport at about 6:30 in the morning, local time. From there we took a bus to Reykjavík and got to Guesthouse Sunna too early to check in, of course. We sat, exhausted, for an hour checking our email until the room was ready.

One thing we never did figure out about Iceland was why all the beds in all the hotels were twin beds, pushed together. It certainly obviates any disputes about who's on whose side, but on a honeymoon it also has rather obvious disadvantages.

Accomadation in Iceland is ether hotels, guesthouses (small, personal hotels, often with shared bathrooms unless you request otherwise) and hostels. This guesthouse was comfortable. It was also economical: just about everything in it was from Ikea.

After getting settled we broke the cardinal rule of fighting jet lag, and took a brief nap. As we woke up we decided to go out and find some food, so we wouldn't fall asleep again. Below is Liz next to some of the typical scenery of Reykjavík.

All around the city, flower pots functioned as ashtrays.

Our first meal was at Kebabhúsið which is a "cheap" fish and chips place. We got two meals (comes with fries and soda, like the U.S.) and paid a little over Isk. 2,000, which comes out to somewhere near $30. Ouch!

The price of lunch prompted us to look for a grocery store, and Bónus was the first one we saw (it's a chain all over Iceland). Sadly, there was nothing in there that was much more reasonably priced than restaurant food, and that could easily be turned into a meal without a full kitchen and lots of time.

Here's the view looking up the street toward the biggest building in Reykjavík, which was directly across the street from our guesthouse.

Some street art.

For much of afternoon, despite my pleading, Liz slept. I took some of the time to study Icelandic pronounciation and learn some basic phrases. I felt like an idiot having no idea how to say some of the letters! If you want to know how to pronounce things as you look at the photos, I made a pronunciation guide that opens in a new window.

We were finally up and going again, for a late dinner, at about 8:30pm, despite what the clock says in the photo (that face of it was stopped). Notice the pretty rainbow, and how bright it is outside.

(Side note: I think it's great that Europe uses 24-hour time on all digital clocks, because it makes more sense. But they don't go all the way; people still say "eight thirty" when the clocks read 20:30. While I'm on the subject of notations, though... the metric system, Celcius temperature scale, and writing the date "14/08/2006" (as opposed to "08/14/2006") make MUCH more sense than the U.S. notations. At least Americans do one thing more logically than Europeans, though: we put our commas and decimal points in the more sensible places in our numbers!)

Liz loved this poster. Can you blame her?

Looking down a street out toward the bay.

For dinner we went to one of Reykjavík's vegetarian restaurants. I knew that once we left the city, I wasn't likely to get a vegetarian meal for the rest of the trip, so I was determined to enjoy it while I could. Proclaimed in an ad on the free city map as "one of the best vegetarian restaurants in the world", Ánæstu Grösum is perhaps among the least-likely vegetarian restaurants in the world, but I don't know about best. That is, unless the elation at finding a complete vegetarian meal in Iceland factors into the descision. That said, it was actually very tasty. It was cafeteria style, so Liz and I shared a meal that was 5 scoops of assorted dishes, all piled onto one plate. The lasagna ended up right on top of the curry, but individually they were delicious.

While we were sitting and eating, I noticed this scene out the window. Note that the photo was taken at 9:40pm.

One last side note: Iceland is on Greenwich Mean Time, the same as England, despite being located far enough west for most of it to be at least one timezone earlier. So it was light outside quite late into the night because in addition to being near the Arctic Circle, Iceland is effectively on daylight savings time all year round.