Europe Trip 10.10 - 10.13

Hello from Iceland! Anton and I have had a very busy past 3 days! We flew out of Seattle at 9am Oct. 10th and landed in Iceland (after a 2 hour stop in New York and a total of about 14 hours of travel time) at about 1am our time, or 7am Iceland time. Somehow we managed to get an hour of sleep in on the flight, which wasn´t as uncomfortable as I had expected. Our combined flight time was only 8 hours, so not too unbearable.

We arrived in Iceland as the sun was rising and our excitement prohibited us from falling asleep. As soon as we arrived we took a very expensive taxi ride into downtown Reykjavik (about a 45 minute ride from the international airport which ended up costing $158, or 9500 Iceland Kronur) only to find that Guesthouse 101, where we intended on staying, was completely booked. Luckily, the guesthouse was only one floor of a renovated office building that houses, along with a couple dentistry practices and a textile shop, a nice hotel right above it on the 4th floor. We booked a room there, where we dropped off our things and stayed for the first night. It cost $160 for the night, and was well worth it. The tiny room was furnished like an Ikea showroom, with cheap wood furniture and zebra print bedding. But the bathroom was nice, even though all the water smells like old eggs here, due to the fact that it all draws from natural hot springs.

The first day we spent here, we walked up and down the main road in town, Laugavegur and looked at the shops. Nothing here opens before around 10 or 11am on weekdays though, so there wasn´t much to see. Eventually we came across a large pond which was full of an assortment of waterfowl, including very some hungry swans, which we fed some leftover bread. Then we kept walking and found an old, overgrown cemetary nearby with gravestones dating back to the early 1800s. This was exciting for us, becuase the place looked and felt haunted, especially when a couple of cats suddenly appeared around a corner and scared me. After that we kept walking around and found that there is a lot of awesome graffiti all over the place here. Later in the day we made our way over to the Iceland National Museum where we got to peruse ancient Norse artifacts like jewelry, tools, clothes, scripture, pottery and even skeletons from a man, a horse and a baby! We then tried on some pretty awesome Viking costumes in the children´s hands-on part of the museum.

We tried to stay awake all day, in order to get onto a good sleeping schedule, but only lasted until about 6pm, then slept a good 12 hours, which was nice (we were running on 3 days with 2 hours of sleep.) After waking up and getting some bread from the ONLY place in town open before 10am on a weekday (a tiny grocery store) we hung around our tiny room until 11am when the man from Guesthouse 101 downstairs showed up and we were able to finally get a room there. The room we have now is a little disapointing (small, white, sterile with two twin beds and no bathroom) but is a better choice, because it only costs us $100 a night and we´ll end up saving $180 this way... yeah... its a incredibly expensive here... we´ve realized that everything averages to roughly twice the cost of it´s American counterpart. So, we´ve been eating in and taking advantage of free entertainment as much as possible!

Yesterday we made a long walk over to the Saga Museum (a.k.a. the Viking Museum) where we listened to headsets and walked through a maze of wax figurines of historical Icelandic figures- Viking men and women who settled Iceland. It was pretty entertaining, and the view from the museum (a.k.a. water plant a.k.a. restaurant) was nice. Then we walked down to the beach, which was very pretty, rocky, windy and cold, but there was some awesome caves by the water and we found another cemetery nearby. The environment here is a lot like Western Washington, without all the trees. After making it back to our room yesterday, we fell asleep around 4pm and slept until 6:30 this morning.

Today after waking up early again, we read in our room for a few hours while we waited for the rest of the town to wake up. Then we walked over to a gigantic church, where we took an elevator to the top and managed to get some great pictures of the amazing view of the whole city (which I will post later along with all the others.) Then we walked back over to Laugavegur and down to the harbor where we perused a flea market full of overpriced crap (a lot like the Tacoma swap meet, but worse) and got some food at another grocery store. Luckily we stumbled across the Reykjavik City Library and were able to get Internet access (the only other Internet cafe we could find is under restoration...)

So, that's pretty much it for now. I´ll probably write some more once we get over to Norway. We are having a great time here, and though everything is expensive, the city and the land are very beautiful and we are really loving it. Hope all is well at home and I miss you all (well... most of you)!

xo