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I'm here! And the whole fucking LJ interface is in Icelandic, so I can't read a thing.

Anyway, more later. I'm beat.

reykjavik smart car!

After getting to JFK we ate crappy airport food and piled onto Iceland Air's brand-spankin'-new 757 jet. Three of the seven people who planned to come with us didn't show up, so there were no middle muffin seats taken. I moved to the aisle seat next to Brett, and Micheal and Tim snoozed against the bulkhead on the window seats. I slept most of the way, waking briefly to have a mushy airline meal, and awoke 30 minutes before the plane was to land in Keflavik.

Flying into Iceland was interesting. Ocean... ocean... ocean... coastline... nothing... nothing... nothing. The landscape here is like nothing I have ever seen: mostly piles of rocks covered with lichen and surrounded by scrubby underbrush. We did see a couple of geysers in the distance, but mostly... nada.

Keflavik airport

Micheal and Brett were in the duty-free shop buying booze before we even left the airport. After struggling with the ATMs at the airport (nobody understood what we meant when we said "bank machine") we hopped a bus to Reykjavik, then a cab to the apartment. The bus ride from Keflavik to Reykjavik is 45 minutes of nothin'. It was interesting, though, and gave me a chance to read about all of the scheduled tours we can do.

Apartment: two thumbs up!! It's nicer than I expected, and the guys were super sweet and agreed to let me have my own room. Reykjavik itself is fantastically cute, and exactly what you'd expect it to be: quaint in the sort of Northern European way, with narrow cobbled streets and beautiful older buildings. I've yet to see any skyscrapers; I haven't seen any buildings with a large footprint or taller than four stories.

The view from the waterfront is... um, words fail me. I can't wait to get out and explore it. After I finish this entry (and my capp) I'm going to buy groceries, drop my laptop and the groceries off at the apartment where the boys are sleeping, and head out to see about renting a mountain bike for the week.

Pictures later, but believe me, they aren't going to capture even 10% of how beautiful this place is.

Sitting in the cafe again. I love this place, even though I just had to spend $15 on a cappuccino and a slice of carrot cake.

3:30pm: Shopping excursion to Bonus (the local market) completed. $120 later I have pie crust and Tom Collins mix.

5:12pm: Finished editing the first block of p1x0rs. Coming soon to a gallery near you.

5:37pm: The owner of the building just stopped by to welcome us and to give us her mobile phone number. She's far more cheerful than even I am. Poor Tim was awakened from a deep slumber on the couch to her knocking. I answered the door and in she bounded, almost like Sarah Jessica Parker's character from L.A. Story. Tim was barely coherent, performing admirably under the circumstances, but luckily I am me. Stewardess, I speak Cheerful.

5:50pm: Brett and Micheal are awake. I can hear them. Brett's deep bass voice reverberates through the wall separating our rooms. He's practically a seismic event.

7:46pm: Made and ate a dinner that consisted of $40 of chicken. Holy crap that stuff is expensive. Tired of whatever stupid American television show is on; we're headed to one of the geothermal pools. Tim is holding down the fort.

Water slide OMFG squeeeee!

11:30pm: Brett: "A priest, a rabbi and a minister walk into a bar. The bartender says, 'is this some kind of joke?'"

2:38am: I lied about going to bed. Just got back from rocking out with the guys. Not five minutes after we left the apartment, we met two guys at an ATM who invited us back to their house party when they found out we were from Canada. It was held in an absolutely fantastic loft that was home to a guy who owns a television station here in Iceland. I managed to score a somewhat crappy picture of the loft under the pretense of taking a photo of people. :) The poured concrete floor was painted grey and drizzed, in a Pollock-esque style, with black and white paint. The overall effect was amazing. Got fawned over by several guys, and only one of them was creepy: there are benefits to being the lone girl. Talked to a New Yorker who was on our flight last night and is returning with us on Wednesday. He was sitting two rows in front of us on the plane. How crazy is that? Anyway, after hanging out at this loft for a couple of hours (soundtrack provided by four drunken guys playing foosball for money) we went to a bar with the group of the 15. Had one drink. Micheal observed that he had yet to see a black person in Iceland. I told him that he was one of three non-white people I'd seen. He said he would figure out a way to make this work to his advantage. Had to let them go to the next bar by themselves because I'm totally beat.

We met these guys at an ATM.

Icelandic is a beautiful language. It's very fluid, like they're rolling marbles around on their tongues. Apparently it's descended from the original Viking tongue. I don't know if it's true, but you can definitely see the Viking influence here: the Ys are prevalent, the women are statuesque, and the people down the street have gone berserk and are laying siege to the fishing village across the bay.

Anyway, three miniature items from today:

12:59pm: I'm getting ready to go to the Hyargenfargendyargenyargen (Hafnarhús) art museum. I'll bet that Tim is the only one who will be in any shape to come along. Micheal looks like he was hit by a truck. Brett is still snoozing; he's disposed of the duvet and has wrapped himself in the fitted sheet, sleeping directly on the mattress pad.

2:08pm: Micheal, Tim and I lunched on hot dogs. On the way to the museum I caught some cool sounds and dragged Tim into a basement CD shop so that I could purchase the CD that was playing.

4:07pm: Tim and I are just back from the art museum, which was an absolutely fantastic, sparse, stark space -- exactly what you'd expect the art museum to be here. Brett and Micheal are catching some Z's (and sharing them with all within hearing distance.)

Look! Mongol invaders!

Some of the other exhibits were very conceptual, including a video piece that showed people sitting still on a grassy hill, posing for the camera. After a minute or so, the audio track plays machine gun noises and the actors begin convulsing as if struck by bullets, collapsing to the ground and pretending to be dead. As I said: Video medium by Chuckles the Artistic Clown. Another video work showed a guy dressed up like an old Icelandic fisherman, with long, scraggly, white beard, sobbing on screen. The title of the work was something like "I was here hundreds of years before you." Ha ha! Good times.

One exhibit was a chair and a footstool, and beside it on the wall was a list of times. If you sat in the chair during, say, 12-14 on Wednesday, one particular group of nuns would pray for you. From 14-16 Wednesday, you'd get cheerleading by a different set of nuns. From 11-14 Thursday, the Boogie Woogie Bugle Monks of Company B would harmonize to save your immortal soul. The exhibit didn't mention what happens if you sit in the chair outside of hours; I suppose that either you get no prayer... or you get a prayer by some third-string group like the local dorktastic SCAdian pseudo-Wiccan coven comprised of 19-year-olds who got into it because they read about sex magick on some website.

The museum itself, as I said, was an impressive architectural work. Even the washrooms were cool, with poured concrete, frosted glass and wall-mounted faucets over groovy little white basins. I'm a big fan of sparse, clean design, and the entire place was a very stylish example of that.

After Tim finishes his writing, he and I are going to go to the cafe where I will connect via wireless. We will attempt Internet Connection Sharing to Tim's laptop through a crossover cable. We can both nerd out at the same time. I don't think it's possible to be any dorkier than we are.

I'm not sure what's going on tonight. Apparently Saturday night is also a pub crawl night, but right now it doesn't look like Micheal is in any shape to do anything that involves being ambulatory. Brett and Micheal are still asleep.

We're going to the Internet cafe for dessert, where I will be able to post this entry so that you can see it.

7:07pm: Nobody ever gets to complain about women taking too long to get ready ever again. Trying to get these fellows together to go out is like herding cats.

So last night the one creepy guy insisted that we call him "Sir John." He was wearing a Beastie Boys t-shirt and was so drunk that he was slurring his words. He kept kissing me on the head, and was constantly touching the hair of other women in the bars. When he did that, I'd make eye contact with the women and we'd roll our eyes. Harmless but annoying.

Another guy at the party told us that a Japanese businessman had wanted to buy Iceland. Like, the whole country. They also told us that they were the group of movers and shakers in Iceland, the people who were really making a difference. The important people. Of course, they were drunk, so who knows if they even had the day jobs that they claimed to.

Tim and I are ready to go with Internet connection sharing:

More later. Internet connection sux0r.

Last evening we stopped off at a bar and met Willie, the owner. The guys bought me a beer, the owner gave us a shot, and I bought a round for a total of three drinks. I was definitely tipsy. We came back to the apartment and the guys watched Full Metal Jacket while I napped before going out for the evening. When I woke up the light was hurting my eyes. My head was aching, and I was feeling a little queasy. I managed to get a hangover from THREE FREAKING DRINKS.

I decided I needed to get some air, so the guys went with me to try to find some headache medicine. We walked around for probably 30 minutes without finding a single store that was open. (It was midnight by this time.) Finally we found a store, but they didn't sell headache medicine. The guy tried to send us to a pharmacy. When Brett asked him if he could point us at one that was open, the guy said that there was usually a pharmacy open late. He couldn't tell us which one, though. "It changes," he said. Apparently they have a rotating schedule for pharmacies? Dunno. Anyway, after walking around for about 45 minutes I felt way better. We popped back by the apartment so that Micheal and Brett could do their pre-drinking, then headed out again. I let the guys go off to a bar while I walked around Reykjavik by myself, just checking out the residential streets. I must have walked around for a good hour or more. It was pretty uneventful, except when I got closer to the apartment on the main street I was accosted by a group of drunken Icelandic men who surrounded me, got to their knees, and serenaded me. I have no idea what they were saying but it was both cute and amusing.

It's almost 4am. The guys are still out, as is the sun. My headache has mostly subsided. I'm going to bed.

- - - - Sunday - - - -

Fountain in Reykjavik
town square

Reykjavik.

I'm still in Reykjavik.

Just kidding. My hangover is mostly gone, perhaps due to the fact that I consumed about a gallon of water last night. I am about nine-tenths of my normal chipper self, with only a very mild headache that could even be chalked up to the change in the weather... if the weather here ever changed. Which it doesn't. It's exactly the same at 3am today as it was at 1pm on Friday.

The people in Reykjavik are super friendly when drunk. They can be downright grumpy and dismissive at other times. I've not figured out what causes this grumpiness yet, but I've spotted more packets of it than I even did in NYC. I try to be my normal chipper self: very Southern/Canadian in my frequent and enthusiastic uses of "please," "thank you" and "have a nice day," but they're harshin' my buzz, man.

The water stinks, powerfully, of sulphur. It's unpleasant to be around, like the funk of forty thousand Brett farts. Okay, maybe more like 40% of a Brett fart. But anyway it's stinky. Luckily the smell doesn't seem to linger after you shower in it; otherwise everyone in this country would walk around smelling of rotten eggs, and I'd have to find a place to rent a gas mask.

I've showered and have put a load of laundry in the machine downstairs. As soon as it finishes and I can move it to the dryer, I'm going to head down to the cafe to have a coffee and an as-yet-to-be-determined form of pastry for breakfast. Hopefully the guys will be awake and can meet me around 12:30, when we will go for a Chinese buffet (only $18! Whatta bargain!) and then to the Tourist Bureau where we can book a tour for tomorrow. I'm desperate to get some activity other than walking, so I'm going to rent a bike. Also, Brett and I are going to find a gym where we can pick up heavy things and put them down again. Other than lunch and the gym, I think I'm going to spend today by myself. Being single and living alone has conditioned me to need a certain amount of me time, and that's what I need right now. Then I'll be all chilled and ready to drive around the interior of Iceland for a day. W00t.

11:08am: At the cafe! Posting and uploading pics now.

Who is that hot chick
with the bike?

I was really surprised by the weather. I started out in my cycling jacket and cold-weather pants, but quickly stripped to a t-shirt and bike shorts because it was downright toasty! Luckily I brought my backpack along with me and could stuff the extra clothes into it. I would have looked even more the dork with a pair of rain pants wrapped around my waist. I don't know what it's like in the winter, but the weather here in the summer is insanely freaking beautiful.

I'm currently at one of the tourist bureaus on the public Internet terminal because they have a bike rack outside. I'm killing time because I have to meet the guys in a half hour at the place that's going to set us up on a Super Jeep tour. (It's no ordinary jeep; it's a SUPER JEEP!) I'm going to go buy batteries now because I want to get a picture of myself with the bike, in all of my bike dork splendour, before I have to return my mount (uh huh huh) to the place where I hired it.

Scratch what I said about the grumpy Icelandic folk. The people at the tourist bureaus have been delightfully cheerful.

10:24pm:

Me: "Okay, guys. bedtime for me."
Micheal: "Are you kidding? It isn't even dark yet."

- - - - - - - -

Last night we went for pizza and then for ice cream. The ice cream was soft serve and dipped in the flavouring of our choice. My choice was banana, so I was presented with a yellow stack of chemicals on top of my cone. I'm pretty sure that no actual bananas were harmed in the making of the banana dip.

Tra la, gone walkabout in Iceland. Back this afternoon between 1-5pm Toronto time.

BTW, the most hysterical thing so far: as we were getting ice cream we saw a bunch of bikers gathered nearby. Most of their leathers were black, but one guy had white leathers. OMG. Check him out. It's Tron guy!!!

Brett snoring.

(I'm IMing with Rebecca right now!) The tour was FANTASTIC.

A path at Þingvellir
National Park

The lake in Þingvellir was remarkable. It was completely crystal clear, and from what I recall extremely deep: something like 1300 meters. The tour guide was telling us that she went diving (in a dry suit) and visibility was 150 meters, obstructed, really, only by the landscape itself. Apparently the same craggy rock formations exist under the water as exist above the water. I really wish I had a couple more days because I'd totally do the diving thing in that lake.

Next we saw a geyser. You just have to stand there for 10 minutes in order to watch it bubble up and launch a stream of water 50 feet into the air. Pretty cool.

After that we headed through the weirdest landscape on our way to see the glacier Langjökull, which apparently means "long glacier." It should mean "way the fuck out there glacier" because, let me tell you, it's... um... way the fuck out there.

Outside of Reykjavik, Iceland seems to have exactly one reliably paved road: route 1, which circles the edge of the island. If you're trying to get anywhere else then you might be able to count on a gravel road. If not, then there might be a mud track. And if there's no mud track then, well, you're four-wheeling across big piles of rocks and streams that are runoff from the glaciers. The trip out to the glacier was otherworldly. It seriously looked like Mars; almost completely dead lava fields, with igneous rocks covering the ground. The only living things, really, would be the moss. According to our driver the moss takes 100 years to grow, and in some places it completely covers these old lava fields. The view is indescribable. I can take pictures, but to get a sense of exactly what the landscape looks like, and the sheer vastness of it, you really need to see it in person.

The glacier itself was underwhelming. It was a big block of ice, which hey, let's face it, I can see in Canada. The glacier is melting at a very accelerated rate due to the unseasonably warm temperatures. Our driver was reluctant to take his giant monster bus onto the glacier, but the rest of the people in the vehicle insisted, so he did. We got stuck a couple of times and ended up putting the right front wheel through a fissure that was opening in the glacier. He made us pile out of the vehicle while he turned it around and headed back down, which was fine with me because, y'know, it's just ice.

Gullfoss. Words fail to
describe the beauty

Next we stopped by a volcano crater. Again, *shrug*. Cool, but whatever, I've seen volcano craters before, and this one was nothing special.

Our final stop was an offroading trip to see the geothermal plant. I took pictures for Chris. BTW, I thought the water coming out of my shower reeked badly until I stood under the outlet valve of the well, which was blowing a plume of steam. Sulphur city, baby.

We met a few cool people on the trip, but my favourites were Karen and Julie, two women from Edinburgh. We just finished having dinner with them. They were charming and interesting companions for the evening. Super fun and outgoing. We went for a tasty meal and then adjourned to Cafe Paris for coffees. I left the gang around 10:20pm but will be back at the apartment... well, when I get there. I might go walk around some more. ;)

I'm not sure what's going on tomorrow, but I think I'm going to spend it by myself again. Looks like Micheal and Brett are considering a horseback riding tour, but I really want to do some cycling outside of the city. I also hear that there is excellent and affordable shopping at a local mall. I'll probably try that, too.

I'm having a great time but am looking forward to being home.

By the way, you MUST come here if you've never been to Iceland. It's a wonderful, wonderful vacation spot.

WOO! I loved Reykjavik and Iceland but I am so ready to come home. I'm waiting for Micheal and Brett to arrive at the bus station; they are doing some last minute shopping, but I wanted to come down here and hang out because:

1. I hate feeling rushed
2. I hate feeling rushed

On the way to the airport we're going to the Blue Lagoon spa and geothermal pool; the Blue Lagoon runs a shuttle service from Reykjavik to Keflavik via their place, so we just booked that instead of going straight to the airport.

I got up yesterday and went to see Reykjavik city hall and the Saga Museum with Micheal and Brett. We tried to see the penis museum, but apparently it has moved a few hundred kilometres from Reykjavik to Húsavíkurbær in the north of Iceland. So no penises for us!

Bloody lupins! ("Dennis
Moore, Dennis Moore...."

I will come back to Iceland, but next time I'm going to do more outdoorsy stuff. I'd like to try diving in Þingvellir lake, rock climbing, a visit to the fjords, and maybe rafting, with only a day or two in Reykjavik. It's a cool little down but I want to expand my horizons.

I'm just killing time here. I'm going now. Byeeee!

It's so great to be back in Toronto again. I love travelling, but at the end of a holiday I love coming home even more.

FIN.

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