Reykjavik

So, it turned out not to be a scam; they were waiting for me at the airport. Some time ago I decided that this year's European vacation destination was going to be Iceland. No particular reason for it, just a desire to somewhere different and Iceland popped into my mind. So after talking to K. we decided that we wanted to do a car tour of the island and I went online, found a site with shiny pictures, filled out a form and gave them my credit card number. One month later we got out of the plane in Reykjavik and, as promised by the tour company, they picked me us up, dropped us off at the hotel and gave us a bag with all the paperwork we needed for the trip, just as they promised. Couldn't have been easier.

Well, getting there wasn't that easy. Our flirst leg from San Francisco to New York was supposed to leave early and arrive early, but was delayed on the departure end because they couldn't fit us into the airspace, and when we landed at JFK it was over 30 minutes before they moved enough airplanes out of the way so we could get to our gate. The second leg was also delayed, as they had to find an alternative way to load potable water into the plane when the hose they were using broke. But they figured it all  out and we made it to Iceland. Unfortunately I only got one hour of sleep, even though they put me in an emergency exit row. So I was exhausted.

Our room was not ready, so we left our luggage in the hotel's storage area and were off to explore the city, starting with a trip to a nearby bakery recommended by the hotel for some breakfast. Turned out to be a good choice. K. raved about her salmon panini, and I hadn't had such a good croissant in a long, long time.

After lunch we set of the explore the old city, visiting the Old Harbor, Laugavegur (the main shopping street), Harpa, Hallgrimskirkja, Tjornin (the downtown lake), city hall, a wool shop that was K.'s must-see destination (she's back into knitting big-time), a restaurant named Tabasco that, nevertheless, promised authentic Icelanding food,  and the Einar Jonsson sculpture garden. All this by foot. One Tallin, if we go by my FitBit.

So, what are my impressions of Reykjavic? Well, let's see...

iIt's not really a city, but more of a town, with very few building more than three stories high. The people are friendly and English is used everywhere; every restaurant we saw had signs in English. They had a gay pride event recently, and they seem to still be very proud of it because we had a street painted in rainbow colors and rainbow flags everywhere; as a matter of fact, other than one Icelandic flag over city hall, all others we saw wee gay pride related. I liked it that there are very few American stores here. I ran into one Subway and one Dunkin Donuts, but the latter had a line of people 20-30 deep waiting for the chance to get into the store. The view from Hallgrimskirkja's iconic tower was very nice and the fact that it was an elevator that got us to the top,instead of the traditional European set of never-ending stairs just made it better.

The only surprise was the code. We expected cold, but thought it would be sweater + jacket weather. Unfortunately, there's this biting wind that made it more of a sweater + jacket + scarf + wool cap + gloves sort of weather. A little too wintery for Summer, but then again, Reykjavik is the world's 

northenmost capital.

And now I find myself back at the hotel, exhausted, achy, and looking forward to catching up on all the sleep I've been missing lately.