Hey, Who Left the Lights On?

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  Reykjavik, Iceland
Thursday, May 26, 2005

After 19 hours of travel on 2 planes and 2 buses, we finally arrived in Iceland at 11:30 pm on Tuesday night. Someone must have left the lights on because it was still bright. Apparently in the summer the sun doesn't set until 1 am with 24 hour sun occurring sometime in July. The international airport in Iceland appears to be built on top of a lava field so landing there seems like you are landing on the moon. We soon discovered that we were not landing on the moon because when we stepped off the plane, we did not die.

Our impression of Iceland is that it is very clean--everything from washrooms and swimming pools to architecture are very clean and sleek. Too clean perhaps, which has led us to our suspicion that Icelanders are robots.

We spent time visiting museums and art galleries

Apparently They Let Monkeys Drive in Iceland

. The National Art Gallery was showing the works of Dieter Roth. We walked into one room and Mel sniffed and said, "Why does it smell like mouldy chocolate in here?"--and then we saw the giant tower sculpture made of chocolate lions. Mystery solved. We walked into another room and Paul remarked, "This looks like crap glued to tables," and then we realized that the art was crap glued to tables--Paul is very insightful when it comes to art.

Wednesday was spent being lost in Reykjavik--you need a doctorate in bus riding to figure out the system here. Unfortunately, Mel only has her masters. We were hooped. The bus maps only name some streets but not others. It also differentiates the 35 lines with 35 "different" colours. There were 8 shades of green. Whoever drew this map was very optimistic. But it was an adventure riding back and forth on one street--we eventually walked to our destination.

Here are some random thoughts about Iceland: (1) slurpees in Iceland are called "krap"; (2) a national past time seems to be walking their babies in strollers; (3) Iceland is sunny and green, but cold--nevermind the whole Iceland isn't cold stuff; (4) Icelanders are very beautiful; (5) the Icelandic currency is in denominations of 1,000s so it was quite alarming when our fastfood meal came to 2,100 krona; (6) tap water is like spring water without the bottle; (7) a big thing in Iceland is to lounge and socialize in what they call "hot pots"--we brought fish balls and noodles to share--they wouldn't let us in (hot pots are actually jacuzzis).

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Go Iceland Go	Interesting Architecture at Hallgrímskirkja	Krap for Sale	Lunar Landscape - 10 pm at Night
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