March 16, 2012, 8:12 a.m.
True, this trip is concentrated mostly in the U.K., but first things first; we began our trip by spending twenty-four hours in Reykjavik, Iceland.
We’d taken the same Icelandair flight just two years before and had experienced the particular frantic heaven/hell of that first day in Iceland with no sleep, so thrilled and ecstatic even as our bodies shut down and we had to consider toothpicking our eyelids to stay awake. This time, we thought we’d be smart about it and have a little snooze on the plane.
The excitement had already set in, though. And no matter how disciplined we were, it seemed a feat of magic to fall asleep at 4:30 p.m. home time—magic we did not have.
Instead we stayed awake, watched movies, and chatted up our seatmate—a woman who does research for the University of Washington on women in commercial fishing. Her focus had been on Brazil for the past several years, and she’d recently moved her focus to Iceland. Since she spends months there at a time, she had plenty of advice to offer.
Before we knew it, it was 7 a.m. Iceland time, and we were still awake. Time to go. Time to go, go, go.
We took the Flybus from Keflavík airport to the terminal in Reykjavik, and for the first time we saw Iceland in the dark. You might recall that during our May 2010 visit, the sun only just dipped below the horizon, leaving a 24-hour glow that our body clocks had to fight in order to sleep. Now, in the dark, it was easy to remember that it was our bedtime, but we had only one day there, and we sure weren’t going to spend it sleeping.
So we walked to Marteinn’s apartment on Laugavegur (street) in the “heart of town,” as boasted on his Airbnb website. Marteinn is an artist—a painter and music composer. We’ve heard that some very high percentage of Icelanders are artists, that field of work being strongly encouraged as opposed to mainly discouraged as in the United States.
Right smack in the middle of downtown, we unloaded our stuff in Marteinn’s guest room and followed as he showed us around his small apartment, the highlight of the tour being the combination bathroom/kitchen complete with dish drying rack and space shuttle shower.
Marteinn gave us our keys and went on his way, back to his other house outside of Reykjavik in an area that doesn’t even have a name. Sadly, we soon discovered that our key to the building’s outer door did not work. Hoofing it up and down the three flights of stairs about six more times proved that none of the room’s other keys did the job either. But no matter; we met a kindly neighbor who generously gave us her spare. The Icelanders are a trusting lot.
Hayl: Amun…dar…dalur.
Thayer: What was that?
Hayl: You heard me.
After some cream-and-sugar-stuffed pancakes and coffee at Café Loki (hello again, Swiss Mocha), we walked to Perlan, Reykjavik’s Saga Museum. Before entering, Thayer noticed some steam rising up from the ground nearby, so we went to investigate. There we found a bubbling, boiling water pot in the middle of the woods. I crept closer to snap a picture, and a nice fellow sitting at a nearby picnic table snickered and said, “That’s not Geysir.” Heheh. We felt a little silly, gawking at a regular ol’ pit of boiling water in the woods, but what can we say; we’re Yankees. Gaui first took us for Canadians, having met Canadians at each and every stop on his recent European tour. We were happy to represent North America’s midsection.
Gaui didn’t give us too much guff about our boiling water fascination. He chatted us up for a while, as he’d just been passing the time reading his book outside on the overcast, 32-degree-Fahrenheit day. “Good weather,” he’d said. We laughed, as we’d never find the likes of him stateside on such a day. Gaui is pronounced “Gwee,” and it’s short for Guðjón, pronounced “GOOTH-yown.” Gaui, if you’re reading this, I apologize if I’ve just butchered the phonetics. I’ve got to make sure we’re on good terms, because we’re taking him out for coffee when we get back to Reykjavik in a few weeks.
Inside Perlan is the Saga Museum, where they have wax figures telling all the stories of the Icelandic Sagas. The museum did much to outline Iceland’s founding history, but we both found some of the stories confusing and difficult to relate to one another, as far as chronology goes. Clearly we need more lessons. My favorite story is of Ingólfur Arnarson, who threw three pillars from his ship overboard, planning to settle wherever the pillars came ashore. After a time, he sent two men around the island to find them, and when they returned, they were all, “Dude, no, you can’t settle there.” But Arnarson did indeed settle there. He named it “the Smoky Bay,” or rather, Reykjavik.
After Perlan we followed a trail down to a beach where a map told us there was a warm water inlet and, in the middle of that, a hot pot. We found the inlet, but it was not warm, and the hot pot in the middle was bone dry; still, any Icelandic beach is lovely to us.
[during the long walk from the beach back to downtown]
Hayl: Hmmm, maybe I’ll lose a couple pounds on this trip.
Thayer: Maybe if you watch the Swiss mochas.
Hayl: Watch them go down my gullet?
Thayer: Right.
On we went to Tjörnin, a manmade lake in the middle of downtown where people like to feed giant geese and where a webcam is set up, which I like to check often when I am at home in the States. Being the super sleuth I am, I spotted the camera and took a picture of it, which will be ridiculously boring to everyone but me. When we get back to Reykjavik, I plan to locate all the other webcams I check obsessively and take pictures of them, too.
Next was dinner at Hressingarskálinn, where I had something non-scary like a pizza and Thayer had a towering mountain of fish stew. At about 9 p.m. it was time for bed, or rather, for lying awake all night long while the very loud sounds of downtown Reykjavik echoed up to our third-floor window and our fears of missing our early morning bus kept us in a near-constant state of frantic readiness. We think we finally succumbed to sleep around 2 a.m.
Up we jumped at 5:45 a.m. and walked the kilometer back to the bus terminal, tiptoeing through the sleeping city and cringing whilst our suitcases thundered along the uneven sidewalks and cobblestones.
I slept the entire flight to London.
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