I was not able to sleep on the flight to Iceland at all. We landed at 8am in Iceland (midnight in California). We ate a large lunch in Seattle but nothing on the flight so we were both hungry. After going through customs we saw the Iceland equivalent of a 7-11 by the airport exit and we couldn’t resist the hot dogs.
Hot dogs are a very special thing to Icelanders and so they put a lot of things on them. There was no relish, but there were 5 types of sauces (including mayonnaise, but not yellow mustard), potato salad, fried onions and minced onions.
Our rental car was in a lot outside of the airport. So we walked for ten minutes with our luggage in the pre-dawn darkness through the ice and a howling snowstorm to the Thrifty shop. Our suv (a Ford Kuga) was nice enough but smelled like diesel inside.
Our airbnb wouldn’t be open until 2pm so we headed to the nearby and world famous blue lagoon. The snow was blowing so hard we had to creep through it at 10 kph sometimes, but in a short while we arrived. We blindly braved the short hike up the lagoon with snow licking our eyeballs and wind screaming in our ears.
When we arrived we were told that the spa was sold out already (it was 10 am) but we could take pictures if we wanted.
So we went up to the famous rooftop lookout, only to have our hats blow off in the powerful wind.
We decided to give up and make our way to Reykjavik. Many parts of that drive were blizzard conditions as well, but it still didn’t take more than an hour to get to the city. Once there we headed to the big church tower, Hallgrímskirkja. We didn’t go up as the queue was very deep. It was a special Sunday mass crowd. We decided to have lunch across the street at the famous Cafe Loki.
We ordered $50 of food and ate less than half. Everything sounded good, it just didn’t live up to the expectations.
All the meat was strongly smoked. I like bbq smokey taste but this was a different kind of tree, one with a bitter aftertaste that ruined everything you ate the rest of the day. I couldn’t place the taste until later when I sniffed second hand cigarette smoke and realized it was similar.
However, nothing could compare to the terribleness of the fermented shark. Every culture has its own disgusting thing that they acclimate to out of necessity and tourists eat for a joke or dare. This fermented shark is Iceland’s balut.
After lunch we crossed the street to a now more empty church and went right to the top.
After checking into the airbnb we went our to do Sam’s favorite vacation activity: foreign grocery shopping!
Okay, that was pretty corny…. but so is this:
