The flight to Iceland landed as schedule at 6am, local time, although the flight was shorter than I had expected. Total time in the air was only 4.5 hours, but we had to wait on the tarmac at JFK for 45 min before takeoff, which is why we didn’t arrive early in Iceland. Icelandair was okay. They had in flight entertainment, which was a tv in every headrest. I watched Sherlock Holmes (was not impressed) and Wall Street (I haven’t seen it in like 10 years and thought it was really random they had it as a selection). I managed to nod off for about 30 minutes as well. The crappiest part about the flight was the dude next to me. He did not obey the rules of the arm rest being the boundary line. The guy practically had his head on my shoulder while he was sleeping. I hate morons.
Landing in Iceland was pretty awesome. There was a low cloud cover as we were approaching, but you could make out the tops of huuuge mountains to the north. Once we broke the cloud ceiling the landscape was unlike anything I have ever seen. To put it bluntly, it’s a lot of rocks, but it looks really cool. There were also these small shrub-like flowers everywhere (they looked blue to me but who the hell knows what color they really are – my guess would be blue, purple, or pink).
I got through customs, got my bag, and went to the ATM all in about 10 min after boarding. I saw there were buses that were headed to Reykjavic (where the hotel is) but I decided to take a cab. This was probably a mistake, because it was very expensive. I had no clue that Reykjavic is 50 km from the airport. I wish I had a way to tell Ben to take the buses, but maybe his new found thriftiness will pay off (he just bought a house so he is watching his expenses; at least more than I am, which doesn’t take much). The cab ride was very smooth and nice, beside costing about $80 US. I got to the hotel around 7am and the guy at the front desk was very nice. My check-in is not until 2pm but he said that he would try his best to have a room ready by 10am, which will be nice for some well needed shut-eye. I dropped off my luggage, got a map from the front desk and headed out to explore. I walked along the shore at first trying to find the restaurant with the whale kabobs (for later, because I am not very hungry at all right now). I did not have success on that front, but I managed to stumble into some cool stuff including the famous sculpture of a viking ship on the shoreline (modern art looking thing I have seen in pics), the Summit House where Reagan met with Gorbachev in 1986, and the site of the receipt of the first wireless message in 1905 (from England, via telegraph). I also managed to walk a lot of the city in search of a cup of coffee and a bathroom, to which I eventually found. It seems almost everyone here speaks English – thank God because I do not know even one Icelandic word. After my coffee and bathroom use, I headed back to the Viking ship sculpture, which is where I sit now typing away. I have no wireless, so this will get posted later, but it is 9:40am local time, and I am gonna head back to the hotel now and take a nap while I await my Brit friend’s arrival. Hopefully he will be down for some whale kabobs, and after that, heading to a few bars I passed by in my wandering around that looked interesting.
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