Good morning Reykjavik!

Made it safe and sound, if incredibly jetlagged, and had a good first day :) And in true travel fashion, I snapped awake at 5 am and couldn't get back to sleep so time to write a post!

The wastelands between KEF airport and Reykjavik were cool.

I landed at around 6:30 and caught a pre-booked bus to my hostel. This was a nice little luxury, as is meant I got to skip all the usual public transit and hauling my stuff across town nonsense that comes with backpacking. KEF airport is actually about quite a drive from Reykjavik (through some really cool mossy, volcanic wasteland), so I didn't get to my hostel until around 8:30. Once there I dropped my stuff off (checkin wasn't until 3), I decided to punch jetlag in the face and go on a walking tour to get oriented right off the bat. My front desk recommended CityWalk.is, so I looked up where they were meeting and started meandering down towards Austurvöllur, the park near Parliament where it left from.

But not before getting coffee first obviously.

One of the streets near my hostel. Pretty much what all of Reykjavik looks like. It's a very pretty city, though not one that makes for too many interesting photos.

Here I learned that three of the stereotypes of Iceland are true:

1. Everyone speaks English. Didn't meet anyone with even a bit of a language barrier.
2. Most Icelandic words are almost impossible to pronounce. Picture the weird sounds and letters of Nordic languages combined with the German habit of forming new incredibly long words just by cramming old ones together.
3. Holy cow, food is expensive here. My little 6oz cup of drip was $6. The hostel has free coffee in the mornings. It might be mediocre, but it'll get the job done.

Anyway, properly caffeinated I joined our tour guide Eric and he walked us through the city and

Eric, in the square outside parliament.

through three main pieces of history: Viking settlement, the Christian period, and independence from the Danes through modern times. He ran us through a couple of aspects of Icelandic society too, like food (fish, fish, fish, fish, lamb, and fish), the criminal justice system (there are 300k people in the country, and only around 150 prisoners), and public relations (everyone's FURIOUS at the banks and now the prime minister over the market collapse, but the Icelandic Police Department has over 150k on Instagram, which is HALF OF THE COUNTRY).

It was also fun to learn that a lot of older Icelandic folks still believe in fairies, elves, and imps. We stopped by an alleged 'Elf boulder' (a boulder that is unable to be moved due to a stubborn elf living in it), and Eric told us about his grandmother, who fervently believes in elves to the point of leaving them gifts of cookies every now and then on elf boulders on her farm. She points to the fact that the cookies always disappear as evidence that the elves eat them. Eric then points to her incredibly fat 12 Icelandic horses and a possible alternative explanation.

Me and the elf boulder. The holes and divets are from the equipment they used to try and haul it away.

The recent history wasn't really my thing, but the Viking history was. It was cool to hear actual stories about the Vikings and how they came to be hear. What was really interesting though was to

Ingolfur Arnarson, the leader of the first Vikings
to land in Iceland. He got a dose of pink lipstick at Pride
a few years ago and no one's in a hurry to get rid of it.  

see just the current political climate of Iceland. They're as socialist as socialists can be, and it's fascinating to see the ups AND downs of that. Taxes are incredibly high (our tour guide said a lot of people fall in the 50% tax bracket here), and even just a sandwich will cost you $10 most places. But, healthcare is free, education is free up even at the PhD/JD/MD level, and there's INCREDIBLY little homelessness or poverty. There's definitely a tradeoff, but this place is basically what Seattle wants to be.

After the tour ended (and Eric showed and sold us some 'beer mittens' his mom's friend made), I got a lunch recommendation from Erik and went to Kaffivagninn out in the harbor district. It was a bit farther than I really wanted to walk, but it was a pretty walk at least, and the food was tasty. I got a pan-fried plaice (a type of flounder) in cream sauce, and a soft drink called Applesin which, of course, was orange flavored. The place was the definition of 'cozy.' Picture 'nordic or new england dock diner' and you're spot on. Which, to be fair, is exactly what it was.

I walked back to the city center and checked out 'Reykjavik 871 +/- 2',  a really awesome exhibit on

the Vikings that is the textbook case why construction and development take so long in Europe. When excavating a site in downtown Reykjavik, they found a Viking longhouse from sometime

Viking axe and big-game hunting arrowhead.

between 869 and 873 AD (hence the name). This put it as one of the first buildings the Vikings ever built in Iceland, so people were ecstatic about the find. They put together a great exhibit showing all the artifacts they found (including a Viking Axe! Granted just a wood axe, but still!), and a whole bunch of cool displays on what the village would have looked like. They also had a display of the oldest surviving copies of the Viking Sagas, which were the stories and documents about Viking colonization of Iceland. They were written in Viking runes, which was (quite literally) epic, but obviously mean I couldn't make heads or tales of them. I need to see if I can find a copy I can read online.

At this point, I was falling asleep on my feet so I headed back to the hostel, checked in, and passed out for a three hour nap. I woke up, met my roommates (one Irish, one French Canadian, one German, and one English), and got a dinner recommendation from the front desk for Islenki Barinn (which literally just means 'Icelandic Bar'). I bundled up and headed out, and got my fill of Icelandic beer and potatoes and lamb. All were excellent, and I'm really liking the beer scene here, especially after the "what do you mean you don't like ultra light lagers?" wastelands that were Spain and Japan.

After dinner, I walked around a bit to enjoy that fact that thanks to Reykjavik being so far north and it being between the spring and fall equinoxes, the sunsets basically last for 3 hours. First I walked up to Hallgrimskirkja and...

Holy Cow.

It's MASSIVE.

It's a giant Lutheran cathedral designed to look like it's made of the volcanic basalt columns Iceland is famous for and it's a freaking STUNNING effect. I need to go back with my DSLR and get some more photos to do it justice because it's REALLY cool. Apparently you can climb the tower too, which is supposed to be the best view of Reykjavik you can get.

After that I walked home to bed, with a quick detour to see the sunset on the coastline.