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| Apartment-living, Icelandic style |
It was still pitch dark at 9am on Wednesday when I got to the hotel. I left Seattle in the late afternoon on Tuesday, and 3 movies and 7 hours later, landed in Northern European sleety cold blackness around 7am. Short line at passport control then onto the shuttle bus for a drive through what appeared to nothingness punctuated by pelting rain to the Hilton. My plan had been to keep moving upon arrival, but that came with an assumption that I would sleep on the plane, which I did not, not even for a minute, didn't even try. So I got into bed around 9:30am, set an alarm for 1:30 (which I slept right through) and finally got up at 3:30 and walked into town. It's cold but not unbearable. Jeans and long-underwear, couple of shirts, sweater, parka, mittens, scarf, hat - pretty usual winter wardrobe for me. I hit just the main street of downtown Reykjavik which is lined with shops and not much else. I stopped into a few but they were either super-designery or tourist-kitchy so since I didn't need any troll dolls or $50-socks, I didn't buy anything. Wandered around for a few hours, got a tiny bit lost since suddenly it was dark out again, then back to the hotel for dinner. Trying local food is really important to me but I couldn't bring myself to stop for minke whale which seemed to be on a lot of the local menus so I ended up with a lovely open-faced roast beef sandwich at the Hilton. I told myself it was authentically European because it lacked a top slice of bread.
