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After the Wedding

Before the Wedding

Ísland Diaries, Part 1

Note: Cat's text is in the normal color, Gregg's is in light blue.

Day 0: 25-th July

Flight

We took off from MSP on time at 7:20pm local (Minneapolis) time. Our Icelandair flight was on a suprising small plane - it was only three seats across. Cathy was scared, but did better than any previous flight since she was 15. We flew over Canada, Hudson Bay, the north Atlantic and southeastern coast of Greenland.

Cool pictures Gregg took from the airplane. The land visible in the second pic (in the upper left) is southeastern Greenland. We think this white stuff is ice floe, but we don't really know.

We both chose "lasagna" as our meal, which began my Odyssey of eating meat for a week. The "lasagna" looked gross, but was pretty tasty. The meal began our love affair with Icelandic cream and butter, which are both outstanding. Our entertainment was weak, so we slep through much of the flight, intending to stay up the entire next day.

Flight time: 5 ½ hours.

Day 1: 26 July

Note: from now on, all times and dates will be in GMT

Arrived in Iceland at Keflavik airport at 6:20 am local time, bummed around the airport a bit, changed our money and picked up our rental car. Ah, the Toyota Yaris, beautiful and small, comfortable and clean, even a pretty green color. Or, as Gregg put it "A Dream Sheathed in Plastic". We braved the cold wind, loaded the car, pulled our coats out of our bags, and got in the car to figure out the route to Rekjavik.

I took a few pictures of Gregg driving and out the windows on that first drive up the Rejakarnes peninsula to Rejkavik.

We got to Rejkavik and looked around a bit, we needed internet so that we could figure out where our hotel for the night was (that was the one thing I - Cathy - forgot to bring). So, we went to the Rejkavik Bagel Co and had some yummy hot chocolate (did I mention it was cold?) and no luck with the wireless. We never did get working free wireless in Iceland! Gregg's laptop just couldn't find the network. This meal was our first bit of sticker shock... a bagel, bagel sandwich, and two hot chocolates: ~1300 Isk. (or ~16 USD)

The first erotic shop (of 3, depressingly similar, overpriced, and generic) we saw, on the corner near the bagelry.

First pics of Rejkavik and Gregg driving the Yaris: 7260010-012

Spent most of the rest of this day looking for our hotel, which involved getting a parking ticket (we were only in the spot for like 5 minutes, they're fast!). After much annoyance and frustration - their road signs make no sense, and not just because they're in another language, they often don't say the name of the road, just where the road goes, but the maps say the name of the road. They'd be labelled something like "To Mosfallsbær." Also, in Capital region (near Reykjavik), route numbers aren't marked on the signs! As for finding the hotel... it was in east Reykjajik, which wasn't on any of the maps, so we had to buy internet time twice, in order to find the damn road. Once we were there, those few block had random building numbering. Erg!

But, with the help of some kind local gas station attendants, we found the hotel, which was really nice, a studio apartment-type place. We wanted some food so we went to a grocery store nearby, which turned out to also be a department store type place, with a sporting goods store and furniture store and housewares store inside it too. Unfortunately, everything in Iceland seems to close at 7 (6:30 in the City center!), so after looking around the furniture store a little (cool lamps) there wasn't any time to buy groceries. So, we looked around the neighborhood a little, trying to see what there was to eat beside a Ruby Tuesday's (it's kind of a random group of American chains that have made it over there, KFC? What made them think Icelanders want their gross chicken?). We ended up settling on a small pita place in the ground floor of the building where our apartment was (in the cities, most buildings are muti-use, ground floors given over to commerce, upper floors to residences or other businesses). We took this back to our room and had a delicious, if expensive (probably worked out to about $18 for two pitas and two bags of fries), dinner and movie (watched "Wonder Boys" on the laptop).

Note on Icelandic power: We bought a transformer and plug adaptor, but it blew on night 5, when we really wanted to write about the trip and watch Firefly... however, my computer adapter blew two weeks later (on 8/15) while we were using the car adapter on the way to the McElroy-Lueck wedding... so I don't know whether my adapter was always bad, or sensitive, and wrecked the transformer, or whether the transformer wrecked the adapter... Be careful, is all I'm saying. Spend money on a good converter. Our Best Buy jobbie may have been at fault

Pics of the room and the view of a bay from our windows (including a cruise ship off in the distance), lamps at the furniture store, and the Iceland-themed toilet paper in our room (boats and sheep). The first few are at 10 at night or so, and last few are from the next morning. This was our cheapest room of the whole trip at 7950 Isk ($110, or so).

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Last Updated: February 07, 2005 -- 17:18:59.
Time since the wedding: 2197 days 23 hours