bjorked

After indulging in my rather delicious Vitaburger, happening upon some "free stuff", and staying out rather late last night (I can attest to the fact that it never truly gets dark during the Islandic summer), it was absolutely excellent to be able to go to sleep in a warm, cushioned bed.

Iceland, circa 1:15 last night. A little early to be starting the night, but I'm a conservative kind of guy.

I guess you just leave stuff here, that you want to give away...

The current offerings

Waking up at a reasonable hour this morning, I set out to find a good breakfast and ended up in the 20/11 store. Perhaps because it was Sunday morning, none of the shops or restaurants were open until 11:00, and I was just too hungry to wait. So I made a rather good breakfast for myself of orange juice, banana, yogurt, and a croissant "og skinn"... which I can only pray to God translates to "with ham" rather that with, well... "skin". Anyway, it was tasty.

I decided that my final full day in Iceland would be dedicated to the sea. So after breakfast, I picked up tickets for a harbor cruise out to see the puffins, a whale watching tour, and a North Atlantic angling adventure. Before all this good fun could begin though, I had to stop by the local flea market to pick up some rotten shark.

I want to start off by saying that I'm usually not one to buy food at a flea market. But then again, I'm usually not one to eat predatory fish that's been buried for 6 months to "improve the flavor". So here goes...

150 kronas worth of rotten shark (it looks about 600x better than it smells)...

150 kronas worth of chocolaty confection that I pray takes the taste away...

...and away we go!

Obviously, it tastes awful. It probably wasn't the worst thing that I've ever eaten (though nothing this bad comes to mind, probably because I'd have to block it out to retain sanity). After 6 seconds of rancid mastication, I could take it no longer. I swallowed the rotten shark I had in my mouth, and threw away the rest. So when I say this, know that I speak from experience: if you visit Iceland, try the rotten shark.

After inhaling my chocolate treat, which served its rotten shark flavor-masking intentions, I skipped over the the harbor, and got on board a boat to go see the puffins. Puffins, if you've never come across one, are tiny. To call them pigeon-sized would be generous. Which is why it's all the more reprehensible that they be used to advertise cigarettes, when a drag on a Virginia Slim Triple Filtered Light would be enough to do in these tiny birds. They are also impossible to photograph...

There are, I swear to God, no less than 400 puffins in this picture, all in the water

Puffins only hobble up to land once a year during nesting season. They spend the rest of their lives floating on, flying over, or diving into the ocean, and avoiding tour boats. Puffins hate tour boats. Probably because tour boats are not so very different from fishing boats, and since I've seen Puffin on the menu at many restauraunts in Reykjavik, I can understand their aversion.

After the puffins, came the whales. I'm kind of a cynic when it comes to whale watching, but it was part of the puffin package. My image of an average whale watch is 2-3 hours spent rocking out on the ocean, your hands slowly losing the battle against frostbite. But of course, you can't put them in your pockets because that would mean lowering your camera from the field of cameras being held up by naively-hopeful whale watchers, pointing their recording devices out onto the desolate ocean in the chance that they might catch the fleeting glimpse of a whale's backside slipping back into the sea. "Over there!", shouts one of your fellow whale watchers, who, probably affected by the frostbite, has most likely just seen the shadow of a wave "Over there on the left! It's a whale!" 37 desperate cameras swing left like syncronized swimmers at an Olympic meet. Bulbs flash, shutters click, and upon review your photograph, you find that - like the 36 other whale watchers - you have a rather decent shot of the backs of everyone's head, though which, vaguely, you can make out a small piece of ocean. But in that piece of ocean, there's a blur, a smudge, the refraction of the sun. No. You know what that blur is. It's a whale. Because that's what you need to believe. That's what you spent $70 and three of the best fingers on your left hand trying to accomplish, so it had better be a whale. For all I know, there are no whales left in the world. We may have hunted them into extinction years ago. The people who run whale watches may well be the sea-going equivalent to ringleaders of the flea circus. But here it is. Here's the proof that there are whales out there in the ocean. Here's proof that it's not all a scam, a ploy, a ruse on a bunch of near-hypothermic tourists with unjustified patience and bad sea legs. I give you...

...a whale! (it's right next to the smudge)

After the whale watch was over, it was time for some sea angling. In this respect I faired better. We weren't exactly going after bluefish, just the small harbor-dwelling fair, and so success was measured by the number of fish you caught. After getting off to a bad start, I soon got the knack of it, and was pulling out fish left and right. Get lure to just the right depth, and you're almost guaranteed bite. In the most impressive bit of angling (read: dumb luck) I managed to pull off, I was able to pull two fish up on one cast...

I'm reminded of Buckwheat from "Our Gang"... "I've got two fishes, I've got two fishes. I've got two fishes, hey hey hey hey!"

Now, it's possible to pull two fish up at the same time, because there are two lures on each line. I was told (probably like the guy that did this yesterday) that such an event is rather rare, as the fish are usually intelligent enough to, upon seeing one of their brethren caught by a hook, avoid the hook directly underneath it. Which means that I pulled out two of the dumbest fish in the Northern Atlantic.

Anyway, the angling was good fun, and at the end of it all, I donated my fish to the Islandic Fish Charity (a real thing). I finished of my sea-inspired day by going to the #1 reviewed restaurant in Reykjavik. For Reykjavik, it's a rather inexpensive, but very popular fish restaurant right on the harbor where you choose kebabs of seafood (fish, shellfish, whale) and they basically just grill it for you. It's fantastically fresh, and really good, especially with an order of their famous lobster soup. These are Norwegian Lobster's we're talking about, so they're maybe 1/6 the size of their New English brethren. But the soup was really good, and chalk full of Norwegian Lobster tails. The restaurant didn't have a liquor license, which in Iceland means that, like the grocery stores, they can only sell light beer. But it was still a really good meal, for a good price.

I ended my day with a walk around Reykjavik, getting as far out as the Reykjavik Peace Summit House, where Ronald Reagan and Michael Gorbachev met in 1986 to get the ball rolling on ending the Cold War. As I have read all kinds of histories that mention this meeting, it was really cool to visit the house.

Outside, there are three plaques explaining the site in English, Islandic, and Russian

Anyway, I was supposed to get to bed early tonight, but this update took a little longer than I expected, and it's now 1:00. So I'm going to do some formatting stuff, and get to bed, as I have to catch a bus to catch a plane at 10:00 tomorrow morning. Next stop: Copenhagen!