Flowers!

Day 6

12052019

We again got to sleep in, and ate some pastries Laura and I nabbed from the grocery store (who incidently didn't take credit cards). Our activity for the day was a tour of the koekenhof, which are the famous tulip fields.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keukenhof

The park is set up to flower at different times so when visitors come they still see something. But the fields themselves hat support the Dutch tulip industry had bloomed in previous weeks and we're thusly empty fields. Which is kinda disappointing. But Washington has their own tulip fields so we can more easily catch those next year.

On the drive out of Amsterdam the guide briefly discussedthe tulipmania of the 17th century. In the 1660-1670s everyone wanted tulips, and a speculative market developed around the harvests. People were buying futures on tulip bulbs, and the futures contracts for the right kind of bulb were trading at the value of a nice house on the main canals of Amsterdam (those houses are now selling for upwards of $1000USD/sqft).

We walked all around the canals viewing the flowers.

We left a little bit or Sicily here too, again in proximity to ducks. I think she would have enjoyed trying to walk into the flower beds to have a pee, mashing the flowers in the process.

We grabbed some fries and curry ketchup as a snack and continued the meandering.

We finally got back on the bus, and napped on the ride back into the city. The return ride took a little longer due to traffic. But I think the propensity for bicycling and mass transit means it wasn't that bad for a city of 800,000.

We headed back to the airbnb, drank some beers that we had picked up at the grocery store (if I didn't mention it before, beer is super cheap, paid like <€7 for 2 6 packs of beer. We headed to another food hall, this one in the mall. https://thefooddepartment.nl/ I know a mall food court doesn't sound very good, but it was great, and the food stalls themselves were more than just Auntie-Anns Pretzels and Sbarro's. Laura and I ate from a Szechuan stall, I got a Jian Bing sandwich, it's like a Chinese shwarma sandwich. It had roast duck, and spices and cabbage and happiness. Laura had a spicy-cumin noodle soup. I watched he guy handpull the noodles that went into her soup. My dad had a lamb burger that he said was solid, and given that he didn't share any, I dont doubt it. My mom had a poke bowl on quinoa, and a plate of zucchini fries. The fries were breaded, and tender, but not too greasy. From here we went back to the Central station to hop on a canal tour. This was free with our ticket for the tulip fields. We sat on the outside back of the canal boat so we got 0 tour-guiding and just looked and took badly lit pictures.

It was nice to see Amsterdam and not also be keeping an eye out for a zooming scooter or whizzing cyclists or silently prowling electric cars.

The homes were beautiful, both architecturally and interior-decoration wise. We spotted buildings currently lived in that were built in the 1660s, meaning older than my home country.

It was relatively late night, we headed back to the Airbnb to drop my parents off and shortly thereafter Laura and I went to wander through the Red Light District.

We walked there as it is close, and it has always been around the older part of town, as it serviced the sailors that were coming in from the main canal. It was a little after midnight when we got there. And it was admittedly a Monday night, but the place was pretty dead. There were drunk people wandering about, but the place wasn't packed. More than half of the girls in the windows were not occupied, so there weren't many people *in* getting serviced. We went into one bar that Laura had researched that was supposed to be pretty hopping, but when we got there we doubled the patronage, so we left without paying €7 for a Heineken. We went to the next bar that was allegedly 24hrs, but when we went to order the beer they said they were closing in <30 mins. So we left there too.
We did find a coffeeshop that was open later, so we sat in there till they closed at 1am. And then took a long circuitous route home

High stakes Frogger

12052019

Day 5

Finally got to sleep in. All of us slept in until at least 0900 Laura got up first to do some stretching and yoga, I finally got up amd started looking at what it takes to get in the Rijksmuseum.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rijksmuseum

It's the Dutch national Museum, seeing that we went to only the one museum in Iceland I was feeling the itch to sauntering around and lookin at old stuff.

We purchase some tickets online and head out for breakfast. On the way to the tram that took us to the museum we stopped at a cafe for breakfast. I had a ham and cheese sandwich, Laura had a ham, cheese and pineapple sandwich, my dad had an omelette, and my mom had a savory tomato-spinach pancake. The savory pancake was basically a pizza, but on a crepe instead of crust, it wasn't bad. Also we obviously had beers, as it was basically lunch, so that's fair.

We made our way to the tram, which involved crossing a bike path, a street, a tramway, another street, and another bike path. Crossing the street here is crazy. You gotta keep an eye out for bikes, because you won't hear them coming. But you have to time it so that you can get across the bike lanes *and* then get across the street as the cars come.

We safely made it to the tram, used our multiday pass for the tram and got to the museum square.

The pre-purchased tickets got us in quick, and we wandered around the museum.

That's a bust of St. Fredrick, that they actually kept some bits of the very same after he was canonized.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_of_Utrecht

Some unicorn horns.

The library, which is an active library, you can do research here through a sign up and wait-time process.

There was much more to see, the museum traces Duth art from about 1100 to modern day. You should check it out.

From the meseum we went to a bar.

https://cafegollem.nl/

They had about a half dozen of their own beers and another half dozen guest beers, in addition to over a hundred different beers in bottles/cans.

They also had a cat.

Every beer we tried was great, and all of them were from the Netherlands.

We also got a sausage, and cheese board for snacking.

The sausage in particular was great. It was organic pork, course ground, and spiced with cubeb that really made it pop.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piper_cubeba

From here we went to dinner. We went to a Surinamese restaurant. Overall it was pretty good. The flavors we're unique and interesting, but there was very little difference across the dishes we selected. There were noodle dishes with beef and lamb, a fried rice and chicken dish, and a chicken and lamb dish with roti. The roti was dry and not inpressive honestly. The chicken and beef was great, the lamb was a little dry, and the fried rice was good, but not my style, it tasted almost smokey. My favorite part were the noodles, they were like chow mein but with Indonesian flavors.

I suppose it was difficult for this meal to be really impressive after our last few dinners.

Laura and I then went to the grocery store to try and get snacks, and we saw we could buy 6 packs of beer for €3.75 we came home with beer in addition to the snacks.

Took it easy the rest if the night.

Tried to wake up before sunrise, but the sun never set...

11052019

Day 4

Got 2.5 hours of sleep, because we were off to Amsterdam. 0750 flight, which means getting to the airport by 0550, which means a taxi pickup at 0500. Fortunately Laura and i did most of our packing after getting back from the beer bar, but that only shifted the sleep back 45 minutes, it didn't help us sleep any more.

Also given that it was Saturday morning there were still many youths out n about after partying Friday night. In fact at some point in the early morning b(though the sun would imply it wat mid day) a pair of young women made their way into the courtyard of the building we were staying at for a few minutes of some activity that was too private to undertake on the street. What they were doing I am not sure, but they selected a spot seemingly right under our window.

Anyways getting to Amsterdam was uneventful. Between the flight time, and he time change it was 1330. Decided to take the bus into the city center, Anto eat up time so we could make it right into the Airbnb, and B. to same a little money. But the ticket machine didn't like our Uber Visa card, nor that of my parents, uh oh, the kiosk wanted a PIN. We're from the United States, we aren't concerned about identity fraud, or people stealing our credit cards... fortunately our reliable Capital One Quick silver card worked.

We purchased a set of 3 day passes and hopped the bus. Easily enough we were getting off at the end of the line, the bus station.

Few hundred meters into the neighborhood, on a side street we found our Airbnb host, who took us around the corner into a side street of a side street and showed us the place. Is great, she even showed us stuff to do, and gave us food recommendations, including an Indonesian restaurant anfew blocks away. Which is great because I was looking forward to exploring the food of Dutch colonies.

So we went out to a cafe to waste enough time for the Indonesian restaurant to open. Laura curated the experience, I just had a very fresh cup of ginger-lemon tea, and my dad had an espresso. After enough time passed we headed to Long Pura.

http://www.restaurant-longpura.com/

Everything we had was amazing, and a welcome change up from the Icelandic food we had been having. Lots of "exotic" flavors. After we ordered but before our food arrived our waiter tried upselling us on Kuruk/Emping chips. To be honest I didn't hear or understand what he said but I remember the last time someone tried upselling us on and appetizer and it went great (see Singapore posts

The chips arrived with a thick peanut sauce that was a great way to start our gastronomic experience.

The satay sampler platter, goat, chicken, beef and ground fish. All were great, there was a spicy sauce that the beef got draped in which pished it to my favorite of the list.

We got the rice platter too, it was effectively a sampler of the whole menu. There was a spicy beef, a coconut beef, a coconut chicken, coconut goat, a spicy hard boiled egg, adish of steamed veggies, there were more of the chicken satay as well. We also ordered an eggplant dish was was very good.

We ended the meal with an Indonesian style creme brulee, which was as good as creme brulee, but honestly nothing special, and my parents split a coconut crepe that was certainly interesting.

The dinner experience took several hours, and was far less expensive than Iceland was. Ultimately we just toddled home and went to sleep shortly thereafter.

Standing on (geologically) fresh ground.

10052019

Day 3

We had leftover pastries from yesterday. The Airbnb had a little Nespresso machine, that even the “big cup” setting produces like a single shot, but the cartridges are condensed enough that you can push the button a few more times, so that took us 10 minutes to make 3 cups of coffee.

Today’s itinerary was driven by a bus tour through the Golden Circle. The pickup was the same place the airport Porter dropped us off at.

The driver/tour guide was essentially a viking. His name was Trond, he was over 2m tall (the shortest of his siblings), long red hair and beard, and was actually a Norwegian transplant to Iceland, and took an Icelandic wife and everything.

I'm betting his move to Iceland was much less violent than the typical historical Norwegian immigrant to Iceland. He was full of good stories, of both his own and the national identity.

His first bit of information was in regards to the original settling of Iceland, which I referred to in an earlier post. It's documented in the Book of Settlement, which he described as “a written record of every person that moved to Iceland, who they came with and when they came. After the initial immigration, the records go into the Book of Icelanders. Which records bloodlines and land ownership. Apparently they also use it for amarous pursuits, to ensure they aren't cousins. There are only 350,000 people here after all.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%8Dslendingab%C3%B3k

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landn%C3%A1mab%C3%B3k

He went on to explain Iceland was populated after the initial settlers by Norwegian refugees. At the time (about the turn of the last millennium) the king was consolidating his power in Norway, and those that opposed him had to bail after he indeed unified Norway.

That's likely why they weren't keen on having a new king in Iceland, and hence established the parliament, which is one of the oldest in the world.

He had a story about the Christianization of Iceland.
The island nation was getting pressured by the Christian nations of Europe through stifling trade. Norway was going to use it as pretext to invade (always). Iceland was pretty well split evenly with maintaining their Norse paganisn and accepting Catholicism (this was prior to the Reformation), including the parliament. So they left it up to the law speaker, who decided to go with Christianity. But the speaker accepted Christianity with some caveats; the priests could marry, the chieftons would become dejure priests and the people could maintain their Norse Gods in some capacity.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Christianity_in_Iceland

Which all basically means, there were a Christian nation in only name.

Trond also had stories about the “discovery” of the Americas:

Erik the Red's father also killed someone in Iceland here (noticing a theme of exiled murderers *discovering* and settling new lands), he and his son Leif Eriksson left, settling in Greenland and ultimately Leif ended up settling in Newfoundland. Really, other Vikings that were coming to Greenland (typically in an exiled capacity from some other land) to immigrate to Greenland stumbled upon Newfoundland after getting lost. When they finally got to their original destination of Greenland they told Leif about it, and he went to “discover” it that too.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leif_Erikson

Beyond that there were more bits of history, that I honestly don't remember very well, I wasn't taking diligent enough notes this time around, because I’m not being tested on this later.

Our first stop was on the edge of the Euroasian continental tectonic plate. Iceland is widening at about 2cm a year as the Euraasian and North American plates drif apart, which is exactly why Iceland is so volcanically active.

Our second stop was at the site of the original parliament. Which is where that law speaker declared on favor of Christianity, and many of he decisions across Icelandic history.

This place also sits on that point between the two Eurasian plates.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%9Eingvellir

Then we stopped at a local farm for some ice cream, again excellent, they had farm dogs.

The stop was about as close as this tour came to feeling like a forced exercise to get us to spend money, also it's ice cream, and happy cows, not locals “happily” producing craftiworks for foreigners.

Then we went to a tourist cafeteria for lunch, and visit a waterfall.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gullfoss

Moving on we stopped at a roadside attraction to meet some Icelandic horses, which are pretty small, and very fluffy.

Next stop was a series of geysers.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geysir

And the final stop was at a Hot Spring. This was a natural hotsprig, so it didn't have the silica, but it did have some algae, which I'm sure it's also good for my skin. I know Laura has all kinds of wierd ocean stuff on her face, and she's beautiful so.

Same story, nekkid shower, run to the water. This was much warmer water, you could she the spring from which this water came, and there were waves of much hotter water that would gush up and into the pool. Ultimately another really cool experience.

We finally got home around 1900.

The 4 of us went to get happy hour beers at 800isk, (cause it's super expensive here, 1000isk is on the cheaper side for a .4L beer)band then we went to a later dinner.

https://kolrestaurant.is/

We went to Kol. The had great cocktails, Laura got a negroni with cherry shrub, but cherrys grow on trees so I don't know what that is, and a donkey, which was effectively a Moscow Mule. I had some Brennvín, which I have grown to like since the last time I had it, it tastes like rye bread.

For starters we got a beef carpaccio, and a seared scallops and duck foie gras.

Oh my, the foie gras was life changing, another one of those foods where I will divide my life into before Kol’s foie gra and after, a watershed moment.

The carpaccio was great, and if we had had it at any other restaurant it would have stolen the show. But the duuuuuck.

Both Laura and my mother got the lamb sirloin, I got charred salmon with a Dill hollandaise, and my father got seared cod and scallop.

All were superb, the fish was light yet flavorful, my salmon pulled apart accross the marbling with only a fork, the lamb was structured enough to need a knife, but moist enough to soften immediately on the tongue. The scallops had that almost meaty taste, and we're perfectly done.

All in all the meal was fantastic.

We escorted my parents home, and then Laura and I had a new tradition to start.

Those of you that know us know that our dog Sicily recently lost her fight to cancer. She was diagnosed in November of 2017, went into remission in April of 2018 and it came back in January 2019. We had great times with her even when she was sick, especially in her last days. She encouraged us to explore the Pacific Northwest, getting us in the car to drive into the mountains or to the coast.

And now that she has passed, we can more easily travel further, but she is still with us. And we are bringing her physically with us too, we had her cremated and brought, and plan to bring on future trips a small amount with us. Enough to pinch a bit and spread to all the places we love, and she loved, and would have loved.

So we made our way to the Reykjavik bay, it was hella windy, and hovering around freezing, to say a few words and sprinkle some extra carbon in the ocean. We also went to a nearby park, where I'm sure she would have yelled at the ducks, to leave some of her there too.

After the sad stuff was over we took a roundabout way back to the Airbnb, stopped in a close approximation to a hipster beer bar, had some beer and went home to pack, and catch 2 hours of sleep.

Do it for the likes!

09052019

Day 2

My mother had booked us a day in the Blue Lagoon, but neglected to go with the package travel because it was so pricey. So yesterday Laura and I looked at alternate options, everything we were looking at was around $180 for the 4 of us, and there weren't any cheaper options, but you can get next day rental cars in Reykjavik for €63. So we rented a car.

We got up a lil early to run to grab the car. This is one if the first times Laura an I have rented a car, and the first time we had done it in a foreign country. When we showed up the attendant had upgraded us to a nicer compact car than what we ordered. It was a pretty normal experience, the attendant was very clear the car wasn't prestine, and we should only note extreme damage.

The car was far from prestine, at some point it had eaten gravel or maybe experience an Icelandic dust/Ash storm, damaging the hood paint, which was now rusted and chipping the windshield in a few places.

The attendant was rather non-chalant about the whole thing and let us take the car. We grabbed some yogurt from a quick-mart type place (1-11 or some other odd hour named store), and pastry from a local bakery.

Vegan blueberry roll, vegan cinnamon roll and a raspberry scone, all were great.

Lighting isnt great, but I'm not a food blogger so deal with it.

We hopped back in the car to drive the 45 minutes to the Blue Lagoon.

He roads are great and pretty well signed. It's also rather easy to find because it's part of a large geothermal power plant so there are huge columns of steam rolling into the sky. And given that there are no trees in Iceland, you really just have to look up.

We roll up to the place, and here is a Hybrid H-RV in the parking lot, which is basically my new favorite car (unnecessary information, but HR-Vs have had good reviews and a hybrid just makes you *feel* better about it).

You approach the facility through a small canyon of rocks.

And you get in and they have everything set up, they give you a towel, that you will inevitably lose, but it's ok cause you just take someone else's (kinda like the army, there are no thieves in the army, everyone is just trying to steal their shit back). And a wrist band that is hooked up to your account. You use the wristband to pay for drinks and snacks and at the end swipe your card to pay.

You go into the locker room and there are clear instructions in various languages, you take a shower (without the swimsuit, very clear instructions on that) put a bunch of leave in conditioner in your hair (put the swimsuit back on) and head out.

It's probably cold out, cause it's Iceland, and your wet. So you have your towel up and scurry into the water.

It is splendid they say it runs about 100°F, and has a milky color from all the silica in the water. You feel extra boyant, you feel it abrading all the dead skin off your body, and you see all the people takes pics for the 'gram.

It was a wonderful hodgepodge of older slightly out of shape Scandanavians and hot young people thinking they are influencers.

We bobbed around the water, eventually got a white silica face mask. My mom went to get a fancy in water massage that I still don't fully understand, and after our requisite 10 of the mask drying Laura and I went under a 104°F waterfall and got beat up by the hot water/cleaned our face.

We also sat in a sauna and baked, putting a little water on the rocks to make sure we developed a good crust. After we were sufficiently heat-stupified we went back to the lagoon to meet with my mom and head home.

Ultimately it was a fantastic experience, and I would recommend everyone do it. We didn't bring our camera in there because it's really something you need to experience for your self. Here is a pic of one of the pools outside the swimming portion (that would definitely kill you if you went in).

For a lil more info on it

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Lagoon_(geothermal_spa)

Because we had the car, we decided to hit an area of Reykjavik that was a little far to walk. And with the previous nights success at a foodhall we went to the Hlemmurmatholl.

We again got a spectrum of food.

I ordered a lamb burger which was delicious. Most lamb burger are hunks of ground lamb, too greasy to eat properly, and sometimes the gamey-ness of the lamb overpowers all the other flavor. But that was done very well, it helped to there was lamb bacon on it as well. The lil potatoes it came with were also fantastic they must have been pre-boiled because they were perfectly cooked after the roasting process.

Laura got the traditional Icelandic lamb soup. My parents got a seafood platter and a salmon ceviche.

This foodhall was in an old fish-saltery, so it was in an maritime industrial area, reminded me very min of fisherman's terminal in Seattle.

There were several other restaurants in the area, including an ice cream shop, and a cake shop, both of which we patronized. Salted caramel is a big thing here, which is great because it's my favorite sweet flavor nowadays. I got straight we all got salted caramel, my mom got black licorice in addition and Laura got vanilla. The good happy cows they got here to produce good ice cream. It prolly comes out of the udder as already ice cream given the ambient temperature around here.

After sauntering around the pier finishing our ice cream we dropped the car off, and the same attendant was just as nonchelant about checking us back in. Laura even asked if she was gonna inspect the car and the attendant said "nah, I trust you".

So far we've only been charged the €63.

We walked home, and napped, researching what to do for dinner.

Ultimately we settled on a quick close bite,

https://www.google.com/search?q=101+reykjavik+street+food&oq=101&aqs=chrome.0.69i59j69i57j0l2.1892j0j4&client=ms-android-verizon&sourceid=chrome-mobile&ie=UTF-8#istate=lrl:iv&lkt=LocalPoiReviews&rlimm=7939043340378079618

Their soups were solid, but go there for the fish and chips. It has no right to be so good. The batter is a lil spicy, and it clings to the fish well, but it's not too heavy. The fish (cod) itself is super soft and moist and has picked up the spice flavor somehow. It carries almost no fishy taste. We were debating stopping there again later in the trip.

And that wrapped up the day, we ate the cupcakes we brought home from the cake shop (caramel with salted caramel frosting and chocolate with salted caramel frosting, like I said salted caramel is all the rage - still not as good as Molly moons in Seattle...).

Went to sleep shortly thereafter.

Bloodfeuds, Big Churches and Brennvín

08052019

Day 1

Day 0 and day 1 kinda blend together, at this point I don't entirely remember what I said we did on Day 0 beyond fly.

Anyways, this was the actual day in Iceland. We landed very early, my parents flew in less than an hour after us, and had already arranged transport from the airport to the place we are staying. I don't think I've ever come out of customs/baggage claim to someone holding a sign with my name on it.

Despite the fact that there *was* a driver waiting for us, I completely missed it, because it's never happened before. Laura inevitably needed a coffee, so we stopped at the final little quickstop in the airport before you get to the parking lot, to grab coffee and some skyr. I had read about this prior to travelling here, and vaguely recalled having some last time I was here (hell I may have written about it). It was excellent.

It's kinda like Greek yogurt, in that it is thicker than more traditional yogurts, but not as inconsistent as curd cheese. I have gotten behind kefir and yogurt, so it's no surprise I like this so much. I lool forward to the hipster foodies to hop on the bandwagon so this stuff gets world wide attention. The market had matured locally enough that the major manufacturers make it with flavors. On this particular occasion we had blueberry, but they have all kinds of fruit and coffee, and chocolate, and creme brulee and probably anything else you could want. As far as flavor, it obvious tastes like whatever flavor you buy, but it's kinda like a gamey-er yogurt. Like if yogurt was made with goat/sheepsmilk.

Anyways we finished that just as my parents were coming through customs and they spotted us the same time they spotted the driver. We hugged and such and hopped in the van to get taken nearby our home for the week. My mother set the drop off location to the bus station described by the AirBnB hosts.

Realising it was like 0800 the place would certainly not be ready, and the previous guests were probably still sleeping we went to a local cafe to get out of the cold, and get into the range of some wifi.

After some time, and some pastries (I got a ham and cheese pocket, Laura got a spinach and feta thing, and my parents got smoked salmon sandwiches, everything was adequate, if I wasn't keeping a blog about what I ate/drank it would be nothing to write home about.

It still isnt late enough for us to reasonably get into the place so we went to find a bar in the immediate neighborhood. We ordered some fries (it's a thing here, fries covered in all kinds of stuff) and wait 15 min to order a beer cause they don't serve before 1100.

After another round of beers, it's well after 11 and we should be able to get into the Airbnb. No-go, key not in key box, place still a mess peeking in the window. It's cold, we have all our shit, we decide to go back to the bar and try to get wifi to call/email.

Fortunately, the barstaff clearly deal with tourists all the time, and provided a cellphone upon request to help us out.

Ultimately the host comes to help us get in and get the cleaning cats over to unfuck the mess precvious guests left.

Not at all a reflection of the host, but the place was pretty dirty, trash left places, half smoked (but clearly stubbed out) cigarette on the kitchen table. I get that Airbnb is super corporate now, but don't be an ass and leave huge messes, thats not cool.

we get in and dump our stuff, and head out to check out the Reykjavik Settlement Museum. This museum exists because back around 2000 someone was going to build a hotel on the spot, and while digging the foundation they found some relica of a bygone age. More investigation ultimately revealed the remains of a longhouse that had been inhabited back at the turn of the *last* millennium. It was around this ancient foundation that the rest of the exhibit was built.



That's a terrible picture and I'm sorry, I don't have a computer so I don't have a fair way to get pictures from my camera to the internet, sometimes Laura's camera will do some work and I'll get those here. But in that picture is the remnants of that longhouse. You can certainly clearly see the outline of the structure and see some of the interior walls. With prompting from all the multimedia displays within the rest of the exhibit you can make out the other parts of the house, the entryway, the stables (people kept some of their livestock in the house, for safety and warmth, and I bet convenience of fresh milk/eggs).

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Settlement_Exhibition

So besides this house being old, it's important because it corroborates the story in The Book of Settling and the Book of Icelanders. Which are appropriate titles for works which describe how Iceland was settled in the first place. Story goes:
Ingolfór Arnarson left the Norselands because he had some long standing beef with someone, he headed into the mid atlantic to an island that he heard a friend of a friend mention once, and when he finally found land he "threw his high seat pillars into the sea, determined to settle where they were found ashore". After admittedly not very much research I dunno what "high seat pillars" are, but they just be important, because ingolfór sent slaved out for three years to go find them. And where they were found he settled, and now stands Reykjavik. The rest of the story is crazy, involving siblings and murder and slaves, and Celts. I don't have the patience to write this all out on my phone, I swore last time I Resurrected this big I was gonna get a tablet cause this is terrible...I digress go read the wiki.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingólfr_Arnarson

After the museum, we walked around the area and checked out the Halgrímskirka, the big church you see in all the pictures of Iceland. Unfortunately the you're elevators were born all we could not get up top but we could walk around inside. It's an Icelandic Lutheran Church, which means it was pretty Spartan, and I think the maintenance meant just about everything was cleared away so it was kinda boring in there. Had a huge beautiful organ though.

I didn't learn much in the church, so here is the wiki.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallgrímskirkja

we came back to the now clean Airbnb and took a nap.

After finally rousing Laura, we decided to check out one of the food halls around here. Its a growing trend here, and elsewhere I spose we ate at a few of these types of places in Puerto Rico (oops never blogged about that trip). It's a congregation of smaller restaurants, very much like the food stalls in Singapore. In this case it was about a half dozen different restaurants all doing their own thing sharing space. We went to the Hlemmer food hall (which was actually across the street from the hostel we stayed at the last time we were in Iceland).

From one place we got lil Arancinis and tenderloin skewers, both were excellent. After that I got a Pair Smorrabrød (which is swedish, so I'll compare when I get there). This was really interesting, a thick slab of liver Patrick (the loaf-y kind not the spread-y kind), candied red cabbage, pickles, and bacon. I paired this with an akvavit spritz (akvavit, ginger liquer, lemon juice, Cardamom Bitters, club Soda).

Beyond that we got a grilled mushroom burger and coconut-carrot soup. Everything we ordered was great, the Smorrabrød would have been a little better with a bigger slice of bread as it was a lil dry.

We toddled home and promptly fell asleep.

Didn't see Santa....

Ok, let's see if I remember how to do this.

08052019

Day 0

Easy flight out of Seattle. We never had a night time. With flying out at 1550 local to Seattle, and arriving at 0600 local to Reykjavik, and traveling around the North Pole we never saw the sin actually set.

We were sitting on the wrong side of the plane, so we didn't get any pictures, but it was pretty neat.

While it seems like we should be travelling East to get to Iceland, we just kind of continuously flew North.

I'll post later today when we complete the day with what we did.