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.
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