So apparently I had a lot of fun last night as I woke up badly hung over. I didn’t feel bad going to bed, but I guess what they say about mixing beer, wine and liquor is true. Sigh. And today’s the first day of getting into port for nearly a week, so a lovely time to feel like crap. Lots of water and juice, food and ibuprofen later, I was feeling adequate.
Finally we could see land, and off on the horizon, I could make out something blocky that I thought was an offshore oil rig. A check through the binoculars proved otherwise. It was a humongous iceberg.
View from the balcony – day 5
We spied this curious structure on the way in. It looked to me that a corner of the building had collapsed.
Yoiks!
As it turns out, it’s the new Opera House, and as our taxi driver informed us with a grunt, designed by a Dane.
As we neared the dock, the harbor pilot came on board via a tug. I dug out my radio scanner, and started listening to the whole operation of getting a large ship sideways into a snug dock. Geek that I am, it was quite fascinating, with only 20 meters to spare on either side. For a ship this size, that sounds pretty tight to me. I even got a heads up that we were cleared to leave prior to the announcement.
So we beat feet outta here with Steve and April, anxious to see something other than the ship. We were a fair ways from town, so a $20 taxi ride took care of that (vs. a $10/person shuttle bus each way). We got dropped on a major shopping area near the town center and wandered around for a bit. The first thing that struck us was everything was very expensive. I guess that’s a byproduct of being on an isolated island. The other thing we noticed was most everyone was dressed in high fashion. It was hard to imagine how anyone can afford to live here.
Laugavegur
One store had some incredible Icelandic wool sweaters (being knitted on site), the kind that would keep you toasty in 20 below windy weather. Yeah, they weren’t cheap, but to me that price was reasonable for what you get. Steve talked April into getting one, and I’m sure she’ll be loving it this winter. I was tempted.
I got thirsty, so we hit a pub for a one and done, a Viking draught.
First one of the day
So we walked more and tried to find a place to eat, finally settling on a pub with decent enough food, but confusion on our parts as to the customs. Ah well, not like they’ll see us again. Their pints are like 20 oz. here, and I happened to hit the 2 for 1 Gull special, so there was two down the hatch. The weather the whole time was upper 50’s to low 60’s with spotty showers. The sun came out once for about 20 seconds, Neesh says otherwise. We’re still discussing the meaning of “out.”
And then as we left, we found my Mecca. “Micro Bar.” And it was exactly what I had hoped it would be, microbrews! In fact, the stout that I had, which was hands down the finest I’ve ever had, was made by the proprietor. But then I noticed a bottle of Gueze, some Rauchbier, etc. etc. etc. Bottom line, I got schnockered and it was about 8:00 when I had to go back to the ship. This is my self-defense mechanism against getting too smashed – I get sleepy. So much apologies, and I crashed and crashed hard. For 12 hours. Come to find out Steve and April got dinner (for free obviously) on the ship and went back in to listen to some music, so no issues there.
Fortunately, having only drank beer, and having slept until 9 AM, I was feeling good, considering, the next day. We decided to go the mellow route and check out one of the malls, figuring it would open around noon, being Sunday. We asked one of the dudes at the port, oh yes, it’s open, so we took a taxi down there, arriving to a nearly empty mall and closed shops, save for the grocery store.
Kringland Shopping Center
We found a sign that said it opened at 1 PM, so we had an hour to kill. Some killer doughnuts from the store (very reminiscent of Janet’s in Concord), and then we had lunch at a nice sit down restaurant with a great waiter. I was going to hold off on any more beer until Neesh noticed this on the menu.
Anything named Black Death can’t be all bad, right?
It was quite good, actually, and only 5.9% ABV. I was worried it was going to be like 12 or something. Oh, the pizza rocked too.
Aghast at the prices yet again, I managed to find a book of one of the Icelandic sagas, and Neesh found some jewelry as we tried to use up all our Kronas. I only realized later that our next stop is in (drum roll…) Iceland! Dummy. Oh well, do it again.
Dinner, and a nursed beer after that, I hit the wall again. We were both just dead tired, but we managed to watch the end of a movie Neesh started that morning. Fine day overall. We’ll be sailing out at 1:00 tomorrow, but no plans to go back in. It was fun, but an expensive stop, but the Icelandic people were just wonderfully helpful, love to laugh, and everyone seems to speak English here nearly flawlessly.
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