Icelanding

You get off an airplane and then what do you do? Most of us go use the restroom. So, that is what we did when we arrived at the airport in Iceland. And that, is how Iceland immediately impresses you. It's by far the most posh restroom I have ever been to. Each bathroom stall is literally the same size of the bathroom in my previous apartment (sans tub). It's clean, it's roomy, it has a Dyson Air Blade hand dryer built into the faucet! It's clearly impressed me so much that I am blogging about it. Henceforth I will think, it's nice, but not Dyson Air Blade-built-into-the-faucet-nice. Okay, really, now I can move on.

The amazing Dyson Air Blade Faucet 

The bathroom stalls

It was a bit of a shock to the system to go from 95 degrees and humidity to 52 and chilly (yeah, I know I am a weather-wuss and a native Californian); like “wintertime in San Francisco”. We stayed in Reykjavik, the capital, for 3 nights, walking all over and sight-seeing. 

Naturally, we stopped by the Icelandic Phallological Museum, or as Joel likes to call it, the Dick Museum. 

We took a cool walking tour where I learned that there are 300,000 Icelanders and last year they received 1 million visitors; this explains a lot to me. You see, I had heard Icelanders were friendly but that was not the impression I got, I got a lot of grimaces. It makes sense though, the country does not have the infrastructure to deal with the massive boom of tourism and so an Icelander probably has to deal with a lot of tourism issues: bad driving, over-crowding, litter, urination and defecation (it's a serious issue), etc. Interestingly, the Icelandic crash is what allowed the world to be able to afford visiting and at the same time tourism has helped the economy out.

So, I spent too much time in Iceland being hangry (angry due to hunger) because although Iceland is less expensive than 7 years ago, it is still the most expensive place I've ever been. It's the first destination on our trip and I was worried about overspending. We paid $3 for a mediocre orange, but fruit was half the price once you got out of the capital. We didn't try any of the well-known Icelandic foods that appear in travel magazines/shows like fermented shark, puffin, whale, etc. But, we did go to a famous hot-dog place that the locals love...it was good, different, a bit sweet. We didn't eat anything amazing, which makes sense, we weren't willing to pay for anything amazing.

One of the highlights of Reykjavik for me was going to Hallgrimskirkja. It's epic looking while being very simple and lacking in ornamentation. 

While we were there the organist was practicing and it was so unlike anything I've ever heard being played in a church, it was awesome! I don't even know how to describe it except as experimental and whimsical.

Outside of Reykjavik we only had the chance to visit the southwest of the island, and the pictures do it now justice. Iceland is beautiful, can't say it any better than that. In other news, Joel can pass for an Icelander. Really, he walks up to a counter and they start speaking to him in Icelandic sometimes. This will come as a shock to you, but this never happened to me. Instead lots of people just openly stared at me, which makes sense, being the only dark-skinned Asian around so I tend to stick out. Bottom line, I hope we come back soon to see the rest of the island.

Observations:

• People outside of city center just leave their apartments unlocked. Trust, imagine that.
• Icelanders loooove KFC. It's so busy there that they have a ticket number system. (We ate there because it was cheap, and no, I don't feel guilty about it. On the downside, they don't serve biscuits.)
• City bus drivers play music or talk radio while driving.
• It's “take away” not “take out”
• Icelanders are very proud of their viking roots
• Iceland, in general, smells sulfuric (a bit like rotten eggs).   

To view the hundreds of photos we took, go here:

https://flic.kr/s/aHskfoqnG2