Ugh. Maybe 10 minutes of sleep on that final leg. Not altogether at once, either. It was just the wrong time for me to be flying, an inexplicably too short 5 hour trip to enable me to get to sleep for an extended period of time, and the seats on that Delta 757 were incredibly uncomfortable.
All of this is to say that we landed in Iceland with me more Frozen Caveman Cro-magnon and less rational, understanding homo sapien. On top of this, I withdrew WAY too many Icelandic Kroner from the ATM. I assumed I would want the maximum figure on the screen and clicked that, hoping to avoid future ATM fees and incur but one foreign currency exchange. But apparently the top figure on the ATM is an OBSCENE amount of kroner. We’re trying to spend the cash whenever possible and ignore ever using our credit cards but holy schnikes did I screw this up.
The weird FlyBus that took us from KEF to our hotel had us transfer from one large coach bus to a smaller minibus at the city center. All well and good but I don’t know if it was a language shortcoming on my part or a short fuse due to sleep deprivation. Whatever the case, I couldn’t figure out what the transport company wanted me to do and I was sadly and definitively a bit of the ugly American.
Laura at the desk of the Hotel Central Plaza told us our room wasn’t quite ready at 9:45 AM when we showed. Perfectly understandable since check-in doesn’t officially begin until 2 PM. We wandered around the city of Reykjavik; it’s small for a capital city… even if it IS the northernmost capital in the world.
For lunch I had the fish of the day, assuming that if I’m in Iceland I should embrace the seafood proximity and quality. Char with carrot puree.
Ambling back to the hotel, we sought refuge in one corner of the lobby as a workman sanded, buffed, polished and just generally stirred up dust in a maddeningly screeching manner. It wasn’t enough to quiet the sounds nor to prevent the hacking coughs… but Laura rescued us, rushing our hotel room into readiness and getting us all checked in.
We met up with Mari Mar, founder and current tour leader for TravellingFit. She gave Mom and me our commemorative shirts and jackets which should prove useful on race day Saturday. We were on our own for the evening so we set off in another direction from the hotel to see what was out there. What we found was this:
If the Easter Bunny lives on Easter Island, then it makes sense that Icelandic Santa would leave in Iceland:
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The Lebowski Bar *sounded* neat and *supposedly* featured an attention to detail to rival the greatest Cohen Brothers set decorators’ afficonado. I never loved The Big Lebowski (1998) but even I know there should’ve been a rug to tie the room together.
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Just up the street from the Lebowski Bar? The Chuck Norris Grill.
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Other sights to see in the land of ice:
- Selfie with Polar Bear
- Not Marvel’s Pick.
- Hallgrímskirkja, a Lutheran parish church, and the sixth tallest architectural structure in Iceland. It also features a Leif Erikson statue.
- Signs, signs, everywhere are signs:
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And before retreating to our room, the day a blur of half realized dreams and waking hallucinations, we dined at Uno, a stone’s throw from our hotel.
I ate too much, slept too little, and ran not at all. I’ve set my alarm for an early wakeup in the hopes of getting a few training miles on my soles but that could prove to be a fool’s quest worthy of Don Quixote. Tomorrow is our city tour, a 5 hour excursion capped with drinks and dinner at a family run restaurant.
One thing’s for certain — I may go broke as everything is expensive here in Reykjavik, but I definitely won’t go hungry.