Iceland, Day 1: The adventure begins

My flight was supposed to leave at 2045, but we ended up leaving BWI a half-hour late. We were never given a reason. It was actually fine by me, as I had about 11.5 hours to kill in Reykjavík until A arrived from Norway.

We flew over on a 757-200, which has a three-and-three seating setup. Thankfully I was in a row of seats all to myself, although I found out that I'm too tall to take advantage of them when I tried to lay down to sleep. So instead I sat up and watched the movie, 1982's Tootsie. They also showed the "Vitameatavegamin" episode of I Love Lucy. Nothing but cutting-edge entertainment on Icelandair, folks.

I arrived at Keflavík around 0700 GMT, only to find that I had to go through security again, after sitting on a plane for 6 hours. It seemed a bit silly to me, so I flat out asked a screener "Why are we doing this again, since we just did it before we got on the plane?" He responded with "Because we don't trust other countries' security procedures." Honest, but frankly a little insulting.

Sunrise over the lava floes

After a bit of confusion regarding the Arrivals signage (and the lack thereof), I picked up my luggage and made my way to the Flybus (airport shuttle). I got my round-trip ticket (which saved me a little bit of kronur), and then rode past the snow- and moss-covered lava fields on my way into Reykjavík. I got to watch the sun rise over the distant mountains, which was quite pretty. I'm sure I failed to appreciate it entirely because I was pretty tired, but it was still quite something.

After arriving at the Icelandair Nordica Hotel, I was given the keys to a very nice room on the fourth floor. Sadly, it was a smoking room and I had to return the keys for another room, this time non-smoking and on the third floor. It wasn't as good as the first room, but in many ways it was preferable. It was weird, though. The third floor was a non-smoking floor, yet they had this sort of phone-boothesque structure near the elevator where people could smoke. It kind of reminded me a bit of the Cone of Silence in some ways, but maybe that's just me.

The view from the better room

I crashed and burned for a little while, catching about two hours' sleep. Before I conked out, though, I turned on the TV. Let's just say you shouldn't go to Iceland if you're a TV junkie. However, on one of the Icelandic channels, they kept playing the same four music videos over and over. I am now the owner of the latest Robbie Williams track, "She's Madonna." When I was there, I couldn't figure out why I liked it. I just discovered that the Pet Shop Boys helped it along. That'll do it. (The audio clip doesn't really do the track justice, so check out the video here before you accuse me of having bad taste in pop music...)

After a quick nap, I set out to visit the Reykjavík Art Museum: Kjarvalsstaðir. Even better, the guidebooks told me that the museum had no entry fees on Mondays. So I set out from the hotel, only to find out that the city of Reykjavík (along with rest of Iceland, I would discover later) does not really do anything to get rid of ice on the sidewalks. The streets were bone dry, but the sidewalks were a fricking skating rink. Lots of little shuffle-stepping, trying not to become a casualty on my first day in the country. Before one can visit an art museum on limited sleep, one must fortify oneself. I did so at Reykjavík's own Ruby Tuesday. They haven't gone all upscale like the ones in the States, so it was a bit jarring yet endearingly familiar. Ordinarily I would have skipped the U.S. chain restaurant when traveling outside the states, but my Icelandic is nominal at best, and I was too tired to try anything more exotic. So sue me.

A view along the way

After a pretty decent burger, I worked my way to the museum, only to find out that the guidebook was wrong. Free admission day is now Thursday. I showed the guidebook to the woman at the desk, and she said she would get in touch with their marketing department to have it corrected in the next edition. Fat lot of good that did me 500 kronur later. The works on display were decent, and there was an installation dealing with waterfalls that I quite enjoyed. The fatigue was catching up to me, though, given the jet lag and shuffle stepping, so I decided to call it a day around 1500. I began working my way back to the hotel, but first I needed to stop and pick up some provisions (Kleenex, water, Hob Nobs, etc.). I nearly killed myself sliding down a stairway, but thankfully some spirited flailing and a vise-like grip on the railing saved me from face-planting.

There's not much more to report for Day 1. A arrived around 2000, and that's all I have to say about that. (I will mention that she brought me Norwegian chocolate...)