Iceland Day 1

Iceland Day One

I wasn’t used to flying on “real” airlines to faraway places. With a mom in Tampa and my home in Pittsburgh, most of my vacation days went to holiday visits. But with some strategic planning and creative use of sick days (cough cough), I finally booked a real airline to a real destination. Since this flight crossed the Atlantic, and I possess a special talent for not sleeping in strange places, I knew an overnight flight would demand some entertainment. Luckily, every seat had a TV. The selection? Excellent. The programming? Free. My TV? Broken. So, I turned to Audible instead. At some point, I think I fell asleep. Or maybe I dreamed that. It’s hard to say. You’d have to fall asleep to dream about falling asleep, but I didn’t want to overthink it and fry my brain.

This flight allowed passengers to pick their own seats, so I had no one to blame but myself. We chose row 9, blissfully unaware it doubled as the entrance row. After boarding early, we had to scrunch up like sardines while everyone sneaked past my gawky knees. This got even more awkward thanks to our rowmate—you’ve met him, he’s on every flight. He sat in the wrong seat and flat-out refused to admit it. Naturally, this led to a passive-aggressive standoff that felt like a game of airplane bingo.

The highlight of the flight? The flight attendant’s seat directly across from mine. We sat about five feet apart, locked in the world’s longest staring contest. Lucky for me, my girlfriend was passed out cold, completely wasting her perfectly functioning TV.

Now, I mentioned it was an overnight flight, but let me paint the picture more vividly. The flight left at 10 PM our time. It lasted six hours, with a two-hour leap forward in time zones. We landed at 6 AM their time. By then, I’d just finished a heated debate over seat ownership with Mr. Wrong Seat, the flight attendant was still staring into my soul, and my TV was still broken. Stellar start.

Here’s the kicker: we couldn’t check into our hotel until 4 PM. That’s Icelandic time, in case there’s any confusion. (I’m sure I was warned about this seven or eight times during planning, but who remembers?) So, our adventure began with a marathon of bouncing between coffee shops. If caffeine fueled the Icelandic economy that day, we were single-handedly responsible.

Welcome to Iceland.

With eight hours to kill and no home base, everything started to look interesting. “Oh hey, what’s that?!” It’s another coffee shop. Great! The goal wasn’t exactly to check in at 4 PM, but more like 2 PM. At 2 PM, we had a free walking tour scheduled, which would finally provide some much-needed assistance in our quest to kill time. The first stop was the hotel to drop off our luggage. They had a luggage storage room that they locked. Question mark. I hope they lock it. This was a huge help because lugging luggage is lame, but here’s the kicker. I planned to propose during this trip. This is immediately relevant because the ring was in my carry-on.

If you're ever interested in a destination proposal, don't freak out about the ring on the plane. Contrary to popular anxiety-related beliefs, you are in fact allowed to have rings on airplanes. Now, back to the legitimate anxiety. The ring was in my carry-on. I was leaving my carry-on with the hotel staff. By the transitive property, I was leaving the ring with the hotel staff. This is when I began preparing to kick my girlfriend out into the cold so I could give these people my best ‘guard this with your life’ speech.

But then they told me I’d be leaving all the baggage upstairs, unguarded, in a room with a plywood door. The door had a master lock, but who can trust those? Despite the objectively low risk for the ring's safety in this situation (in a country with one of the lowest crime rates in the world), it was the first time in the month or so I’d had it that it wasn’t hidden away in one of my special hiding places. It was tucked behind a canvas photo in our apartment. She would have never found it. Now, the ring was inside a pocket, inside a bigger pocket, in my winter jacket, inside my carry-on, inside a locked room, inside a hotel, in a country with one of the lowest crime rates in the world.

Uh-oh.

With the ring not actually at risk, we set off to kill time. The first stop was the Church of Reykjavik. The church is modeled after the basalt columns that can be seen at the Black Sand Beach (which we’ll be visiting in a few days!). It’s called Hallgrímskirkja, and while the church was finished in 1986, it has nothing to do with the Leif Ericsson statue standing out front. That statue predates the church by 56 years. It was a gift from the United States to celebrate Iceland’s 1000th anniversary of the first parliament. Still, it’s right outside the church. This is a good moment to mention that Iceland was the first country to establish a parliament, which is the basis for Thingvellir National Park (we’ll get there). Oh, and they filmed some of season four of Game of Thrones there. (WE WILL GET THERE.)

Back to the church. Iceland is the only country on record that has elected to become Christian. In all other cases, it’s either been a matter of personal freedom or some monarch stepping up and saying, “Hey, let’s all be Christian.” Iceland, however, took a vote and decided it would be mandatory for all children to be baptized Christian. The church has two and a half main points of interest. The first is the pipe organ with a whopping 5,275 pipes! For all you pipe organ enthusiasts, it also has 102 ranks and 72 stops. I’m not sure what any of those mean, but it sounds impressive. Also, this is where the expression “pulling out all the stops” comes from!

The second point of interest is the clock tower. As long as you’re not directly behind the minute hand (which made for an interesting artistic photo), you can see the whole city from its windows. The half-point of interest is the elevator ride up to the tower. It’s an 8-floor express ride, and apparently, no one’s ever heard of getting stuck in it because there’s absolutely no shame in piling into the car. It’s jam-packed for the 8-floor journey.

After the church, we made our way to the Sun Voyager, a monument dedicated to all the Vikings lost at sea. It’s this beautiful skeletal-looking ship, and at a certain hour, the sun lines up perfectly with it. Next up was the Harpa concert hall. The windows look like fish scales, and each one has 3 or 4 hexagonal panels that create a rainbow effect when the sun hits them. I don’t really understand the math behind it, but I know it looks expensive. Like, 150 million dollars expensive. And it was designed while Iceland was going through bankruptcy!

Time for a snack. Whale? Nope. I wasn’t participating in that one. Wait. Hold on. I know the whole world is against it, but the people of Iceland eat whale meat, and when in Iceland... If I’m in Iceland, I’m not above trying whale. She reads aloud, “Only tourists in Iceland eat whale. The locals find it to be a despicable practice.” Dang it. Well, anyway, it tasted kind of like steak-sushi. It had grill marks, but the inside was like raw fish. I need a beer to wash this down. The server brings it out, trips, and spills it all over me. She surprised everyone by saying, “Well, at least it didn’t get on your food.” You got me there. I guess I’ll just freeze to death from beer-hypothermia.

This is what happens when you don’t have to tip. There’s no tipping in Iceland. This is the result. Unrelated, but I need more beer. At a different place. One where the servers have equilibrium. But now, it’s time for the tour!

The tour kicked off with a meet-up outside Iceland’s current House of Parliament—not the OG from the 900s. This spot famously hosted 8% of Iceland’s population (so, about six people) when they gathered to protest their prime minister after the Panama Papers leak. From there, we roamed Reykjavik with a local guide, who unraveled the mysteries of everything we’d been staring at for hours. With zero sleep and eight cups of coffee powering us, we absorbed what we could.

Between sightseeing and surviving caffeine tremors, we picked up gems like this: every wool product in Iceland must be certified by the Hand Knitted Association of Iceland. Yes, that’s a real thing. It’s like a wool mafia crossed with a hyper-vigilant HOA. We also got a whirlwind history lesson—our one shot, given that 90% of the trip was a choose-your-own-adventure. Iceland snagged independence from Denmark during World War II, with a cheeky assist from the United States. The deal? Iceland let the U.S. set up a base there, provided Uncle Sam backed their independence play. The U.S. agreed, and Iceland promptly declared independence, essentially telling Denmark, “We’ve got 55,000 U.S. troops here—do something about it.” Denmark chose not to RSVP.

Speaking of those troops, the U.S. brought 55,000 of them to a country with a total population of 110,000. Quick math reveals this matched the entire male population of Iceland. Unsurprisingly, this caused a little tension, which Icelandic men still refer to, ominously, as The Situation.

We sniffed out a happy hour because, let’s be honest, who can afford full-priced beer in Iceland? The bar’s specials included two options: Bjor and Vin. Feeling worldly, I confidently ordered, “One Bjor for me, and my lady will take the Vin.” Turns out, that’s Icelandic for “the beer” and “the wine.” Not a beer or some wine—the beer and the wine. There were approximately a million options for both. Once the bartender stopped laughing and took pity on us, we managed to get some drinks and ride it out until it was hot dog time.

We hit the hot dog stand. Yes, the stand—you don’t mess with knock-offs here. Iceland has two things that sound too ridiculous to be true. The first is these hot dogs. They’re a lamb-beef hybrid, like gyro meat’s overachieving cousin. They’re topped with five mysterious ingredients I didn’t dare question. One seemed to be onions, another something crunchy, and the rest were colorful sauces of identical consistency but unknown origin. Night one, I inhaled four. Night two, I polished off four and a half. The half wasn’t voluntary—my soon-to-be-betrothed pulled the classic “Can I have a bite?” move. Half a hot dog later, I was left questioning my choices.

These hot dogs are famous. Not like “Primanti Bros. in Pittsburgh” famous. Properly famous. There’s a political cartoon of Bill Clinton scarfing one down and even a Kardashians episode featuring them. I’m pretty sure eating one legally makes you Icelandic.

Properly fueled by beer and questionable hot dogs, we ventured into the nightlife. I had a list of American-style establishments I wanted to check out, but someone (cough future wife cough) vetoed most of them after I announced my plan to critique their lack of authenticity. I did manage to drag us to the Big Lebowski-themed bar. Picture this: a projector loops The Big Lebowski, and for $20, you can spin a wheel to win... something. Options ranged from a glorious six-pack (a steal at Icelandic beer prices) to absolutely nothing. Yes, you could drop $20 to lose at gambling and still feel accomplished. What a rush. It beats traversing the Golden Circle—though we saved that for tomorrow.