First thing of the day was to post some postcards.
Got the street wrong initially, but it turns out that Pósthússtræti means pretty much what it looks like, and connected to the parallel street where the post office lives.
They had one of the ‘take a number’ systems, which I’ve not used since … Perth, I think. They had one at the diver licencing centre, and at the place you signed up for medical stuff.
Helped a couple of folks from the USA, who’d arrived at sparrowsfart, lug their suitcases up eleventy-billion steps, and took the opportunity to photograph the stairwell.
My one scheduled thing of the day was also my last tourist thing; A walking tour of Reykjavik, by the folks from CityWalk, guided by Eiríkur.
It was a good tour, and runs on the ‘Pay What You Want’ model, with an added ‘In whatever currency you like’ option to catch the unprepared tourist. By parts historical, cultural, and comedic, the ‘any questions’ sessions veered steadily further away from what we were looking at & into general Icelandic society & culture.
I didn’t know that Iceland transitioned from being a sovereign state joined with Denmark to being an independent republic during WW2, when Denmark was under Nazi occupation and there wasn’t a damn thing they could do about it.
Well worth it, I think.
And that’s about it.
I checked in on the gear box while I was finishing up & donating any leftover food, and Little Red lasted less than 24 hours before being nabbed.
Showered, packed my bags, and shifted them down to the lobby in the evening.
I actually had this whole night booked, thanks to not paying quite enough attention to how long it’d take to get to the airport, how far in advance they suggest you get there, and what time the flight left.
Sleeping in the room would have involved getting up no later than 0300, which seems obnoxious; It’s a pointless amount of sleep, particularly if you’re me, and it’s a marvelous way to wake everyone else up as you rummage around trying to find all of your stuff.
I’ve done the 0600 variant (in San Francisco), but this … was too early, so I shifted down to the lobby and hung out there for a few hours.
Ended up chatting with some folks¹ the next table over, who’d been horrified to discover that everyone else in their room was asleep at 8pm, and had no interest in the worryingly lage bottle of duty-free vodka. This isn’t a party hostel, but there are some limits to how far in the other direction it’s reasonable to go, and lights out at 2000h is too damn far.
¹ A nurse from Ireland, and a student from Canada
Went for a midnight wander through Reykjavik, mostly to see what was happening.
Not much, though I did get a somewhat creepy picture of Sólfar.
And Harpa, the concert hall/conference centre, looking … alien?
After that, I just loitered in the lobby, chatted to the lady on the night desk about travel in general and Iceland in particular.
She described some aspects of the language which seem mindbogglingly complex, to do with conjugations based on gender, numbers up to four, and something to do with the type of verb which I really didn’t understand.
The bus turned up somewhere between 0200 & 0230, as expected, and collected a few others along the way, including;
- A guy from Albany, NY, who was really into travel and finding out about new places and people, and who I think was running away to Paris to avoid the US election.
- An extremely drunk guy from Kazakhstan who seemed to have an entourage to see him off at the shuttlebus stop, who thought I was a Viking.
Big Red apparently blended in with the luggage bay lining of the shuttlebus, and nearly got left behind; If I hadn’t checked, …
Dunk-Kazahk passed out on the bus on the way to the airport, and we had to take turns stopping him from collapsing out into the aisle & the seat opposite on the sharper turns. Then we couldn’t wake him at the airport.
The driver managed it, mostly by being unconcerned about shaking him awake; If that hadn’t worked, I fully expected the next move to be dragging him out by his heels & dropping him in a puddle.
No idea whether he made it onto his plane, or even through passport control.
I wouldn’t have let him into a taxi in that condition, let alone an aircraft – Booze and altitude do not mix well, as any number of “air rage” and other incidents have shown.
This is vaguely relevant, but only vaguely – Take A Picture
The airport happened in an airport-like manner.
Got my tax refund for the jacket, so thank you very much Iceland.
There was a mob of English Schoolchildren on some sort of trip who more or less kept pace with me the whole way through, from Passport Control at Keflavik to the elevators at Gatwick.
I take back every nasty thing I thought about the French group in the hostel, and offer my apologies, because this mob blocked every hallway and space they were in. They all made it to the UK, so I’m guessing that their chaperone’s repeated reminders not to lose or put down their boarding passes and passports actually made an impression.
I nodded off repeatedly while waiting at the gate, and ended up joining the line just to stay on my feet so that I’d stay awake.
Pretty sure I fell asleep during taxiing, as it’s the last thing I can solidly remember, and my next view was of this;
I’m guessing I missed the first couple of hours of the flight.
Woke up again just before touchdown, and had a moment of “Oh Hey, that’s the runway” when I opened my eyes.
The only impediment to getting through the airport was the school group, one of whom didn’t understand that “EU Passports Only” means that you need to go to the other line if you’re not on an EU passport.
Don’t think their chaperone assembling them right in the way of the only access to any passport control machines or lines particularly endeared them to the officials; It certainly didn’t impress me.
Finding the hotel was easy, and I got to take a little train between the terminals to get there.
Might just be that hotel, or it might be my newly-accrued Silver Status on the Hilton loyalty system, but the sucking-up was noticeable.
Checked in, had a shower, got some lunch (during which I kept dozing off and waking up with a start, which startled the server), and did a lot of sleeping.
