{"id":2448,"date":"2016-10-20T23:55:00","date_gmt":"2016-10-20T22:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hoarde.net\/craigblog\/?p=2448"},"modified":"2016-10-22T20:54:24","modified_gmt":"2016-10-22T19:54:24","slug":"iceland-day-zero-the-land-of-the-ice-and-snow-and-eye-watering-prices","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hoarde.net\/craigblog\/?p=2448","title":{"rendered":"Iceland Day Zero – The Land Of The Ice And Snow And Eye-Watering Prices"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post started out more negatively than I’d like, so I’m mixing it up a bit in the hope <\/b>that this will reduce that a bit.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’m staying at the Reykjavik Downtown Hostel, which conveniently enough is actually downtown, and which seems like a nice place.<\/p>\n

My first afternoon here, during the time I was awake, there was a … Class? Workshop? … on making bags from old t-shirts, as part of a reuse & recycle programme the hostel is a part of.<\/p>\n

This goes as far as the bathroom in the hostel reception\/cafe, which had a notice about Moon Cups, going into some detail & menting that they’re available for purchase at reception.
\nThey’re very much into reducing waste. There are free food boxes in the kitchen for anything left over, so there’s a lot of pasta, a lot of rice, a variety of cereals, and a phenomenal amount of salt.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

I’ve seen book swap shelves at other hostels (San Francisco & Rotorua spring to mind) <\/i>, though this is the first time I’ve seen then divided by language. Could maybe be tempted by the Dark Angel tie-in novel, in exchange for my J.G.Ballard collection.<\/p>\n

There’s also a gear swap box, which seems to have a solid layer of camping gas cannisters.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

You can’t take fuel cannisters on a plane, so that part makes sense to me. The jandals, on the other hand, … I got nothing, and those weren’t the only pair.<\/p>\n

How do you end up with surplus jandals in Iceland? The country actually has ‘ice’ in the name, which should be an indication that beachwear isn’t going to cut it.<\/i><\/p>\n

The flight was, for the most part, horrible. I slept badly the night before the flight, which is standard for me, and worse on<\/i> the flight, which is also annoyingly familiar, so … That wasn’t fun.<\/p>\n

Takeoff was very rough, to the extent that I was wondering whether there was an actual problem. Turns out there wasn’t a problem, just Chicago providing a Windy City farewell, but it left me rattled, and that stuck around for most of the rest of the flight. Re-watched “Warm Bodies”, so it’s not like the whole<\/b> trip was horrible.<\/p>\n

Got to Iceland roughly when we were scheduled (the plane was late getting to Chicago, so we departed late) <\/i>, and getting through immigration was a simple process thanks to my shiny UK passport. Going to have to enjoy that <\/b>while I can.<\/p>\n

It was still dark outside, and I was starting to feel the dehydration and lack of sleep kick in, so I bought the biggest bottle of water I could find and drank it while the sky turned grey & the sun came up. The vague plan was to get a bus to the hostel once the sun came up, so that I could see the view.<\/p>\n

Naturally, I fell asleep on the bus.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Still, I made it to the bus terminal, and then onto a smaller bus to get to my hostel, as the bigger vehicles won’t fit down the streets.<\/p>\n

Something I’ve noticed on some <\/b>long flights is that I get a sort of “travel hangover” in the days following. Headaches, odd fever spikes, and generally feeling ill. It happened in London, but I didn’t notice it in Chicago, and who could possibly notice a fever in Dubai.<\/p>\n

Well, it happened here too, but this time I was expecting it, and made sure to have no plans for the first few days.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There was no way I’d be able to get into my room\/bed at 10am, but I did stash Big Red and hang out, by which I mean sleep, in the lobby\/cafe. I didn’t go for lying down on the benches, as some other folk did, mostly because they’d grabbed the ones that weren’t a massive inconvenience for patrons.<\/p>\n

After a while, the reception folks gave us access to the guest kitchen & the wee lounge upstairs, because it’d be a more comfortable place to sleep. And possibly so that we’d get the hell out of their nice lobby.<\/p>\n

There was already someone crashed out on the sofa, but there was a comfy chair, and I got in a couple of hours of much-needed sleep until check-in. When I got to my room, there was already someone sleeping there. (She’d also arrived that day, but managed to convince them to let her get in early)<\/i><\/p>\n

Didn’t do much for the rest of the day. Hung out in the lobby cafe, listened to some folks making bags from t-shirts and talking about sustainability issues & gear recycling, that sort of thing.<\/p>\n

Roommates turned out to be a (formerly sleeping like the dead)\u00a0<\/em>woman from Wales, here on very much a spur of the moment trip with a monumentally cheap flight deal, and a guy from San Francisco who was finishing up his trip, having already done a bunch of sightseeing up North.<\/p>\n

Someone arrived at around midnight, and did a pretty good job of being quiet as he located his bed, more or less figured out how the duvet worked, and got into a top bunk without turning on the light.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This post started out more negatively than I’d like, so I’m mixing it up a bit in the hope that this will reduce that a bit. I’m staying at the Reykjavik Downtown Hostel, which conveniently enough is actually downtown, and which seems like a nice place. My first afternoon here, during the time I was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2448","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-it-can-be-fun-to-run-away"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3O6N9-Du","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hoarde.net\/craigblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2448","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hoarde.net\/craigblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hoarde.net\/craigblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hoarde.net\/craigblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hoarde.net\/craigblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2448"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/hoarde.net\/craigblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2448\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2469,"href":"https:\/\/hoarde.net\/craigblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2448\/revisions\/2469"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hoarde.net\/craigblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2448"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hoarde.net\/craigblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2448"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hoarde.net\/craigblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2448"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}