Another roll of photographs from Iceland, featuring an early morning stroll around the deserted city center and then more randomness while walking a winding path in the general direction of the office.

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I managed to get to sleep around 6 in the afternoon yesterday, meaning I sprung awake today at 3 AM. Not ideal, but at least I’ll be functional during the morning. It also gave me the unique opportunity to poke around the city in the wee hours, when no other sober, sane soul is out on the streets.

Allow me first to confirm a nasty rumor about Iceland’s hot water. Yes, it does have the distinctly lovely odor of sulphur. Yes, this means that a shower smells like the restroom of a burrito joint on two-for-one day. Fortunately, the scent doesn’t seem to cling too much, and Icelandic soaps seem to be perfumed to cover up any remaining traces of pungency. I’ll still probably pick up some cologne somewhere, just in case I’ve been obliviously walking around smelling like a latrine for the past 36 hours.

After my stinkbath, I suited up and headed out in search of brekkie around 3:30 in the morning. The helpful night clerk pointed out that no restaurant was open at the moment - although there were a few pubs still serving - but there was the Icelandic equivalent of a 7-11 convenience mart down the street, called “24″. I can only presume the store’s purpose was to defeat terrorism by feeding hungry Americans in the dead of night.

Once in the store, I picked up a tub of skyr, a bottle of Toppur - Icelandic soda water, bottled by the omnipresent Coca-Cola Company - and a curry-flavored Pot Noodle. What I forgot to pick up was hot water for my Pot Noodle or a spoon for my skyr. Oops. I did, however, find the world’s greatest tinfoil.

Sweet.

I ended up munching on my skyr using the foil lid as an impromptu spoon while sitting on a park bench under the statue of Ingólfur Arnarson in Arnarhóll, a public park centered around the aforementioned statue. It rests at the top of a small hill, and the benches there provide a damn nice view of the downtown area against a backdrop of fluffy clouds and a golden western horizon. I think the sun was just peeking up over it as I broke my fast.

Heading back down into the city, I wandered randomly around the streets a bit, looking at the various statues that are sprinkled liberally throughout the downtown area. I honestly have no idea who most of them were, since any sign that existed was in Icelandic, and the gray, flat light wasn’t particularly conducive to good photography. I’ll try to get some decent shots later on, though, hopefully before I post a link to the day’s photo gallery.

I’ve put up some photos I took this morning while arriving in town, and also some from a brisk afternoon stroll. I’ve been up for nearly 30 hours straight now, but it was just too nice outside to pass up the opportunity to see a bit of the city.

And yes, there was a minor earthquake here in the early afternoon. It hit while I was in the shower. Now I’m just hoping we don’t get a volcanic eruption while I’m catching some shut-eye, as I’m liable to sleep right through it.

Photo thumbs and links after the jump.

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I didn’t sleep a wink on the plane over. I’m not quite sure why. IcelandAir is, by any standards, at least a good airline. The seats were a bit narrower than Delta’s, but there was more legroom. Perfect for me, although some of the wider-assed travelers near me were audibly less than amused. I’m guessing it’s either due to the constant grousing and shouting by the half-deaf octogenarian tour group that filled the rear half of the plane, or the adrenaline rush of finally fucking going to Iceland, a moment I’ve been lusting after like an adolescent peering into his first nudie mag.

Around 4 AM, Iceland time, I start seeing the sun rise over the north Atlantic. By 5, it’s up fully and I can see the featureless ocean below. There’s more than an hour left in the flight and my adrenals are already pumping hard.

Landing in Keflavik is an intriguing experience. As you approach, you’ll see nothing but water for miles and miles, almost entirely obscured by a fluffy marine layer. Diving into the soup, you’ll emerge and still witness nothing solid for a good ten minutes. Then, just before wheeling about, your first glimpse of Icelandic soil: a small, black promonitory jutting out into the steel-blue frigidity that surrounds this island nation. Then, all of a sudden, that hard-edged black rock is everywhere, dotted with a few red-roofed hangars, and you’re on the ground.

Deplaning into the bracing breezes of the silvery dawn, I found myself herded through the most perfunctory customs check I’ve encountered so far. A simple metal detector check, without the customary American removal of shoes I’ve come to detest. Then, “How long are you in Europe?” “Three weeks.” “All in Iceland?” “Yes.” Stamp. “Have a nice stay.”

Downstairs, the duty free shop is easily the size of the entire baggage claim area, and then some. I, foolishly, did not avail myself, having far too much luggage already. Out through customs, nothing to declare, I get an eagle’s stare from the customs attendants – after all, I’m one man walking around with 90 pounds of baggage. The total cubic-meterage of my things probably exceeds that of my own person. Walking past them, I can see only one thing in my future: rubber gloves pulled tight over frozen Nordic hands, probing anatomical areas Man Was Not Meant to Know.

Fortunately, they instead pull aside a musician walking in front of me. Rather lucky on my part and I’m immediately whisked into a car by Addi, an affable Icelandic driver. He points out a few landmarks on the way to Reykjavík and tells me about Iceland’s labor shortage as he tries to figure out whether I’m supposed to go to a hotel (and which hotel it is that I’m destined for) or to Headquarters.

After several attempts to get in contact with someone local, I’m informed that the choice is mine – go to the hotel, which probably doesn’t have my room ready yet, or head for HQ, where there is breakfast and coffee.
It’s an easy choice. Coffee wins. So here I sit, typing up the last few hours, sipping some espresso to supplement whatever choice cocktails my body has seen fit to dump in my blood and having an Icelandic breakfast. In this case, it’s a little tub of skyr (“með vanilla”), which is a sort of Icelandic cheese-yogurt hybrid. It’s actually quite pleasant and mild

My next task is to figure out how to get a shower, I suppose.

So sorry for the lack of content during this month of May. Between work and travel, I’ve had barely a moment to upgrade WordPress (again!) and insert more anti-spam plugins into the restless machinery that drives this site forward.

However, I’ve finally gotten some time to start writing up the Moroccan Chronicles, which shall begin appearing - backdated for my convenience - over the next few days. I’ll try to get them all up before the Next Big Thing hits.

As it turns out, it will hit on Wednesday night. I’ll be going up for a month-long visit to Reykjavík, and I’ve finally remedied my cameralessness, so I promise the introduction of photography. Sobriety, however, is not guaranteed.

I awake to a delightful sunrise over the North Atlantic. The cheap sports watch on my wrist indicates that it’s about 04:30 local time. It seems the drunken revelry has taken its toll - the main cabin is eerily and, judging from my last period of significant wakefulness, unusually silent, save for the noisome drone of Flight itself.

We’re a few hundred miles off Ireland when the cabin crew rattles into action again, rolling my nemesis, Kneebane the Beverage Cart, down the aisle with tins of breakfast. People jolt awake at the prospect of “food” and I receive my tray with only mild trepidation. A granola bar, a microwaved and flattened croissant and a little plastic bowl of FCOJ. Delightful. At least I’ll be hungry in Britain itself.

But soon we land in Merrie Olde England! Oh, finally, European soil! My natural impatience voltrons with neophilic excitement to form an incredible adrenaline rush that has me almost literally bouncing off the walls, straight up until we get to Passport Control. The walk there, I’m glued to the windows on the walkways. The sun is just peeking out of a cloud, and around us are things familiar but yet subtly alien.
“Lorries.” “Transit.”

Fortuitously, Gatwick is somewhat bare at 6 AM, and so immigration is efficient and rapid. My particular processing agent looks strangely like a shorter, older Ben Croshaw, without the sweet hat. He’s just as bitter as well, complaining about having been on shift for 12 hours and yet still performing his job with studied efficiency. It’s a refreshing splash of Britishism to start off this short adventure.

Stowing our group’s luggage in a rented office in LGW itself, we’re shepherded to the Gatwick Express, a cushy - sorry - posh train that runs straight to Victoria station in downtown Westminster. The English countryside is incredibly storybook, just as all our old children’s tales describe pastoral life. Tidily-kept fields separated by low fences, cleared of brush and trees. These form a secondary divider, but are well-confined to their narrow rows between dewy squares of viridian grass. The trees are gnarled and would lend themselves well to youths clambering up their branches. It’s surprising that degree to which it resembles expectations.

Another startling revelation - they serve beer on the train at 7 in the morning. There are, again, many cheers.

Disembarking, we’re given guidance to the front of Buckingham Palace and then set free for four hours in the grey Anglo-dawn. Dissembling into smaller subgroups, I decide to lead mine up The Mall to Trafalgar Square. Getting to the Mall from Buckingham is a little adventure in and of itself. There’s no lights or zebra crossings within a few hundred yards. Being lazy brash and hotheaded Yankees, we decide to perform an Epic and Illegal jaywalk. As luck would have it, we sprint across the macadam in front of two police cars sitting up the road at the red light, and I don’t notice it until I’m already vaulting the black metal fence on the far side of the road. True to form, the coppers drive slowly past and… glare at us in a rather disapproving manner.

Up the Mall, we pass a number of statues and statuesque buildings built over the last several hundred years. One particular statue is a man in bronze, standing atop a thirty-foot column. Curious, I close in for a peek at the plaque affixed to the base. It celebrates the second son of King George III, commander of the British Army from 1775 - 1807 and 1811 - 1827. Bloody British are celebrating burning down Washington.

Trafalgar Square is enormous and an incredibly complicated traffic zone. I’m surprised that anyone would willingly navigate it in an automobile. Finding a red telephone booth, my group takes turns doing Stupid Tourist Shit with it.

By this point, I’m rather hungry. Being in London and overwhelmed by the weight of the British Empire’s thousand years at the heart of Western Civilization, I decide that the only thing that can satisfy would be a Full English Breakfast in a Full English Pub in England. With some tea. We head down Whitechapel and find The Old Shades just opening for the morning. The proprietor is delighted to have us as his first customers that day.

Breakfast is ordered and tea is served. Black English tea in an English pub in England with a full English breakfast. If I were any more English at that particular moment, a monocle would have spontaneously sprouted from my tear ducts. Breakfast arrives and is incredibly delicious. The sausage is sublime, as is the bacon - even though it is closer to what we Yanks call ham. Finally, the moment I’d been waiting for. A demand I’d been annoying my companions with for hours. Beans On Toast.

Before heading out I decide to employ the pub’s facilities. Turns out that even the toilets in Westminster could beat up our poor American potties. Every loo I found in that basement water-closet was branded “Armitage Shanks,” which I think we can all agree is an incredibly bad-ass name for a crapper.

Either as a joke or in that darkly dry British humor, the condom machine had a large label affixed to it. “This Is Not a Bomb.” I didn’t stick around to find out if that was true or not, but it struck me as hilarious at the time.

Down towards Parliament, and we start running into bobbies with MP5s. We’re not talking Danny Butterman cops either. These guys look far more akin to Sergeant Nicholas Angel, and they’re clearly not pleased with having to stand around outside while the skies of England piss down. I elect to try taking the Tube back - as this would complete the Essential Englishness of the morning, but I turn back after realizing it’s £4 for a mere two-stop ride per person.

Arriving on foot in the vicinity of Victoria, I discovered that (a) I had about an hour before the train back to Gatwick and (b) there is an open pub directly across the street. I was already eager to try the flavor of UK Guinness, having heard tales of the incredible flavor gulf between Yank-land and Tory-land, fostered by the vastness of the Atlantic Ocean. I easily obtained a pint of the stuff and slurped it down; sure, it’s a bit better than US Guinness, but, to me, it’s still relatively flavorless. I’ll have to stop by Dublin at some point for the real experience. I only wish that little UK pub served John Courage.

A short train-ride back to the airport later, I check in and realize I’ve not yet purchased sunglasses to replace the cheap ones I broke on the flight over. Fortunately, there’s a store vending that precise item in the Gatwick Concourse-Lounge. Except, well, they only sell designer sunglasses, starting around £90. Screw that, I’ll squint.

By 15:00, we’re in the air and winging it south over France and the Bay of Biscay, towards Morocco - finally. But that story is for another time.

The day before the trip, all hell has not broken loose. Everything’s tidily packed in my trunk, sans broken camera. A quick stop at the Target next to the office nets me the last few supplies I need - plastic baggies for airport security, mostly.

After a quick rendezvous with the rest of my immediate travel group, we checked in and somehow managed to get through the TSA Gauntlet without losing the Rubber-Glove Lottery. Once on-board, it dawns on us that our whole travel group takes up, easily, half the 767. Duty-free liquor is, naturally, broken out upon take-off and when the stewardess announces that everyone’s getting a free round courtesy of Delta, the cheers were deafening.

After a purely perfunctory dinner - even international airline food leaves something to be desired - I dosed myself up with melatonin, hoping to catch forty winks and be fresh for a morning in the British Isles. Sadly, coach is incredibly un-conducive to somnolent endeavors, particularly with a beverage cart jolting me awake every hour by slamming into my knee.

Still, earplugs and willpower made for at least twenty-three winks over the North Atlantic.