Today I leave Iceland, and I’m sadder about that than I expected to be. This was such an amazing stop, and I can’t tell you how glad I came here, especially for the winter solstice. Now I can’t wait to come back in the summer at some point and see it from an entirely new perspective. I am just eating my breakfast right now, and then I go pack my bags and catch a plane to the US.
I have had so much fun the last couple days though. Two nights ago, I signed up for hostel outing night, which was a foosball tournament and a pub crawl. Turns out everyone who signed up was the kids I have been hanging out with the last several days, so we all knew each other already and quickly paired off into teams. Darren and I were Team Hurific, which is the way our Icelandic event coordinator spelled horrific. We felt that made our team even cooler. We lost, sadly, but we did give the game a very good effort and held our own for the majority of it. We even had the game tied at 6 for awhile!
Eventually the girls team one and we all sat around drinking cheap beers before we hit the bars. So much fun once we got out though. We ended up at The English Pub (somehow a lot of the best places here are named after other countries. Café Paris was good too…), and as we walked in the live band was doing Proud Mary, and quite well. They played all these great older songs, with random covers of Umbrella and Dynamite thrown in to change up the mix a bit. Everyone got shots of Black Death, which is an Icelandic drink that is supposed to be awful. Not great, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought. The Jelly Bean Jen gave me in Cheney was far worse.
Actually so was the other drink I had earlier…Darren and Jess had bought the traditional Icelandic candy Opal, and its alcoholic counterpart. They are flavored with licorice and menthol. After trying both, I don’t think I will have sinus problems for weeks. Wow. The candy was like a chewy, sticky Halls that you just couldn’t get out of your teeth, and the drink was like shooting really bad cough syrup.
Eventually we made our way back to the hostel, after an amazing night out in Reykjavik. Well the girls did at least. The boys stayed behind and later tried to find the hot dog stand, but it was closed on the. Their loss!
Yesterday, Darren, Jess and I had made plans to go to the Wednesday free museums together. We met up and decided to try Café Loki for lunch first, as you could get sample plates of local specialties, and we all wanted to try the shark. Why we wanted to try this, don’t ask, but we were curious. Even after the locals told us how horrible it was.
So, we got to Café Loki and each ordered a lunch of meat soup and bread with either smoked lamb or lamb pate on it. And a side of shark for us to split. Our waitress warned us when she brought it out, “Make sure you eat it and don’t smell it.” Not a good sign. While setting up cameras to photograph the eating, Darren got a whiff. Now I was getting scared as I saw his face. What had I just gotten myself into…but it was too late to turn back, we had our cubes on toothpicks and were ready to go.
Then we ate it. The consistency is what hits you first. It is slimy like a gelatin, but really thick and chewy. You have to chew and chew and chew. Then it finally hits the back of your throat and you can both taste and smell it at the same time. This is where the gag reflex kicks in and you can’t help but think, ‘I am eating putrefied shark. What is wrong with me?!’ But we all got it down and dived for our drinks and soup, trying to get the taste out. Our waitress just laughed at us, “Sooo…what did you think? Delicious?” We all had to laugh and admit, no, delicious is probably not the best description of what we just did. The rest of our meal was delicious, and it was one of the cheapest ones I had here, even with the shark added to it.
After this we braved the cold and went museum hopping. First up was the National Gallery. This was cool, and we got to walk across part of a frozen lake to get there. Too soon it was over, and at 3 it was already dark out, but we still decided to walk across town to get to the Saga Museum on the hill. While it was cold, we were fine. Until we hit the wall of snow. It was clear one minute, and then boom, snowing. Which still wouldn’t have been too horrible, if the wind hadn’t been shooting the bits of snow into our faces like little needles. None the less, we eventually made it to the museum, which was not nearly as cool as anticipated. So we went to wait for the bus. Which was 20 minutes late. Soooo cold.
Eventually we made it back to the hostel though and warmed up enough to go get hot dogs for dinner. And on the way back we swung through the Christmas market where I got to try horse meat for the first time. It was delicious! Much more tender and flavorful than I had been expecting, and I wanted to buy some. But, I am flying home, and I don’t need to bring horse meat with me too. I recommend trying that one though, to anyone who is curious. It was the good culinary adventure to counter the shark of earlier.
But now I am here, getting ready to go. Thank you Iceland, for a wonderful set of experiences. I cannot wait to encounter you again!
0 comments:
Post a Comment