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Published: September 30th 2017
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London Gatwick
They do not let you know your boarding Gate until it is time to get on the plane - everyone hangs-out in their "mall" until that time. Very odd but smart marketing. Geo: 64.0065, -22.5721
Late yesterday afternoon we took about a 2 hour nap...then went out for dinner...and Kamie was sleep around 9:30pm. I packed everything and was putting the final suitcase by the door when I realized it was 11:00pm! We had a wake-up call for 2am as our driver was arriving at 3am for an hour trip to London Gatwick airport! I could not believe I was only going to get <3 hours of sleep. 😞 I went to bed immediately and ended-up barely sleeping and was out of bed before 2am. Needless to say, I slept most of our 3-hour flight from London to Iceland.
We got to our hotel in Iceland and our room was ready! Yay!! We both took a quick nap and then we had a foodie tour of Reykjavik scheduled for 2:30pm. This tour took us around with another couple and a guide walking all over Reykjavik and trying authentic and local cuisine. We started at an Icelandic bar where we all had bowls of lamb stew (soooo good - tasted like a pot roast really) with poppy seed bread. They also had the famous fermented shark here. I refused to taste it since the smell
alone grossed me out. Kamie and the other guy tried it. It's a Christmas tradition and some other day in January they eat it - plus our guide told me the local guys dare one another every weekend and end-up eating it at the bar with a shot of "Black Death" ~ some sort of local Icelandic liquor that apparently is also terrible. Whyyy men? Whyyy? So anyway, we ended-up hearing a lot of facts, history, and tales about Reykjavik while walking around and learning where things were located. We tried various foods.... 3 cheeses and 3 meats - smoked goose with a raspberry sauce, horse jerky (they eat horse here like we eat beef - I refused but Kamie will try anything once), and more salted/fermented lamb....then we had some rye bread ice cream with rhubarb caramel sauce and whipped cream.... vanilla skyr and strawberry skyr (an Icelandic version of yogurt or sour cream that is apparently high protein and good for you ~ they say it's like cream cheese but I don't think so)....Iceland's famous lamb hot dogs (94% lamb with a brown butter sauce and a skyr cream that's sorta like mayonnaise)....Lobster soup with sourdough bread...and for
a finale - Apricot mouse with Apricot sorbet and a hot peach tea - Delish!!! This tour was FULL of amazing, great food. The lamb was wonderful and I don't usually like lamb. The lobster soup was named the #1 lobster soup in the world by the New York Times. My favorite of the tour was the Rye Bread Ice Cream or the Lamb Stew.
We also heard an interesting story today about the trolls in Iceland. Icelandic people believe in trolls. They celebrate Christmas at 6pm on December 24th. They believe that 13 brothers are Santa Claus and they come down 13 days prior to the 24th and bring the kids a gift per day. The legend is that the brother's dad (a troll) is nice but their mom (a troll) is really mean and if you are a bad kid during Christmas, she will come kidnap you and take you back to the mountains with her. There are life-size "trolls" downtown. I'll have to get pictures of them later.
We had a beautiful day today in Iceland. The tour guide said it was unusually warm for them but it was just perfect for us - chilly but not too
cold. Reykjavik is a completely safe and walkable town with lots to see and do over the next five days. I'm really excited about our time here because so far, this volcanic island is intriguing - the landscape, the Norse people, the food, the traditions, etc.
Today is the first day since November 4th that the sky has been clear enough for a Northern Lights Tour and we have one booked for for tonight!! Yay!!! We leave in an hour and we'll be back around 1am - just in time to see or hopefully see who is our new President!
Having a great time and hoping everyone is doing well and Simon is happy and healthy!!
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Mom
non-member comment
everything looks beautiful,glad younce are having a good time,your babies are fine no one sick, they both went to the bathroom with me today,ha,ha,,just sat and looked at me while I was on the pot.Simon has had a cold nose every day so he i
s fine.