Montreal: By Land, Sea, and Air

Montreal!

This trip was a bit of a last-minute decision, and was largely initiated by Graydyn's desire to go there and eat all of their food. He actually booked the whole thing while I was still in Iceland, which was a real treat for me since I was still on vacation while getting updates via e-mail about my next trip. I think I need to ensure that I've always got something being planned while I'm away...

We (being Graydyn, Susan, Jay, and myself) just went for the Labour Day long weekend, and in order to make the most of our time we decided to fly. Porter airlines runs short-distance flights on smaller planes from the diminutive Toronto City Centre Airport. This option is extremely convenient for us since we were able to take the subway down, catch a ferry (hence the travelling by sea portion of this post's title) and then jump on a plane. Since it's a smaller airport you don't need to leave as much time to get through security and all that. Also, you get to wait in the hippest departure lounge I've ever been in! The flight itself is a piece of cake, weighing in somewhere around the one hour mark. It goes a little something like this: take off, gain altitude, level off, get served snack and red wine, eat snack, chug red wine since you are beginning decent, descend, touchdown. Yeah, not exactly a taxing way to travel.

Upon arrival at Montreal we grabbed a cab to our hotel, which is probably a better bet than relying on public transit if you've got enough people to split the cost. We then did what anyone should do immediately upon getting settled in Montreal; this:

That, ladies and gentlemen, is my first ever genuine Quebec poutine, served at the world-famous Dunn's restaurant in downtown Montreal. Beside it you will see the edge of a smoked meat sandwich (the well deserved source of Dunn's fame) and above it a beer. There can be no better way to spend an evening with your friends than this.

We didn't get in till the evening, so by the time we'd had our food we were ready to wind down for the evening.

The next day we had breakfast at the hotel and got our tourism well and truly underway. We were going to start with the Botanical Gardens, but on our way stopped to check out this impressive structure:

No, not Graydyn. That's the Olympic Stadium in the background. It's a great landmark since the Botanical Gardens are across the street from it, and the Biodome is beside it. Both of those are things that you should check out by the way.

The Botanical Gardens feature a very nice Insectarium, with cool things like this on the wall:

There were also some live insects, but they don't let them wander about as freely as the metal ones, and they didn't photograph well through their glass homes.

The gardens themselves were very nice with great features like a Japanese garden:

A nice pond:

And a very cool heron:

After touring around there for quite awhile we jumped across the street to the Biodome. This building encloses a variety of distinct ecosystems, kept separate from each other at their ideal temperatures.

You can wander around freely through these various forests and admire their denizens, sometimes quite close up.

It was a bit crowded in there and I really wouldn't mind taking a look around again sometime when it's not the Saturday of a holiday weekend.

By the time we'd finished wandering about the Biodome it was time to head back to the hotel and get ready for dinner. Graydyn and Susan had dinner plans, so Jay and I just wandered about until we found an appealing looking restaurant. We picked a rib joint called Bofinger which I highly recommend for their pulled pork sandwich and great poutine, but ironically not for their ribs which Jay reported were a bit lackluster.

The following day started out with a breakfast of crepes at "Crepes 2Go" which I HIGHLY recommend. They've only got one guy making the crepes on a pair of griddles, so it may take awhile if there's a crowd, but it's well worth the wait.

After that we took a trip down to Montreal's historic "Old Town" to have a look around and the nice architecture:

Another great example being:

We made our way down to the shore of the river and followed it for awhile, taking in the nice views:

After spending the morning wandering about we were ready for a big lunch. We made our way to another world-famous venue for smoked meat sandwiches: Shwartz's. This place can be easily identified by the clear sign, and the 465,000 people lined up outside waiting desperately to get in and have a sandwich. If you happen to be in the area and notice that there is a full legion waiting to get in, try the door to the left, which leads to their take-out-only restaurant. You'll have to find somewhere else in the city to eat your lunch, but at least you'll get it before dinner time.

I, for one, was pretty beat by the time we were finished lunch. I should have brought my hiking boots on this trip, but I neglected to do so, and my poor choice of footwear may have lead to my lack of enthusiasm for further walking. We just chilled out in the hotel pool for the afternoon so that my various appendages could recover from their trauma.

That evening we headed to Au Pied De Cochon (I believe that's literally "The Pig's Foot" and I hope I spelled it correctly) which was really the focal point of this entire culinary adventure. This epic restaurant has an entire section dedicated to the lovely Fois Gras, and features numerous wonderful duck dishes. If you are dining with a vegetarian I strongly recommend finding another venue unless they feel like making a meal of bread and water. Actually, given the state of their menu I imagine that there's some duck somewhere in the bread as well.

Needless to say we had a wonderful meal, which capped off a great weekend. There wasn't much more to the weekend, since we just got up the next day, had breakfast, and made our way to the airport. I'm somewhat ashamed that it's taken me this long to make my way to Montreal, and I really wish that I'd had more time to enjoy it. I can say with certainty that it won't be the last time I find myself in that truly lovely city... I'm getting hungry just thinking about it.

Montreal: Ready To Go

Hi everyone! It's Friday morning and I'm just taking a moment to write this before I head to work. I'm all packed up and as soon as work is finished I'll be making a quick dash home, grabbing my luggage, and jumping on the subway down to the airport. After a mere one hour on the plane I'll be in Montreal! I'm really liking the sound of this short trip.

To confirm, my laptop is indeed dead. I'll still do my best to get a post or two out this weekend, but the pictures will have to wait until next week, probably Tuesday. With my machine in the shop for the third time (with the same symptoms) and having very little life left in its battery I was VERY tempted to just get myself a new laptop. Unfortunately the more I researched the new line of netbooks that are out right now the pickier I got. I've figured out what machine I was (Asus Eee PC 1005HA-P) but wasn't able to procure one in time for this trip. Having missed the mark for my Montreal trip I've just put a hold of any computer shopping for now. If it's even three months before I need a laptop again the entire face of what's available to the consumer will have drastically changed and I'll have to re-educate myself on what's out there.

Okay, I have to keep this brief, so I'm signing off now. Remember to check in this weekend as I will hopefully be able to find internet access somewhere along the line. Failing that I will get all my thoughts up in one massive post on Tuesday. Talk to you later!

Final Thoughts On Iceland

Well, I'm home now. As much as it will pain me to be back to work on Monday, sometimes it's nice to be home. I'm really looking forward to my trip back to Petrolia tonight, it will be great to see everyone and go through my pictures. The latter activity might be an issue as my laptop appears to have died... again. Same problem as the first two times. Oh well, at least it didn't fail my while I was away.

I just wanted to close out this trip with a few final thought, tips really, for anyone considering a trip to Iceland (which I highly recommend.) So here's my tips for the Icelandic adventure:

1) Your hot water is probably going to smell like sulphur. That's because it gets pumped out of the ground, and there's nothing to be done about it, so save yourself the trouble of complaining to the front desk.

2) The wind in Iceland can be savage. This is largely attributed to the lack of trees. Whatever the cause, make sure you have a good jacket that is breathable but blocks out the wind.

3) Regarding the aforementioned wind: when it's that windy the weather can change in a hurry. If you are going out make sure you dress for changes in the weather.

4) Layer up so that you've got something to take off; the weather can turn nice just as quickly as it can turn foul.

5) Due to the high winds the rain can travel in an alarmingly horizontal fashion. While umbrellas are commonly used, and widely available, in the long run you may be better served by a rain suit, especially if you are out on adventurous activities.

6) Don't burden yourself with trying to find Kronur in your home country, or ever travelling with huge amounts of cash unless you are going to be away from a major centre for awhile. Bank machines are everywhere in the capital and plastic is very widely accepted. Just make sure that you have a 4-digit PIN.

7) If you are even considering a trip in August make sure that you look up when the Reykjavik Marathon is held. It's always a Saturday in August. This is important because whatever day the marathon is, that evening will be Culture Night, and you don't want to miss that.

8) Over-the-counter pharmaceuticals are not as readily available as they are in Canada. Even mild painkillers for a headache appear to only be available in pharmacies, and even then they are kept behind the counter. With the pharmacy hours not being particularly long it's advised that if you are even slightly prone to headache, allergy, etc. that you bring some meds with you.

9) The day-night cycle shifts around quite quickly. Make sure that you are aware of when the sun rises and sets for the time that you are there and if the sun will be up during hours that you are likely to be sleeping bring a sleep mask. Heavy blinds and curtains aren't necessarily something you can count on.

That's really about all I can offer in terms of advice for the perspective Iceland tourist. I can only now reiterate that I highly recommend this as a vacation spot. It's got all the excitement and adventure that you could ask for, but is quite easy to travel to since they've got a very well established tourist trade and English is spoke almost universally.

To close, I had a staggeringly good time and I really do hope that I get the opportunity to visit again. Hopefully sometime soon. I'll be back home in Petrolia for this weekend, visiting friends and family. Next weekend will find Graydyn, Susan, Jay, and myself in Montreal, so look for some posts then. Thanks for reading, and an extra special thanks for those who commented while I was away, it was great to have that feedback and to know that everyone was keeping tabs on me.

For now, this is Colin, signing off.

My Last Day In Iceland Draws To A Close

It's truly sad to say, but the sun is setting on my last full day in Reykjavik. Tomorrow will be almost entirely a travel day. I'm really hoping that they've got a Wi-Fi hotspot somewhere in the airport that I can make a final post from, but if not I'll post from Canada tomorrow with my final thoughts on the trip, and a few useful tips I've compiled. For now, I'll just focus on the events of the day.

I let myself sleep in again this morning, once again choosing a good night's sleep over the free breakfast. I actually ended up having a quite a good breakfast at Cafe Paris, which is close to my guesthouse. You always find the good restaurants on your last day don't you?

Left with a bit of time to kill I began to wander aimlessly around Reykjavik. I ended up approaching Hallgrimskirkja from the back of the church, and got some shots that show how impressive the structure must be without all the scaffolding on it.



It really is a massive structure. Also, on my first day here I'd just snapped a few photos as I wandered past, so this time I decided to actually poke my head in for a moment. I rather enjoy the fact that in the Viking tradition even their pipe organ looks a bit like a weapon:



After snapping a few more shots of the church I went to catch the bus for my rafting trip. Unfortunately this concludes the portion of the post where I have any pictures to show. My camera is waterproof, but I didn't have a good way of securing it to myself for the rafting ride and I decided that it was just too risky to bring it along. It's a shame too, I could have got some great pictures.

The rafting itself was a blast. Almost everyone on my raft was Canadian, and we all got questioned on why we would have to come to Iceland for rafting when there was certainly perfectly good rafting to be had in Canada. I guess sometimes the things that are close to home just get taken for granted. I've been informed that there's some excellent white water rafting to be had in Ottawa for those of you who don't feel like making the trek to Iceland.

For anyone considering the Hvítá rafting experience here, you should keep in mind that you will get wet, and you will get cold. This is just part of the Icelandic rafting experience, and should be something that you are prepared to deal with. Beyond that it's not really a difficult river and makes for a good first ride. There were plenty of flat stretches where we were just fooling around by playing various games while standing on the side walls, which invariably ended with someone (often me) in the water. It really gets you used to the whole feel of rafting.

Since returning to Reykjavik I've just had time for dinner, and then to get here to my beloved cafe for a blog post. After this it will probably be time for me to call it a night. As I mentioned earlier I'm going to get a wrap-up post up either tomorrow or Friday, so check in for that. Also, as Graydyn pointed out in the comments, I'll be in Montreal the Labour Day long weekend, and I'll hopefully be able to get a post or two in there as well.

Check in soon, more posts to follow! Thanks for reading everyone!

A Slight Departure From My Master Plan

Okay, so with only a couple of days left in Iceland I'd managed to formulate a fairly concrete master plan. Today we white water rafting at noon, which I expected to take up the whole afternoon, so I figured that I'd sleep in as much as possible to make sure that I was fully refreshed, and then make rafting the focus of my day. Tomorrow I'd intended to hit a couple of interesting sounding museums and spend the day around Reykjavik.

Arriving at the Cintimani Centre at noon today I was informed that I wasn't in the system. Apparently Reykjavik Excursion, whom I booked this tour with, outsource most of their tours to other more specialize tour groups, and (I was informed) have a habit of forgetting to actually call these tour groups to book people into the tours they had been sold. I was quite ready to recommend Reykjavik Excursions as a convenient place to book any sort of tour that might happen to interest you, but this puts a damper on that plan. They still operate the FlyBus, the most convenient way of getting between Reykjavik, the Blue Lagoon, and the airport at Keflavik, so don't give up on them completely, but you may wish to exercise some caution when it comes to booking anything else with them.

That said, the good people at Cintamani were willing to accept my ticket to the rafting tour and book me in for tomorrow, so at least I don't have to go shout at someone from Reykjavik Excursions about getting my money back. The unfortunate thing is that I'd really just slept in and then killed time this morning waiting for the rafting trip, when I could have been using that time to see the sights.

Realizing that I'd already lost half the day I immediately set out to recoup what was left of yesterday's plan so I headed in the direction of the National Museum of Iceland. Along the way I came across this:





That is a rather substantial cemetery in Reykjavik that David had pointed out upon returning from one of our diving trips a few days ago. I believe it's the biggest in the country, though I can't confirm that. It's obviously quite old, and it was fascinating to walk around, especially with the drizzling weather setting an ideal mood. I just love the fact that it looks more like a forest than a cemetery. There are trees everywhere, often dominating the plot, with only a tiny chuck of stone to let you know that it's actually a grave. Very natural, and very nice.

From there I went across the road to the museum. There's a rather large, permanent exhibit in place on the history of Iceland that's well worth checking out. It's free on Wednesdays, which is why it's even more unfortunate that I couldn't have gone tomorrow instead, but at a mere 800ISK it's still worth checking out no matter what day of the week you manage to get there. The light was dim, and most exhibits were behind glass, so photography was difficult, but I managed a few good shots.

Below is the actual axe head and wood block used in the last ever execution carried out in Iceland!



The next shot depicts some settlement-era weapons that have been found in various grave sites.



Some of you are surely wondering at the strange coincidence that the only pictures that turned out happen to display one type of weapon or another. Those that know me better will realize that medieval weapons are the reason that I go to museums and that I have not, in fact, photographed anything else.

From there I began my final mission that I'd planned for tomorrow: Souvenir Shopping. Whenever I'm planning on living out of my backpack for awhile I bring at least one simple nylon stuff sack. This allows me to put my dirty clothes in a distinct bag to keep them separate from the clean stuff. It's just an organizational aid really. I found out today though that there is a great advantage to having your clothes in a stuff sack as opposed to neatly folded in your backpack... they take up a lot less space. With liberal amounts of squeezing, pushing, and swearing I was able to get all of the clothes that I've worn up to this point into an incredibly compact little package. I have no further worries about shipping silly souvenirs home, and all without having to buy an extra piece of luggage.

To Corey's point, yes, I could buy Brennivin at the duty-free in the airport. However, since it's become such a discussion point I didn't want to risk getting through airport security only to find that there was none to be had at the duty-free. I therefore decided to just go buy some at the local liquor store. I could have just bought a 1L bottle, but going with two 500mL bottles allowed me to get them in plastic bottles which should have far less risk of breakage. I was willing to throw out some of my clothes, but I'd rather they not all smell like caraway schnapps. Everything else I've got will just be wrapped in the few remaining articles of clothing that I'm either wearing, or will wear tomorrow, and I will have to hope that they survive the travel-related abuses that are sure to befall them.

As a side note, I've decided to take the advice that my dear Aunt Jeanette gave in the comments section of a previous post and do this for a living. From this point forward my new job title is "Adventurer" and that is how I intend to introduce myself. It should be noted that I haven't yet figured out how to earn any money by adventuring, so I will continue to occasionally perform the duties of a computer programmer in order to fund my hobbies of eating, having a roof over my head, and adventuring for a living. That's a fairly minor footnote though and should not detract in anyway from viewing me as a paramount adventurer while I figure out how to get paid for this ridiculously lavish lifestyle.

Well, I've still got a few hours left in this day, but the weather is (as it has been all day) truly miserable. I may decide to just stay holed up in my cafe here and have a couple beers to pass the time. I'll be back on tomorrow night, hopefully with tales of rafting!

Onward, To Adventure!

Hehehe, I specifically asked someone to take that picture today so that I could start my blog post with it. That's how much I'm thinking ahead for you guys!

In case there was some lack of clarity as to the purpose of my awesome toque and those crampons, I was doing my glacier hike today. I actually mis-reported yesterday that I'd be climbing Langjökull (Long Glacier) but in fact I was climbing Sólheimajökull (Sliding Glacier) which is along the South coast. If you're looking for it on a map of Iceland you probably won't find it as it's actually an extension of Mýrdalsjökull, which is considerably bigger. I had a choice of activities when I booked this, and half of our group split off when we got dropped of to hike Sólheimajökull and went on to a snowmobile ride on Mýrdalsjökull. I'd thought that sounded like fun, but decided that it would be more enjoyable to hike around rather that bomb along on a noisy snow mobile. That turned out to be an excellent choice, since apparently the snowmobile trip got cut very short due to the extraordinarily high winds we were experiencing today. I thought a few times that I was going to get blown off the face of the glacier! High winds are extremely common in Iceland, a fact that's often attributed to the lack of trees. It's just something you've got to be prepared for. Aside from the small hurricane that we were hiking through it was actually quite warm up there, and all the thermal gear was probably not entirely necessary.

Here's a shot of our approach to the glacier:



Another picture once we got on there:



And another:



You'll notice in the shots above that there are conical piles of black dirt everywhere. Glaciers are always full of debris, and around these parts that debris is likely to be largely from volcanic ash, which stains the glacier black. The reason they form in conical piles is that they settle to the bottom of the holes caused by running water, as evidenced here:

Once the walls of the hole melt out and away the landscape levels off, leaving cones of ice that were protected by the layer of sediment. So those conical "piles" of dirt are actually chunks of ice and probably only have about an inch of sediment on them.

It's a pretty uneven landscape, which makes a guide handy. They always say that you should take a guide with you on glaciers to watch out for holes and cracks. This implies that you need someone to point out the giant holes in the ice to you. Honestly, if you don't see those holes you really need to pay better attention. Either that or you are suffering from a severe visual impairment, and may wish to consider an activity other than glacier hiking.

I actually think that the real reason a guide is handy is that these cracks and holes often join together into an absolute labyrinth, and I imagine that if you weren't familiar with the glacier you'd waste a lot of time hitting dead ends and backtracking.

Not that the danger of the holes should be underestimated, sometimes it's a long fall:

After checking out the glacier we stopped at a couple of neat waterfalls on the way back to Reykjavik. Below is Skogafoss:

And this is Seljalandsfoss:

That was particularly fun since we could walk in behind it:

Tomorrow's rafting adventure doesn't start until 12:30, which gives me a chance to sleep in. I'm pretty happy about that, since I didn't sleep great last night and I'm feeling pretty beat. After that I've got a free day on Wednesday, and then I fly out on Thursday, so my adventure is drawing to a close. I'm still trying to figure out what to do on Wednesday, I've got to prioritize all the activities that I haven't got around to yet!

Those of you who have been reading the comments section probably had a good chuckle at Graydyn's suggestion that I throw out my socks in order to facilitate the transport of Brennivin. What's more funny is how much he and I think alike. I really should have brought a proper suitcase on this trip since I've had the luxury of a single base camp and haven't had to lug all my luggage around the country this time. A suitcase wouldn't have been an inconvenience and would have afforded me a lot more space. As it is my backpack was STUFFED when I set out, and now I want to bring home a ton of souvenirs. I've been eyeing up all my shirts trying to decide which I like the least. It's entirely possible that I'll arrive home without any of the clothes that I left with. Wish me luck in not running up a high clothing bill.

Svarti Daudhi? Why Do They Call It That?

Okay, before I get into the events of yesterday evening and today, I want to show off some of my pictures from yesterday's dives. Since I was unable to post any pictures with yesterday's update, here's Silfra. I think you'll find these pictures a bit better than the previous day's offering:

There you have it folks. THAT is why I came to Iceland! Everything else is just gravy at this point. It's pretty delicious gravy mind you. I've already decided that this is not going to be the last time that I find myself on Icelandic soil. Once I've got a group together I'm coming back and doing a driving tour so that I can see more than just what can be reached in a day-trip from Reykjavik.

Now, on to this Culture Night phenomenon. It's, as the name implies, a celebration of culture. Music, art, food, it's all out on display, and this apparently attracts about half of Iceland to descend upon Reykjavik as evidenced in the photo below:

If you'd like some contrast, here's what that same street looked like this morning:

The whole affair was absolutely manic. Tons of streets were blocked off, and everywhere you turned there were food stalls, and musicians on stages. In the big square near my guesthouse there was a group of guys playing jazz on a huge stage. A little way down the road I started to hear some hard rock being played, and turned down a small side street to find a tiny stage with a few guys rocking out. Down another small street I came across a local tattoo parlor where the local motorcycle club had put their bikes on display for everyone to see, with a rock trio playing songs from the roof. Further down I discovered someone selling samosas, and a rap duo performing the first bit of Icelandic rap I'd ever heard.

I popped into a pub to grab a beer and ended up chatting with a fellow Canadian who's been living in Iceland for the past 8 years. If any of you are looking for help planning a trip to Iceland have a chat with Kent at nordictrails.org and he'll help you out! I decided to stick around for another beer before the festival's fireworks display started, but first I thought I'd better try the local spirit, Brennivin. That's literally translated as "burn wine" but it's also commonly referred to as Svarti Daudhi, the Black Death. It's a schnapps made from potatoes and flavoured with caraway. I actually found it quite pleasant, but that could have been the fact that it kicked me in the head so hard that I lost some of my sense of taste. Following it up with two more beers and then calling it a night should not have made me feel as rotten as I did this morning... but there you have it. Actually, I just get headaches out of the blue, but still, when I do I need something to blame, and Brennivin seems a convenient scapegoat at this point.

That brings me to my next fun fact. If you are travelling to Iceland, bring a small med kit. Actually, that's sensible advice no matter where you go, and I'm very foolish for not following that particular traveller's law myself. I'm not just suggesting the med kit for Iceland because some Brennivin might sneak up from behind and cudgel you senseless either. You never know when you might need painkillers, antihistamines, etc. and unlike in Canada, you can't just drop by the grocery store and pick some up. As far as I've been able to tell even a simple painkiller can only be obtained from the pharmacy, and the only one I could find wasn't open on the weekends. So I had a bit of a long morning until I'd consumed enough caffeinated beverages to straighten myself out.

Not that I was about to let a slight headache slow me down! This morning after I'd grabbed a quick bite to eat I set out to the harbour in search of the flea market where Kent said I stood my best chance of finding hákarl, the fermented shark delicacy for which Iceland is famous in the culinary world. I wandered around for awhile without seeing anything before returning to my room to consult my guidebook. I could have sworn that I'd seen some mention of it in there, but alas, I could seem to find in anywhere in the book when it really counted. Unfortunately that's a weekend-only thing, so I've missed any shot I would have had of checking it out. With any luck I'll still be able to find some hákarl, but my searches of the local supermarkets have yet to yield positive results.

Having failed in that mission I decided to go checkout Reykjavik 871 ± 2. It's a display of the remains of an early Viking longhouse, and the name comes from the fact that they've estimated the date of the settlement at the year 871 AD, with a margin of error of 2 years. It's an interesting story; the longhouse had fallen into disuse, collapsed, and been buried in volcanic ash many years ago. As Reykjavik built up a building was constructed over the site. Then, in the year 2000 an expansion was proposed to the building which involved construction on the foundation. That's when the ruins were discovered, and the Icelandic people's love of their heritage really shines through. Rather than destroy the ruins, or scrape the building plan, they set to work unearthing the ruins, preserving them as best they could, and then simply built the basement of the new building around them, turning that into a cultural museum and allowing construction of the building to continue. Real genius. It's not a huge exhibit and won't take you long to tour through, but it's incredible to see what they've accomplished from an archaeological perspective, and it's completely free to enter.

After that I grabbed some lunch and then grabbed a bus down to Perlan ("The Pearl" in English) for a tour of the Saga Museum. It's a brief discussion of the history of Iceland, with eerily lifelike models adding a visual aid to the story. Here's an example of the one of the displays:

They had a video of how it was all put together, and the whole process was very familiar, having already experimented with the techniques before. The reason that these statues look so lifelike is that they are actually built from algenate moulds taken from real people. It's a technique that Graydyn and I experimented with in an attempt to make Halloween masks one year. It was pretty cool to watch it being done as a full-scale operation.

While at Perlan I went up to their observation deck, which allows a 360 view of Reykjavik from a great vantage point:

Perlan itself is quite interesting, as it's the main distribution point for Reykjavik's hot water. It's something that David described to me on the way to our first dive on Thursday. Apparently the Icelandic people have no need of hot water heaters since the country is riddled with sites where water is bubbling out of the ground a near-boiling temperatures anyway. For Reykjavik this geothermally heated water is just pumped to Perlan and then distributed to the city. I was happy to learn this on Thursday, since I'd wondered why the hot water in my shower smelled so much like Sulfur. Apparently this is pretty standard in Iceland.

Another fun thing to do at the Perlan is to just go for a walk from there. There's a warren of trails running for miles out from the South and East of Perlan. I didn't go too far, but it was a fun walk all the same. Everyone fixates on the bleak, alien landscape that's so typical of Iceland, and they forget that there are still small pockets like this:

It actually reminded me a bit of Canada. There aren't many trees in Iceland, but they are certainly there.

Well, I'm going to go find something for dinner, and then call it an early night. It's up early again tomorrow for my glacier tour. I'm expecting that to be a fairly full day since we're going to Langjökull, which is considerably further away than any of the dive sites I've been too. I'm anticipating a fairly long, but very interesting drive up there. If I'm not too late getting back tomorrow I'll jump on and post some pictures. Adios for now.