Imago said:

there are icelandic bathing suit shots.

our crazy asses went to the blue lagoon outdoor geothermal pool in like 25 degree weather.

does miami have volcanos?

i'm pretty sure this picture was taken when david and i were trying to describe imago's dirty underwear thread to the people at the party. (and yes, i'm serious)

Okay, so how to sum up the trip?

DAY ONE

We left MPLS Thursday night and landed in Iceland early Friday morning, all jetlagged and janked out. We checked in at our little bed & breakfast place and they were nice enough to let us have our rooms early, so we dumped our stuff and rested a bit, and I channel surfed a little while I was in my room and found the Icelandic version of MTV. If you like Mika or the Robbie Williams drag queen video, you'd be in luck in Iceland right now.

This was also when I first realized that, no matter how cold or snowy or blustery it is outside, it is very common in Iceland to keep the windows open year-round. This did not make for a terribly comfortable first visit to the bathroom. I'll just leave it at that.

We got ourselves together enough to go out foraging for lunch, and we trudged up a few blocks to the main shopping/eating/drinking strip in Reykjavik and found a yummy vegetarian cafe (First Vegetarian) that served food cafeteria style. It was just what we needed - they doled out HUGE servings of food and I am fairly certain that starting our trip with a big healthy meal cut down considerably on our jetlag.

There were posters for the band Gus Gus everywhere. They just put out a new record and were having a record release party/concert a couple of days after we were to leave Iceland.

We checked a few things out on our first day, but we were all so blearghy from the flight that I don't think much of what we saw counted...not to mention, we'd be going up and down the strip DOZENS of times throughout the week, so whatever we saw on our first day, we'd see tons of times again.



That night, we did get a little bit of drinking in, though we knew better than to get too schnockered (cuz that would come the next night). We dropped into Sirkus, which is the bar featured in Bjork's "Triumph of a Heart" video. Very cute little scrungey artsty bar with various local eccentrics dressed interestingly and doing odd things. I felt at home.




We then pressed on to a shamelessly touristy watering hole that had an ice bar - yup, the whole place was made out of ice - and we were given these big white parka/kimono looking things which we wore over our coats and we chilled out for a while in what was basically an igloo. Silly. Fun.

OH, and we also got our first look at the Hallgrímskirkja that day - an enormous church which is one of the most distinctive (if not THE most distinctive) buildings in Reykjavik. We had a good look at the outside, but we'd go inside the church later in the week.

Oh yeah, and we also watched an episode of The Simpsons with Icelandic subtitles. I think if I had a DVD of Icelandic Simpsons when we planned this trip, I would have gotten FAR closer to learning the language!
[Edited 3/24/07 6:39am]
[Edited 3/24/07 18:03pm]

Anx said:

nooooo!!!!!

Imago said:

Whoa! Look at those pupils. Something in the water?

Cloudbuster said:

Hey, anything to post this pic again and torment Imago.

look at Anx! drunk and still managing the sexiness

Imago said:

"...and then, I kid you not, he said he BLEW HIS NOSE with it!"

brownsugar said:

i wasn't so sexy the next morning, i can tell you that.

Anx said:

FunkMistress said:

you know? there is something almost religious about it
glad you are home and look forward to more stories about your trip!

emm said:

It is very "the last supper", isn't it?

M

MIGUELGOMEZ said:

seems the light is focused on anx. when i first saw it i thought 'anx and his 12 disciples'

Anx said:

endorphin74 said:

Thank y'all as well for all the good times this past week, especially on Saturday. Which brings up the fact that I'm at the guys' place right NOW..... Elli is STILL drunk ..... And Raggi (our staff photographer) would like to send a shout-out to y'all .... And Dáni..... he misses you SO much... He's probably crying in a pillow right now

OH SHIT! I just realized that the "beer" you guys gave me when we went to the pizzeria is not really BEER, the alcohol level is only 2,25%!

Which is because you probably bought it at the supermarket, but they don't sell beer at the supermarket (yet) in Iceland, they only sell "light beer" (light in alcohol volume, not light in calories)... The real stuff can only be found in those state monopoly stores called "Vínbúð" like the one we visited last Saturday....

Again... DUDES!

purplehippieonthe1 said:

oooops...yeah, i was kinda musing over why they sold beer in supermarkets when everyone was saying you could only get alcohol in the state shops. um. well. is that stuff good for feeding plants?

Goodness...I can't wait to read all of this.

Actually, in all seriousness I love the pictures. It looks like you guys had a great time.

I hope I'm not imposing, but I'm going to use one of them in my profile cause I like it so much.

Imago said:

bitch

brownsugar said:

you guys are scaring me!

Anx said:

Anx said:

Where is that?

Neeto Reykjavik street art:

GangstaFam said:

Gullfoss waterfall - it was part of the Golden Circle tour we took on Wednesday. It was COLD COLD COLD.

DAY 2



I don't have a lot of photos from this day, so bear with. This was the day we met David, who took us on our WRECKA STOW TOUR of Reykjavik, and then later on in the day unleashed us upon his friends for the infamous party that has already been all too well documented.

I'll start one of my lovely Wrecka Stow threads in Music: Non-Prince about my music finds because that's a whole topic to itself, but we went to several shops, including the local "chain" record shop and also to Smekkleysa ("Bad Taste" in Icelandic), which is also the record label that puts out a lot of Sugarcubes/Bjork/Sigur Ros albums.

I found an AMAZING little book called "Riceboy Sleeps" by the artist(s?) who did the album art for Sigur Ros's "Takk" album, and when I took it to the counter, the guy was like "are you SURE you want this? It's 4500 kronor!" and I put it back, though I was so taken with it, I went back a few days later and decided to splurge and buy it. The web site for the book is here if you wanna take a look:

http://riceboysleeps.com/book/

...and here is a closeup of the shop window at Bad Taste.


Saturday morning, we also went to Reykjavik's one and only citywide flea market, where Endo bought some wacky Icelandic kiddie albums and I scoured the antique postcard bins and bought a few old picture cards, including one from the year 1820. The guy at the booth was nice enough to give me one card for free - score!

The weather was absolutely INSANE on Saturday. It would sleet for ten minutes, then snow, then get sunny, then rain, then snow some more. I was expecting frogs to fall from the sky. And the size of the snowflakes was completely OVER THE TOP. Here, look:



I think Endo actually has a bruise on his forehead from where one of the snowflakes hit him!

So after our wrecka stow tour, we had some pizza and then dumped off our purchases at the hotel and lazed around for a bit till David came back around to take us to the party, which was intended to be a quick prebar before going out on the town and being sloppy drunken messes in public. Well, we got the sloppy drunken mess part right, but we didn't quite make it back into town. OOPSIES!

This is where we were introduced to Icelandic Schnapps, a/k/a BLACK DEATH. It tastes as good as it sounds.

And then we had a lot of beer and at some point a bottle of OPAL was passed around, which tasted like a cross between Jagermeister and mouthwash. YUMMY! Every few minutes, someone at the party would hand me the bottle of Opal and say "here, try this!" and I'd tell them I already did, and they'd say "try it again - it gets better!" I think I "tried" Opal about four or five times, whee.

Unfortunately, I got a little too tipsy to remember that I brought my camera to the party, and I didn't get to take any more pics until I was reunited with it on Tuesday, thanks to David and his friends, who diligently made sure it got back to the hotel. Fortunately, I think this was the worst logistical mishap of the trip.

Fun day, and I'm sure I won't miss the brain cells I drank into an early grave.

...oh, and what's an Iceland thread without a big pic of Reykjavik rooftops? Duh!

Anx said:

These posts are priceless. I'm loving these!