Iceland - Day 2 November 11, 2019

I hate JET LAG... It sucks when you wake up at 0230am and can't go back to sleep. So you ready, watch a movie on your Kindle. My wife having the same problem is playing her games on her Kindle too.

Being a photographer and not being able to sleep really kinda sucks. I wanted to get up and start to explore Reykjavik, start taking pictures do something. I try to get my wife to go along with this. Yeah she wasn't too keen on the idea, told me to go ahead and go on my own. I chose against that plan as I thought it might be a trap. (LOL, my wife is good to go with my midnight jaunts out to take pictures and puts up with a lot trust me).

0700 finally hits and we are both awake, so you get dressed and head down to the Continental Breakfast that is being severed here in the hotel. You go down to the buffet line, grab a plate and go. Your choices are scrambled eggs, sausage, bacon, breads for toast, fruits, yogurt, cereal and of course drinks.

I grab some eggs and then attempt to make me some toast. I put the toast in the toaster and begin to wait. Well hang on I didn't do it right. A young lady came over to me and goes here you need to turn the timer dial to get it to make the toast. DUH!!!! With disaster at the toaster being averted I go sit with my wife and have a bite to eat and we begin to discuss what we were going to do for the day.

The weather on this Monday morning was much like it was on Sunday, Cloudy, Rainy and windy with a slight chill.

We decide to go out and explore a little bit, keeping in mind that we have the local beer tasting tonight.

After a quick trip to get camera gear and our coats (warm weather gear, my wife god love her dress in so many layers I thought she might be like that kid from "A Christmas Story" that couldn't put his arms down), we head the car and begin to explore.

I decided after getting in the car that we should go check out a place called the "Cathedral of Christ The King" it had peaked my interest when I saw it on the maps before leaving home. Okay GPS information plugged in. Click on "GO"!!!

We head out and follow the directions being given by Google Maps, and it is taking us all over the place, ARGH!!! where are we going? After driving all over the place I realize that we have been going in one big circle and just not making any head way. But WAIT" what do I see on my right hand side? A Church Tower, I'll head for that.

So throwing caution to the wind we begin to head up a hill and come upon this beautiful Church. Except it's not the destination what I wanted. Nope we stumbled across the Hallgrimskirkja Church. Sweet I wanted to get pictures of this place anyway... We find a car park and while my wife waits inside the car, I go out and check out the area.

The Church is a beautiful design and when it is lit up, is something else. I take a few pictures but tell myself come back later tonight and get some better ones, but I decide to go inside and of course it looks like a Church, but it does have a gift shop and if you want to go up in the tower you must pay to do so. Here is their website for more information: http://en.hallgrimskirkja.is/.

Once I see what I want to see and inform my wife, we proceed to leave the area still following directions, we end up in the shopping district area of Reykjavik aka tourist area. We see all of the various tourist gift shops and local bars/ eateries, I have already been told that WE will becoming back to the area to pick up a few things to bring home.

Back to the directions with trying to find the "Cathedral of Christ The King". We continue to follow the Google Maps information and it's still not getting us there and the directions are now talking about "Taking the Crosswalk" huh, "Taking the Crosswalk" what the? So while driving around, I end up on Route 49 heading out of town, where am I going. I recognize a few of the land marks from the day before (Sunday) and notice that we are going around in the wrong direction.. We head back and come across a local mall, should I stop there and figure things out? "NO" keep going, I'm not lost. I'm a Marine and a guy, we don't get lost (or at least we won't admit it) I finally make my way back to the local mall and find a place to stop and look at Google Maps, what's going on here? How can we be this far away and lost it makes no sense. THEN I notice the problem. Stupid me when I programed Google Maps for directions I put down we were walking not driving!!!! Yeah that fixed the issue.

So about 15 minutes later we finally make it to the "Cathedral of Christ the King", honestly the Church didn't impress me much, and maybe it had to do with the local weather as it was cloudy and rainy still so it was killing any photographic potential in my opinion.

So now what are we going to do? The BOSS (aka my wife) says back to the shopping district, I will shop. SO we head back towards Hallgrimskirkja Church as it is a landmark that I recognize and it also means that we are by the shops that my wife wants to check out.

Once we are back in the tourist area of Reykjavik we drive down Vitastigur street and find a place to park. That was easy as I found a place to park that was right next to a store that was selling local items (inflated pricing of course) that my wife was really wanting to get. Now when you are parking in and around Reykjavik, you will have to pay for parking at some places, you must make sure you take a picture of your license plate and go up to one of the local pay stations. Make sure you take your time with these machines and you have the option of the local language or English and it took me a good 15 minutes to figure out how to make this work!!!

The area that has all of the local shops catering to the tourist that come to visit is vast, but every single shop pretty much has the same items (yeah like we didn't already know this), the only main difference is the pricing. My wife has been wanting to get a real wool blanket and they are all over the place and they average in price from about 13900ks = $111.17 for a blanket. Shot glasses are about 950ks = $7.60 and the same pricing for a spoon. So we walked through several different shops looking for those items that my wife wants to get and we come across a store called 66 North (Icelandic Version of REI back home). We go into the store just to look around, its your typical sports apparel store, with a lot of cold weather jackets (who would have thought right, Iceland = Cold in November) This place is extremely pricey, my wife came across a foul weather jacket with a fur hood and they want $1,200 for it. NOPE not happening.

We walked around the area for a bit and glanced in the stores and window shopped others. The upside for I found the Local Cigar Store here in Reykjavik. He had mixture of Tabaco products in the store and explained that the reason for the prices being so high was that were taxed pretty heavily by the government (sounds like California). He was selling Cohiba Cigars and Romeo & Juliet Cigars, I'm thinking oh hell yeah. Let's do this. For a three (3) pack of Cohiba's he was charging about $80.00 eh. I can get a better deal from my guy back home in Oxnard.

After walking around the area for a bit, we decided that it was time to hit a grocery store to stock up on some snacks and drinks so we weren't going broke eating out... Now scuttlebutt (rumor) had it that there is a COSTCO here in Iceland.. That Rumor is TRUE!!!!! and you can use your US Membership to get into the store too. GPS programed for COSTCO and engage number 1, we are on our way over to COSTCO!!!.

We drove for about 20 minutes to get to COSTCO and found that they also have COSTCO GAS here and wait for it!!! They even have an IKEA!!!!! YES IKEA is even here in Iceland. First stop is COSTCO gas, got told that we'd be paying about $11.00 per liter for Diesel Fuel. It was more like $15.43 from my figuring. So now we topped off the gas tank and decide to go into COSTCO...

We walked into COSTCO and there was no one there... I mean there was people there shopping but it was nothing like trying to shop at the Oxnard COSTCO (trust me it's a zoo always). My wife and I walked the store and it was pretty much the same set up as back in the States the only difference being that we were in Iceland, and everything was in the local language. The biggest change is that all of the alcohol here at the COSTCO is located in a different section and unless you own a business or a bar and have the SPECIAL COSTCO card, you aren't allowed to go in this room. I had a young lady come up to me and escort me out of there, even though I was just looking... Typical Marine gets escorted away from the booze. She was nice enough to inform me that there was an alcohol store located right next door. No we didn't buy anything in the store, didn't need to stock up on bulk items for just a few days!

SO we walked out of the store and turned left and found a local grocery store. We walked in to a local store called Bonus (https://bonus.is/) its really a Icelandic version of Aldi's back in the states, same set up and everything. Special note though (just thought about this), the stores here do charge you for your bags just like California. SO keep that in mind when you are out and about shopping. We bought some pop, chips and my favorite Peanut M&M's and scooted out of the store.

Once we reached the car, we decide to make sure we can find the place where we are supposed to meet up for the Reykjavik Pub Crawl/ Beer Tasting later that evening. It wasn't that hard of a drive, as we ended up back in an area of the shopping district that had more food places, bars and pubs for us to go too. We found the Ingolfur Square made a mental note of where to go and proceeded back to our hotel.

At around 1730 we proceed out towards where we need to go to meet up for the Reykjavik Pub Crawl/ Beer Tasting, we proceeded back to Ingolfur Square via the directions from our GPS, now to find parking. Okay found a spot and of course trying to parallel park driving a stick shift (manual transmission) isn't the easies thing to do, but then again. I had to ask my wife to guide me to make sure I wasn't in the middle of the street.

After the parking mission was completed we proceeded to Inglfur Squard to meet up with our guide. Inside this part are two tall pillars and next to them are two steam pipes that emit some heat, good place to hang out at and wait for people. We meet our tour guide (one of the locals) and a young lady for Austin, Texas. Our entire Pub Crawl was a total of three of us plus the guide. Oh this is going to be epic.

The first pub went to is called the "Saeta Svino Gastropub" (https://saetasvinid.is/en/drinks/beer/). The inside of this pub is pretty nice, all wood interior and just a really nice atmosphere. Our guide obtained our first beer (and yes she was drinking with us) and it was pretty damn good. Don't ask me the name of the beer cause I don't remember and even if I did I couldn't say the name. During the time we were here, the conversation was awesome as we talked about where we all came from and our back grounds and our tour guide also filled us in on the history of Iceland, Reykjavik and the local district we were in.

The Northern Lights were also discussed during this time and a suggestion of a few apps we could use were made and my wife and I eagerly downloaded them to check them out. Gotta see the Northern Lights!!!!

The next pub we went to was called the Micro Bar (https://www.facebook.com/MicroBarIceland). It is situated in the basement of another place and is actually another nice place too. This time instead of one beer we got to try five (5) different ones, this time I have a list!!! So here we go.

1. Jingle Balls (2019) Christmas Brown Ale

2. Jola Tumi (2019) Christmas NEIPA

3. Yllur - IPA with Elderflowrs

4. Cherry Picking - Wheat Ale w/ cherry's

5. Skarfur Porter

We tried each of these and they weren't too bad, the Cherry Picking one I could have done without and my wife who has a dislike for cherry's couldn't agree more. But the others were just fine and all tasted great.

While here the discussion turned towards the recent music festival and out tour partner talked about working several concert festivals in the States to include the South By Southwest festival in Austin.

Onto our final stop for the night, it was a little bit of a walk, but it was worth it. We walked through the rest of the restaurant/ pub/ bar area and back up to the shopping district (oh not that again!!!) Our tour guide promised that we wouldn't be sorry about this next place.

While walking we continued to talk and I brought up how the United States Marine Corps and Navy invaded Reykjavik and drank the town dry back in 2018. Our tour guide laughed about this and said that if they had known in advance that we were coming they would have ordered more Beer!!!! We all got a great laugh.

So after walking about a half mile, we came upon our next location, the pubs name "Bastard" (https://bastard.is/?lang=en) (yes the name and spelling is correct, however it is not the same "Bastards" that is located in Downey, CA.) The inside of this establishment reminds you a lot of the local pubs that you see throughout Europe, but again a really nice atmosphere and friendly people here.

Our guide went up to the bar and got us a selection of the four local beers that have for tasting. They are:

1. Hazy

2. Amber

3. Solveig

4. Olfur

All of the beers were actually not that bad and tasted pretty good, of course by the time we made to "Bastard" my wife and I had already decided to get something to eat otherwise it wasn't going to be good. SO while we were talking, we order a hamburger (for me) and fish taco's (my wife). The food arrived and it wasn't too bad, and the food was decently priced too. Our tour guide started talking about Gin during this time and my wife's eyes lit up and our guide recommended that we come back to "Bastard" or go to a place called Kaldi to try Gin drinks.

Shortly after this conversation our friend from Austin had to leave to go catch another tour she hoped would get her to see the Northern Lights and our guide left to head home.

After sitting for a few minutes and fooling around with the Northern Light App's my wife and I decided to head for the car and try to head out to see if we could see the them. My thought was to try to head north of Reykjavik in the hope of maybe getting out of the weather and clear skies.

So I looked at a city that showed on the app that was about 30 miles away a town called Borgarnes.. Off we go!

We drove for about an hour, got to travel on Route 1 and go through a long tunnel that takes you under the water of one of the bays here pretty cool to be honest. so until we reached the town of Borgarnes, the clouds and rain were still coming, yeah this wasn't going to work. So we turned around and headed back to Reykjavik and our hotel via the long tunnel.

Once back at the hotel my wife recommended that I go out and take pictures of the Hallgrimskirkja Church, so I did that. It's only about a four (4) minute drive from our hotel so that was perfect. Got up to the Church and took my pictures.

The one thing that I truly hate about trying to take pictures especially at night is that people in general don't pay attention when they are walking around and don't usually pay attention to the occasional photographer that's there trying to take a picture. Taking pictures at night is a challenge as it is, but to add people walking through your picture is just another challenge.

So I got my pictures and left for the hotel and a late night pint of beer and bed. For Tomorrow was another day.