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Running Around in the Land of the Midnight Sun

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My Guesthouse in Reykjavik at 11 pm

My Guesthouse in Reykjavik at 11 pm

My first day in Iceland began with my arrival at Keflavík Airport around 6:30 am Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). (I should add that it is not Daylight Savings Time, which is not needed when it’s light 24 hours a day.) In Los Angeles time, it was only 11:30 pm on the previous day. I knew that my sleep pattern would be massively disrupted if I tried to hit the sack at that point.

What I did was to go all over the place so I wouldn’t sleep until around 11 pm GMT. To that end, here is a partial listing of what I did on the first day:

  1. The first stop was the excellent information center of The Icelandic Travel Market at Bankastræti 2, where I picked up a 3-day Reykjavík Welcome Card and some local bus schedules.
  2. In 2001, I never got a chance to visit the original saga manuscripts; so I took care of that right away by stopping in at The Culture House.
  3. Then I walked over to the city’s famous hot dog stand: Bæjarins Beztu and got eina pylsur með öllu (what they call a hot dog with everything). Very tasty!
  4. Then it was off to the old port to book a Sea Adventures puffin tour by boat to the Isle of Lundey (“Puffin Island”) in Faxafloi Bay.
  5. I had some time to kill, so it was off to the Settlement Museum, also known as Reykjavík 871±2, where I saw the ruins of one of the original farmhouses from the 9th century A.D.
  6. I hung around the Old Harbor waiting for the puffin tour, which I loved.
  7. Next: Get a great fish dinner, using my Reykjavík Welcome card 10% discount at The Fish Company, where I dined on arctic char and other Icelandic fish delicacies. It was what my British friends would call “splashing out,” but it was worth every penny!
  8. That put me in the mood for GoEcco’s Haunted Walk of Reykjavik at 8:00 pm local time.

By the time the Haunted Walk ended around 10:30 pm, I was feeling a bit haunted myself; so I trudged back to the Guesthouse Odínn, ready to hit the sack.

The Sack

The Sack

I expected to have trouble dealing with the sun being up 24 hours on the longest day of the year, so I had purchased a sleep mask. All that did was make my head sweat, so I decided I would just deal with it. I laid it aside, never to pick it back up, and sank into a deep, dreamless sleep. I woke briefly around 3:00 am and saw the sun still up. Having warn myself out with all my running around, I had no trouble sinking back into sleep.

 

The Second Step Is Taken

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Downtown Reykjavik, Iceland

Downtown Reykjavik, Iceland

Now that I settled on a flight to/from Iceland, it’s time to get some room reservations. Iceland has a very short tourist season, running roughly from the middle of June to the end of August. Even before September, many tourist offices are closed down in preparation for the beginning of school. That’s right: Many tourist facilities are in school buildings scattered around the country. Many boarding schools become summer hotels, and then return to educational use come September.

When I arrive in Reykjavik, it will be just before the longest day of the year, during which there is no darkness to speak of. Unless the guesthouses where I stay have blackout curtains (and most of them don’t), I will have to wear eyeshades to allow me to sleep. And because of the runtur—the Icelandic equivalent of a spring weekend at a Mexican resort—and the boisterousness of hundreds of European teenagers showing they can drink like a man, I will also come equipped with earplugs. That will not be much of a problem outside the capital, however.

Greater Reykjavik is a small city by U.S. standards, about 120,000 people in a country whose total population is about 322,000. It is the world’s northernmost capital of a sovereign state. That sentence is worded thusly to eliminate Nuuk, which is the capital of the Danish colony of Greenland.

I had hoped to secure a room at the Baldursbra Guesthouse on Laufásvegur, where I stayed in 2001, but they were booked solid; so I took a chance on the Guesthouse Odinn, which is slightly nearer the center of things by Laugavegur (the main shopping street) and therefore probably more noisy. No matter. Being by myself, I am more able to put up with a variety of situations. I just hope it’s not a big party place, with young males screaming and projectile vomiting all over the place.