After ten hours of sleep last night I woke up feeling much more like myself. I also went downstairs in my pajamas for breakfast with my bed hair sticking out everywhere and got some weird looks. Apparently, hostelers are not supposed to hang out in common areas unless wearing normal people clothes? Whatever, this hostel is right next to a geothermal pool, I will be running around shamelessly in a swimsuit at some point, and they can get over it. With that said, here are my journal entries for the day:
30 May
07:00
So it never really got dark last night…yay land of the midnight sun! In other news, I woke up to it being much lighter outside than when I went to sleep…great balls of fire it’s sunny outside! (today was a beautiful day. The sun was out all day, which means the locals run around in shorts and t-shirts. I would wear more substantial clothing since the temperature was only about 48 degrees Fahrenheit, but hey, you do you boo.)
08:30
I just learned that there is a giant 500 square meter banana greenhouse here in Iceland. Much excitement, yes. (it sucks at producing bananas in sufficient enough quantities to be economically feasible, but hell, it would be super awesome to claim that you ate an Icelandic banana. The only way that statement could be more awesome is if you consumed said banana while riding in a Viking ship or dangling above one of the volcanoes.)
10:30
I met a kitty and made it my friend in the Botanical Gardens! Her name is Bronzy. Time to check that off my list. (Such a cute kitty floof. I’ll include a picture of her looking all majestic. I guess she’s not *technically* a stray since she was wearing a collar, but since I doubt she lives in the gardens, I am counting her as a met goal.
11:45
Holy cow there is a zoo thing in the open space behind the hostel, and they have lambs and seals and ponies…I can’t handle the cuteness right now. Also, does reindeer (or even the seals) living in a random zoo in the middle of Reykjavik count as finding wildlife in a random place? If so, I can also check that off my list. Apparently farm animals are a novelty here as they had them in the zoo. I felt sorry for the pigs, the barn had no heat, and one of the sows was shivering something terrible. I got to tell Madre about the thermal “window” that seals possess that so that they don’t overheat. It would be travel time with Miranda if there weren’t a Fun Fact Friday session on some other day of the week hosted by yours truly.
12:45
I just had a “Swiss Mokka” and oh my gosh, if this is how they make mochas in Switzerland, I’m moving there. (no joke, it was that good. I’m pretty sure my eyes rolled back into my head at some point while I was drinking it. Not even embarrassed about it. Also, I had the mocha at this little cafe Madre and I stopped by for lunch. It was sitting in the middle of a greenhouse and had some of the best food I have ever eaten. Plus, most of the vegetables in the food were grown right there on the same property. Hot damn. Maybe I should move here. They do offer an M.S. in Biology…but I would probably need to learn Icelandic, and since only 0.005% of the world’s population speaks Icelandic, it would be a cool language to know, but pretty much useless outside of Iceland. Icelandic is also one of the hardest languages to learn because it hasn’t really modernized and exists mostly in its original form. There’s your daily #FunFactFriday with Miranda! Oh gosh, I just used a hashtag)
14:30
There’s a main road here called Kringlumyrarbraut. (seriously, that’s even the proper spelling, I triple checked) I’ve been calling it “kringle rabbit” because for the life of me I can’t pronounce it. (I know, I know, the inability to utter a word doesn’t give me the right to butcher its name brutally, but E for effort?)
15:15
I go all the way to Iceland and what do I get? Shoes. *facepalm* (I am finally admitting that I have an unhealthy love of shoes…)
18:00
There are many cyclists in this town. It works out quite well since all the main roads I’ve seen so far have bike lanes that are separated from the vehicle traffic by a grassy median. Reykjavik is very bike friendly. (Super neat! There are usually even designations between pedestrian and bike lanes. And the pedestrians seem to stay where they are supposed to be! Now if we could only teach CSU students to do that…)
I think that’s pretty much all I have for today’s adventures! However, it’s only 19:30ish here so I may take a nap and then go to Laugardalslaug next door and hang out in some geothermal water. I can always tell y’all about my experience tomorrow if it happens!
Over and Out
The Adventures of a Budding Biologist 