We stayed at the Icelandair Natura, which was apparently the
best possible choice. Like any normal people do, we flew into Keflavik airport
and got a bus to the hotel. Unbeknownst to me, the Natura is right next to
Reykjavik airport. Like right beside it. Every time Ed went out for a smoke he
got to look at whatever had flown in.
Reykjavik airport is a smaller airport that nevertheless had
smaller corporate jets and the like coming in all the time. Over the course of
the week we saw a MU2, a Beechcraft Starship (he told me he thought they were
all recalled), and a turboprop DC3. This plane was parked there the whole time,
harassing me:
(you can't actually see the scantily-clad woman painted on near the front there, can you?)
There was a shrine to Bobby Fisher, and the boy was really
into playing chess at the time (that seems to have died off this week, but will
probably ramp up again next week, my theory is), so that was a hit, though he
wasn’t really impressed with the WiFi, which would randomly kick him off every
half hour or so, making online chess frustrating.
John Scalzi has been showing pictures out his hotel room
during his tour. My view was this:
That’s Ed down there.
There was an elfstone (a boulder where supposedly an elf or
elves live) at the other end of the parking lot with a plaque that said this
was a well-known elf stone location (which I took to imply that they didn’t
want people to think the hotel had just made this up for the tourists). I didn’t
take a picture of it.
Everything seemed like it was in walking distance. We could
have walked from the bus depot to the hotel (and did on several occasions).
There was a Subway (restaurant) nearby. More about that in another post. We
walked downtown, and the hotel also gave us a bus pass which was fabulous. We
walked to the beach, and the graveyard. And we walked to the Pearl.
The pearl was clearly visible up the hill from our hotel,
and there were all walking trails up there, so it was one of my first obvious
things to want to find out about.
When, a couple of days later, we went on our big Golden
Circle bus tour, we went to a geothermal plant.
It has giant water pipes that run to the pearl, filling six
giant hot water tanks, losing one or two degrees on the way. Apparently they heat houses that way, and houses in Reykjavik don't have hot water heaters. Signing up for the tour, the boy said “Coming in, I didn’t
think I was interested, but that was cool.” Win!