Arrived in Reykjavik on Sunday in the afternoon and checked into the hostel. Kex is a wicked hostel with a big bar area. When I arrived there was a band playing as part of a weekend music festival. After checking in I went for a walk and grabbed a boat for dinner (pretty much just a sub from subway). Then went for more of a walk around the city checking out a few tourist spots. Got some unbelievable photos of the sunset with the viking ship sculpture in the foreground. This was at 10:30pm at night! The sun doesn't seem to go down here at all. I thought london was cool with twilight! Then headed back to the hostel and TRIED to get to sleep. Lucky for all of us in room 321 we had a chronic snorer. Even luckier for myself he was in the bunk above me. I swear at one stage i could feel the bunks vibrating from the sound!
I woke up tired at 7am the next day to go grab some brekkie before my Golden Circle tour which started at 8am. The guide on our tour was excellent and def knew his stuff about Icealnd. He was full of info. We visited a horse farm with the famous Icelandic horses. They have a really funny running style but look like amazing animals! So we watched a show there and met the horses in the stable before taking off. Next stop was the spouting geysir. This was a pretty impressive sight and scared the pants off me the first time it blew out. I did manage to get a decent photo of it though. We got some tucker in here before moving onto my favourite part of the tour. The Gulfoss waterfall was incredible. So much water rushing down this waterfall. A very impressive site. The scenery of Iceland is pretty unbelievable with gas steams being seen everywhere, snow capped mountains and the Icelandic horses dotting the fields. I got back to the hostel about 5pm and then found out where to go get me some whale. Off to the Icelandic bar it was for some whale. I had an entree portion and it was absolutely delish! I thought it would be really fatty but it was nicely seared and kinda just tasted like steak. Then for the main i had a reindeer burger which was so nice and juicy. So much flavour in old rudolph! Afterwards headed back to the hostel where i met rob and dave, an american from cali and the token irish man. After some small talk we headed down to the bar to drink with some more americans. From here it was on to a bar in town. However unfortunately during the week the bars close at 1am in Reykjavik. So we came back to some vodka! The americans and dave all left early the next morning.
Tuesday I woke at 10am to check out. I was going to head to a small country hotel near Hella however it sounded like a real mission to get there so i bailed. In hindsight i wish i had just hitchhiked there as i've since heard its safe to do that here and its something i want to do. Anyways another time. So rob and i went for a walk around reykjavik before heading to one of the geothermal pools. I had a chronic headache all day while we were walking around however a couple of hours in the pools fixed that right up! Then we went on a boat from the harbour fishing for cod. I caught a small fish the first time i through the line in. However after that the going got tough. The weather has been amazing since i've been here and i've even got sunburnt but of course as soon as we got on the boat a massive dark cloud came overhead and it was freezing fishing out on the boat. However i perserved and caught another bigger cod which we were able to keep. So the skipper of the boat tells me to cut the fish's throat. After this he pulls the still beating heart out and hands it to me telling me to eat it for good luck. Without hesitation i chuck it into my gob. Big mistake! It took all my will power to keep the beating heart down and swallow it. I won't be doing that again! Plus i caught no more fish after this....so much for good luck! Although this wasn't enough. After our fishing trip rob and i went to the icelandic bar. This time it was the fermented shark and puffin (native bird in iceland). The shark was the most horrible thing i have ever tasted. It was worse than the fish heart! But the puffin wasn't too bad. Then it was back to the hostel where we met a bunch of people
