Page 6 - 2000 ICELAND

the hour; why would the current guests want to be rousted out by this
ungodly time? They did offer us breakfast in the lunchroom which we

happily devoured: hot and cold cereals, toast, tea and coffee, fruit (apples
and bananas), tomato and cucumber slices, hard boiled eggs, and of course

the typical Scandinavian cold cuts. Then we went to the guest lounge to
sleep on straight backed chairs (by stretching across 2-3 of them) until 10

AM when they finally rewarded us for good and quiet behavior by giving us

our room keys. Napped again until noon and then ventured out to try the
city bus system whose drivers were not on strike; we headed for downtown

and arrived in a quick 20 minutes.

A bright sun was shining in a pretty much cloudless sky but it was chilly
enough to us to need a light jacket. The town center was quite deserted

when we first arrived and stayed that way until late afternoon. The few
people we saw on the streets were not dressed warmly so this was pretty

obviously a lovely summer day to them. Icelanders did not appear to our

eyes quite as “Nordic” looking as the Swedes, Danes and Norwegians. We
saw a wide range of hair colors from blonde to dark hues and red-heads as

well. Not all eyes were blue and builds were slender in all age groups; but
certainly all skin tones were quite pale! This variety must come from the

mixture of Irish and Viking genes.

Since we felt ill at ease, jet-lagged strangers in a strange land, we really
could not yet judge the friendliness factor of the local inhabitants as we

were not very outgoing ourselves. We did meet a couple of Scottish tourists

with whom we talked for quite some time. It takes them only 1.5 hours to
fly over from Glasgow and it’s relatively inexpensive for them to come to

Iceland, except for the fearsome food prices.

First impressions of the city of Reykjavik (population 170,000 persons out of a
total Icelandic population of 280,000) a fourth of whom are under 15 years

of age were somewhat surprising! The city is quite colorful; guess we had
expected rather drab grays and icy whites, but instead we saw barn reds,

wedgewood blues, buttercup yellows, rosy pinks, and even some sea-foam