Yesterday we spent the entire day in Reykjavik to do some shopping. It is a nice little town with interesting architecture, many restaurants and nice people – but it is not a town where you go shopping. During our stay here, all I have bought is two t-shirts and two comic books (Wolverine:  Weapon X and Zombie Stories: Good Eatin’).

Anyway, yesterday we  walked around for a few hours trying to find something interesting to buy. Failing that, we then took a bus out to Kringlan, the big shopping mall outside the city. A lot of stores but not much of interest to us. After that we met up with my brother and we had some dinner at the Mexican restaurant Santa Maria next to our hotel. A Mexican restaurant where you had to make a special request to get a Mojito, since the waiter didn’t even seemed to know what that was. Anyway, the food was quite good and the prices low (or odyr, as they say here in Iceland). We went on to Kaffi Zimsen, a pub that seemed to have a nice atmosphere, but turned out to have very expensive drinks and a busted-up bathroom. After a while four women that Fredde had been diving with turned up. After chatting with them for a while we went back to the hotel after a quick stop at our favorite pyslur (Icelandic hot dog) place.

Just a quick update before going out:

Yesterday wee took the Golder Circle Tour, a guided bus tour to different parts of southern Iceland. First, we went to a geothermal plant to look at how the hot springs brings hot water and electricity to practically all of Iceland.

Next stop was the Gullfoss waterfall. Absolutely stunning! That was probably the most intense nature experience I’ve had, and is strongly recommended if you ever go here.

After that, we went to the geysir area, “where hot springs are in abundance, geysers explode and pools of mud bubble”. Cool experience – got some really nice photos as well.

Last stop was a visit to the Thingvellir National Park, the site of the oldest existing parliament in the world. It is located between two tactonic plates (North American and Eurasian), which has created a huge rift in the ground, still drifting apart with a few centimeters per year.

We got home to the hotel at about 17:00, where we met up with Fredde who had been diving in two degrees cold water (but with at least 60 meters of clear sight!) during the day. We went to a restaurant to have dinner, and did some barhopping after that.

Pictures and further updates will come when I have time, now we will do Reykjavik!

Update: Pictures!

Update 2: Captions!

Woot!

We are now in Iceland. The flight went wery well, comfortable seats with good in-flight entertainment (touch sceens in every seat). Hotel is absolutely faboulus with a really fresh room larger than my last apartment, located right in the very center of Reykjavik. We have had a great dinner, good beer, nice Icelandic company and the best hot dog (due to munchies) in ages.
Tomorrow we will go on a tour, seeing waterfalls, geysers and a national park.
Some pictures:

In June me and Marianne will be moving to Tokyo.

I recently got a job offer as a graphic designer at a big (and I mean BIG) telecom company in Japan. Since we hadn’t decided whether or not to go through with this we have decided to not tell anyone until now. Last night we sat down again and came to the mutual agreement to take the job and go through with the move.

The company has arranged an apartment in Shimokitazawa, Setagaya district. It’s an older (but newly renovated) apartment fairly close to the subway. And most important, it has a 100mbit Internet connection.

The salary is good enough to provide for us both, but Marianne should have no problems finding job as an English teacher there either.

Now we have a little over two months to sell of our stuff. Some will be placed in storage at our parent’s places, but most electronics and furniture will have to go.

By the way, is anyone interested in our current apartment, 79 sqm in Helenelund, Sollentuna? Otherwise we will cancel the contract fairly soon.

These are exciting times.

Update:

As I still get questions about this half a year later, I feel I should explain that this was an April fools joke, originally posted on April 1st.

Still, I wouldn’t mind to actually move there.

Nomadic Matt’s Travel Site has an excellent post titled Seven Things to Do in Iceland (Why You Should Go Right Now!).

As a group of us are getting together to go there this Easter, this is a nice place to quickly read up on Iceland if you are interested in joining us. Keep in mind that while the tickets and hotels are still very cheap, they tend to run out sooner or later, and you can already see the prices rise on a daily basis.

Gallery: Seven things to Do in Iceland

Worth adding is also Whale Safari, where a large number of different whales are often sighted all around the Icelandic coast.