Day 16 -- Iceland

Spent the morning walking around, shopping and comparing prices. We could not help comparing Reykjavik with Lviv. Lviv is so much more interesting, has so much more to offer, not to mention the very tourist-friendly prices (Lvov .1L vodka 65cents – Iceland $8.  Lvov dinner for 3 with drinks  $20, Iceland hamburger and fries $20), and yet it is virtually unknown to international tourists. We took a city tour which cost 10 times as much as Lvov city tour and less than half as good. Reykjavik has almost nothing to see. The city tour consisted of the church (which we had already seen on our own), the Pearl  (an out of town facility that stores geothermic water for the city) and driving around pointing to pools, camping sites, a couple of churches, business district, and a little house where Reagan met with Gorbachev. When we got off the bus at the Pearl, it was snowing! The guide said that tourism is #1 source of income for Iceland. It surpassed fishing a few years ago. Bo is convinced that this is the result of a brilliant marketing campaign rather than the virtues of the country. Ukraine should hire this marketing firm to increase their tourism. We decided to have a nice dinner and picked out a highly rated restaurant in the city center where entres started at $50. After we walked there in pouring rain and freezing wind, we were told that they are fully booked by a group of 250 people. They recommended their sister restaurant a bit further downtown. When we got there, we were told again that there were no tables until 9 pm. We walked back and tried a couple more places, which were also full. Finally, we found a table at a little French restaurant almost next door to our hotel. The food was OK. After dinner, we went to our now favorite bar called “Ten Drops”. Al went to get our beers and picked up a cute young Icelandic girl who joined us at our table. A few minutes later her friend joined us too. They told us a lot about life in Iceland and recommended a thermal pool that we’ll try tomorrow. A bit later, their friend from Chicago also joined us. She’s been living in Iceland off and on for about a year making a documentary film about Icelandic creativity together with her mother who is a professor at a university in Kansas. It turned out be be quite an interesting evening, which we concluded by watching the US-Belgium soccer game.