Iceland: Our Arrival and Whale Watching

Decision of our plane ride to Iceland: I love Fiance a lot. Fiance loves the window seat, loves, loves, loves it. We also like to sit next to each other. Which means I have to sit in the middle, you guys. On a five hour flight, next to an unconscious woman which is unhelpful because I have the bladder of a fly.

But I digress.

This is us before take off! I fell asleep five minutes before we took off (I have incredible napping ability) and woke up 20 minutes after thinking I had been asleep for four hours. I was sadly mistaken.

We arrived and obviously I had to use the restroom. Also obviously I had to take a picture of myself, so here you go. Little did I know this was my first of many experiences with the CLEANEST BATHROOMS IN THE ENTIRE WORLD. But more on that later.

We took a shuttle bus (22$/person) from the airport to our hostel (The Reykjavik Downtown Hostel which we would absolutely recommend) and promptly fell asleep but only AFTER we decided that on Sunday morning we would be going whale watching.

Our hostel was right near the (beautiful) harbor, so all we had to do was take a five minute walk to buy our tickets at 8AM. Then we ran back to our hostel to eat breakfast (because nothing was open on Sunday) even though the woman who told us the water would be "rough". Should you preempt sea-sickness by not eating? Should you eat? Who knows but we ate breakfast.

Here are some pictures of us before things went terribly wrong (read: sea sick). Seriously LOOK HOW EXCITED I WAS!

We are SO HAPPY!

An hour into our two and a half hour tour and no whales later, we were done. And entire family next to us threw up (two grandparents, two parents and little girl) the entire time. The above (beautiful) picture is the last one I took. We went below deck to sit down and attempt to feel less nauseous, only to run up the steps five minutes later to escape the family vomit and the bobbing of the ship. Miserable.

SO miserable that on the way off the boat I didn't even want to get my picture taken with the wooden puffin cutout on the dock. If you know me THAT IS SERIOUS BUSINESS.

In conclusion we saw no whales, not even the fake dolphin "whales" the guide was talking about and we all looked green exiting the boat. So green that we had to lay down before the start of the rest of our day. Despite all of this, I would absolutely recommend it, but you should definitely do the two and a half hour version and not the four/six hour version (I would have just thrown myself over the side of the boat if we had done that one). Or you could be a more proactive planner than we were and take a Dramamine. Either way, do it! The scenery is beautiful and you can pretend to be a pirate. And if you see some whales, email me the pictures? I'll pretend like we saw them, too!