I am trying to remember what I did and how I did it, but oye! I think I was sleep deprived for 95% of the time I was there. I may very well still be sleep deprived. We shall see.
So, I always have this idea that I will follow these very exact rules for how not to get jet lag, but first, I can't really sleep on planes. So that. The main rule is to start eating according to the time where you are going the day you leave. So, I didn't do that, and then when they offered me free salad and free wine on the flight, I took it! Yeah!
Then I maybe got two or three head-jerking, superficial hours of "sleep," and then arrived at Reykjavik! I had already booked a shuttle to town, which takes about 45 minutes. Then I transferred to another bus that dropped me off about a ten minute walk from the place I was staying.
The place, basically the lower floor of a house, was awesome, and right next to the University of Iceland, where my conference was. After consulting a map, I figured out which way I was going and found the place. I dropped off my extremely too heavy back pack, and got my bearings. I believe this was when I walked around the neighborhood, found a grocery store but was too confused to do much except buy coffee and a banana. I took the long way home and got a bit lost, but saw some cool stuff. I went back to our flat, dropped off the stuff and headed over to the University.
I couldn't register for the conference yet, so I bought a salad, which was not too expensive, in the student center. Then I registered for the conference, ran into some friends, and went to a roundtable with one of them, Laura. She was presenting, but there were so many people that each person just read for about 5 minutes. Overall it was pretty amazing, and one woman played a song she had written on her fiddle. She had an amazing Scottish accent. During this panel, I felt like my face was melting.
After this panel, there was free wine! Always drink free wine! So I drank some wine and talked to people I knew, all the while feeling like my head was a balloon being blown about by some invisible wind. I was going to go back to the flat, have a handful of trail mix and crash, but Brenda, my flatmate, convinced me that I should eat dinner.
We went to the Nordic House and I had fish, I think it was cod, with a rhubarb reduction and roasted vegetables. It was delicious and $40!! Then I went home and crashed, and I had a great night's sleep, with my eye mask and my ear plugs!
bottom: view from my walk around the neighborhood
