We rose fairly early and had a substantial breakfast at the Hotel Borg's cafe, then dressed in our warmest clothes and headed down to the waterfront to board one of the Elding whale-watching tour boats for a three-hour cruise. We shared the boat with a tour group from Italy, who were having a swell time.
The weather out in Faxafloi Bay couldn't have been better. Sunny, clear, light breeze. The sea was so calm it looked as if it had been ironed. Birds and whales were out in abundance. We finally saw some puffins, as well as various gulls and gannets.
And then the whales! A Humpback (pretty sure it was just one whale), a group of Minke whales, and other people reported a pilot whale which I didn't see. There aren't any photos because the whales don't stop and pose for the camera. You see a spout, a black back breaking the surface, a tail, and then the whale is gone again, feeding down below.
When we motored back to the dock Diane and I went back to our hotel. Along the way we got to see the exciting finish of a 5-kilometer road race, which was part of the celebrations of the first day of summer in Reykjavik. You may wonder how anyone can call April 21 the first day of summer, especially when it's still dipping below freezing at night. Well, in Iceland they're a bit more relaxed about their definitions of "summer." What they really mean is "not winter" and it's their celebration so I won't quibble.
After a delightful lunch at a sort of Icelandic diner around the corner from our hotel, we went for a walk generally south and west, just to explore that part of the city. We walked through the University campus and past several embassies (including Russia's, which occupied multiple houses, all very secure-looking). It was drizzling through most of our walk, making us glad to have on layers of wool.
I did get a photo of the most dignified-looking cat in Iceland, a fierce old fellow perched majestically on a fence post.
In lieu of dinner we got fancy desserts at the "Apotek" restaurant in the hotel next to ours. Very fancy indeed, and quite good. I chased my dessert with a shot of Brinnevin, the Icelandic distilled spirit. It's sometimes called Akvavit, and sometimes called Schnapps, and to me it tasted like caraway gin, so let's just say it's good. I will admit that it would probably be a lot better to drink with smoked fish rather than ice cream.
And then, tired out from our day, it was off to bed.
Next time: soaking!
You may find this project interesting: For the past month, I've been learning how to write compute shaders for OpenGL, to do parallel processing on the GPU.
I recently finished this: a noneuclidean raytracer that simulates a Riemannian wormhole.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1976310/Riemanns_Lens/
Any new books in the works? I've enjoyed most of your novels.
Posted by: MadRocketSci | 05/12/2022 at 07:27 PM