Final Stopover

We flew via Iceland to Greenland, stopping for what was to be one night in Rekjavik, the capital. Which would have to be one of the most uninspired cities that I have ever been in! It feels like an American suburb - there are these horrible big high rise concrete-and-glass things going up everywhere, motorways snaking every which way, and apparently over 250,000 cars for just 500,000 Icelanders! It was also exhorbitantly expensive. Like, NZ$40 for an average meal at an average restaurant. And $14 for a glass of house wine! And we ended up staying a second night there, because our flight to Greenland was cancelled due to fog...

Main motorway into Rekjavik - playground for Mercs and Chevs, and not a lot else.

From our hotel looking towards the waterfront.
The old being demolished, and the new going up.

We did find one pretty building though, right on the waterfront. Apparently it's the place where in 1986 Reagan and Gorbachev met to end the Cold War! Other exciting things about Iceland? Well, we discovered Icelandic is very hard to say and/or comprehend. The have letters that we do not recognise as letters, and sounds that we do not recognise as pronouncible! We found that Icelanders eat cold cuts and cheese with cucumber and hard boiled egg on toast for breakfast. It's very windy there. Oh, and the most exciting thing is that all their electricity is thermally generated, and their hot water comes staight out of the ground! This results in every Icelandic bathroom smelling like Rotorua, which is interesting to say the least...

The place the Cold War began to end.
Also the prettiest house in Reykjavik, and the prettiest time of day (almost midnight..)

And then finally, 24 hours later than we'd hoped, we got the call from the airport to say it was all go. One and a half hours in the air, and this is the first sight we had of Greenland -