Well I am offi­cially an “hon­est woman” except that I can’t read what our mar­riage cer­tifi­cate says because it’s in Ice­landic. We’ll get it trans­lated into Eng­lish tomor­row (Wednes­day) and then I’ll know for sure what I’ve agreed to.

All has gone smoothly here in Reyk­javik. I love the city and think that it is one of the best places I can imag­ine to visit and get mar­ried in. We arrived early morn­ing at 7am and already the sun was high in sky due to the long sum­mer days. We took the Fly­bus to the Reyk­javik bus ter­mi­nal and then a smaller bus to the Hotel. All very effi­cient. The roads were empty and the ride from Keflavik (where the air­port is) into Reyk­javik passed lava fields, fields of lovely pur­ple Lupines and inter­est­ing apart­ment and busi­ness struc­tures. I feel like I am liv­ing in a Dwell Mag­a­zine arti­cle. Very cool. Our hotel room is sim­i­larly effi­cient. It’s small but clean and very new. We have a bed with two duvet cov­ers (so Euro­pean), a tv, closet space for Jus­tine (Greg’s clothes are still in his suit­case). Our hotel is built on top of Viking ruins that date back to the 9th cen­tury. The National Museum of Ice­land has an exhi­bi­tion titled 871+2 right below us. The hotel is on Aoal­straeti (street) which was the first and in fact, the only street in the early days of Reyk­javik. This is the old­est part of the city with some very old houses and trees sit­u­ated aside mod­ern design houses. There is an old well which used to be one of the city’s main water sources until the estab­lish­ment of the Water Works in 1909.

After a short nap (not the best idea as get­ting up was so dif­fi­cult) we roamed around. Right away I noticed the cor­ru­gated steel houses all painted bright col­ors with flow­ers out­side. Houses mix with shops and it’s unlike any city I’ve been to. The sky was as blue as could be and there was quite a breeze mak­ing it cool in the wind but quite warm in the shel­tered areas. We went and got my divorce decree at the Min­istry of Justice’s offices where they were as friendly as could be. I have had an email rela­tion­ship with so many help­ful peo­ple in this town. It took 10 min­utes and I was legit­i­mate to marry again. Thank God as Greg was (I think) a bit ner­vous. We had a nice lunch at a cafe and sat in the sun (hot). Greg got some fish stew (had­dock) in a bread bowl and I got shrimp on toast (basi­cally an open faced sand­wich). The shrimp were very tasty, com­pletely dif­fer­ent than the ones in the States. I’d like to think that they came right out of Reyk­javik Har­bor (down the street from the restau­rant), but I’m not sure. Our wait­ress like so many women here was very tall and very blonde and very nice. Every­one here speaks Eng­lish very well. And to lis­ten to the Ice­land lan­guage is so inter­est­ing. I can’t even begin to form the words with my mouth or pro­nounce the words I see. There is “a look” to the men and women here. All the women here are quite styl­ish, the black leg­gings with the dresses over them are quite pop­u­lar. Prob­a­bly keeps the legs warm. The guys were the slim peg legged jeans and have the look that the Bea­t­les did in the 60’s. Every­one smokes here and cof­fee is king more than in Seat­tle and quite tasty too. We got mar­ried at the Town Hall by two men, one of whom read the vows with a strong accent and his cute cohort/witness. It was mov­ing in a dif­fer­ent way than I expected. We tried to cam­corder it, but as Greg men­tioned I think only our (his) belly was filmed. You can hear it. We exchanged rings and had our pic­ture taken and went on our way. I haven’t received the bill yet so as of now, we got mar­ried for free.

We took our first stroll as man and wife back into town from the Town Hall area. We went to the Hall­grim­skirkja church which sits up on the hill over­look­ing Reyk­javik. It has a very unique style made to look like it has basalt/lava flow­ing off of it. We couldn’t go in as there was a funeral, but hope to go to the top of it this week where there is meant to be great views of the city and sur­round­ing areas. Out­side the church is a large statue of Leif Erick­son, the Viking Explorer and iconic fig­ure in his­tory. We walked back to the hotel enjoy­ing the sun­shine and throngs of peo­ple out­side soak­ing up every pos­si­ble ray. I think a lot of peo­ple must have called into work sick today as it was very crowded in all the parks and out­door cafes.

Later we had din­ner at the Ris­torante Caruso which is inside an old house made of brick and stone. It was very cosy inside. The cui­sine was Italian/Latin but had Ice­landic spe­cial­ties such as lamb and cod. The wait­ress was so nice. Her Eng­lish like every­one here was per­fect. We had a nice meal, some drinks., etc. and dessert on the house as a wed­ding gift. Greg had cod which was great. We ended up back at the hotel around 10:30pm with activ­ity in Reyk­javik just start­ing. I went to sleep so quickly and noted that when I got up in the night at 3am it was still light out­side. Bizarre.