Reykjavik to Keflavik- Day 6

Date: August 24th, 2009
Distance: 51km
Country: Iceland
Song of the Day: Burn to Shine - Ben Lee

Woke up to go to the Icelandic National Museum. It was very nice. It is like a museum of Icelandic history in chronological order from the settlement to the modern day. They had a number of artifacts from the last thousand years of history. I spent a couple of hours poking around there.

After that it was off to fight my way back out of the city. Again, what a pain. Little paths that come and go. Stupid paths. I was able to avoid most of the freeways. But I was happy to get out of town and get back on the highways. The shoulder out to Keflavik was actually very wide and felt pretty safe. I was worried about my tires though. There is broken glass all over the shoulder. But so far, no popped tires.

Oh, and I had to pick up my credit cards (and a few other things) from FedEx. It was on the outskirts of Reykjavik. When I got there, the package had arrived, yay! There was a tax on it though. I thought the guy had said it was 523isk. This is about five bucks. I told him that the stuff was mine, and there really shouldn't be taxes on it. It was leaving the next day anyway. But this was the person from FedEx. The person from customs had gone home, and I could explain it tomorrow. I was going to just pay the taxes and be done with it, when it turns out the actual amount was 5023isk. So about 50 bucks. There was no way I was going pay that. I would have to come back tomorrow. So I left that night without my stuff. Lame.

Went to the camping in Keflavik and met a nice girl from Switzerland. I guess she had spent the last two months biking around the island by herself. Way to go! We talked for a bit about the best places to see in Iceland. Oh, and the weather. It is better to come in June or July, apparently. It was fun to meet another solo bike tourer.

After that it was time for dinner. Nice restaurant in town. I was hoping for something with local color, but it was filled with foreigners. Oh well. After traveling to lots of different countries, I think most of the local people eat at pizza joints. I haven't been to any country that doesn't have them.

After that it was onto the Internet for a bit. It has been days since I checked my e-mail. I also wanted to find out if I had a place to stay in London. Finally I tried to book travel out of England. Talking with a few people along the way I am now thinking that having a reservation out of the country makes customs happy. I don't want to get stopped because they think I am trying to stay. I looked it up, but I wasn't going to put my credit card information into a public terminal. After that, just went to bed.

-Dravis