Thursday, September 1, 2011

day 21 Iceland and Bad Bill

We are back on the ship, sitting in the lido, have had a lovely dinner and now its time to blog.

We had an eight hour tour today. We sat in the very back of the bus with a bunch of Germans…so friendly even if they didn’t speak much English.

Iceland was absolutely NOT what I expected. Truly, I feel like one of those down south peeps that think we canadians get around by dog sled. It hardly ever snows here, the coldest it gets in the winter is about ten below and they have more daylight in a year than almost anywhere else on the planet.

There are no trees, other than ones they have imported and planted. All the areas that humans can go is like endless prairie with volcanoes off in the distance. The fields are covered with 1000 year old lava that is covered with green moss and lichen. There are lots and lots of geothermal areas, steam and geysers coming out of the ground. We drove about 125 miles today and basically saw endless fields of moss covered lava. I have to admit it was just a tad disappointing. Iceland was nothing at all like the Faeroes, which by comparison was indescribably beautiful.

We did stop at a geothermal plant…and learned all about how they are creating their electricity by using the underground hot water. Most interesting. But in the gift shoppy area, Bill made me so mad I stomped out of there. He can be so annoying and I can write this cuz I always read my blogs to him before I post. So, this is what happened:

Bill has a phobia of weird money. He simply does not want to come home with even 1 krona or whatever. But…..he always comes on these trips with nothing smaller than fifties. When you buy something with an american fifty or fifty euros, you get the change back in the country your in currency. So we never have small enough money to get something in the gift shops or small enough money to tip the tour guides…which is really embarrassing. So, today, in the thermal plant gift shop I found a t shirt I would dearly have loved to get my niece Dorothy. Plus we would get change to tip the guide and leftover kronas can be used in Greenland. But, do you think he would just hand over a fifty? No he would not. “Use your credit card” he says. So I explained my plan but nope, he just kept whining that we would end up with kronas. I KNOW! We can use them to tip the tour guide and spend it in Greenland. I finally got so mad I quietly but very forcefully said, “well I am handling and organizing the money next trip” And he yelled really loudly back, “Well good, you just do that!!!” Everybody was looking. Oh my God!! It was time for us all to go to the bus anyway so I ducked out of there and into the bus really quickly. But Bill, now all mad and preoccupied, didn’t remember that we had to be on the bus by 2:30. So the tour guide came down the aisle, counted us all and announced that one was missing. Hah!!! He didn’t show up for five minutes, long enough that when he got on the bus people razzed him. He took it well..He did show up with a bag. He bought something. I didn’t ask what it was or what he used to buy it. The bag is sitting on the bed and I ain’t touching it!!!

I just read this to him. He didn’t say much. But he did admit that he used an american fifty and we now have a few kronas to use in Greenland and he tipped the tour guide properly. Good man!! I still don’t know what is in the paper bag on the bed! TTYL

No comments:

Post a Comment