Bobzilla's Adventures: Show Day 2 in Reykjavik, Iceland

Had to get out of bed to take a leak around 3:30 am last night. Damn beers! The sun was coming up. Sunset lasted for hours and hours and darkness lasts maybe 60-90 minutes.

Such a place!

Wow! We managed to squeeze an entire day's worth of fun in and still be back at the hotel by lunchtime.

Since we're doing 2 shows at the same venue, everything's already in place for tonight's show. Most of us have no reason to go to the gig before 2pm today.

So… a group of 6 of us went on a whale-watching excursion this morning. Everyone was up, had breakfast (or not) and met in the lobby around 8:30 for the 10-minute drive to the Whale Watching Center.

I wasn't sure we were gonna be able to do it, because when I got up around 6:15, it was raining and about 43 degrees. Here's what the sky looked like then:

Click image to enlarge.

It had mostly blown clear by the time we left the hotel. Abby set up one of our show runners to come pick us up in a van and take us to the waterfront. It was still a little chilly (high today was 50 degrees), but the boat provided insulated overalls, raincoats, hats and such, so we were all fine.

The trip lasted just under 3 hours and cost us each 4100 Kroners, which is about $67-68 in USD. The seas were calm, which was good. Otherwise, I would have been hurling pickled herring (from breakfast) over the side of the boat. One fellow on board was telling us about having taken the trip on Sunday when the waves were 8-10 meters. He said a lot of folks were getting seasick and throwing up and the ship actually turned around and returned to port. Everyone onboard that day got free tickets to take the excursion again, which is why he was there today.

After we reached the whaling area, the captain killed the engines to drift a bit. He would occasionally fire 'em up to rotate us or move us a bit for better viewing. The guide was an Icelandic hottie, about 25 years old, who stood atop the bridge. As she was spotting whales, she'd use her handheld wireless microphone to announce their location over the boat's PA system. In her cute little accent we'd hear "There's one, 11 o'clock to the front of the boat, and another at 3 o'clock." She could have read me the damn newspaper in that accent and I woulda loved it.

Here's some shots: