Iceland Day 1 - Foodies

We arrived in Iceland at 7 am, made it through customs, and onto the bus into Reykjavik by 8:30 am.  That airport is amazing, easy to get through, friendly folks - just great!

Libby and I are self proclaimed "foodies".  We were looking forward to trying authentic Icelandic foods.  Day 1 was filled with Icelandic foods.

Before our trip, I watched Andrew Zimmer's bizarre foods in Iceland.  I learned of the love of fermented shark, lamb, puffin, and many other foods.  While searching for what tours we should do while in Iceland, I found a food tour mountainguides.is  This group is GREAT.  They have a nice little shop on the main shopping street of Reykjavik.

Our group (5 of us, plus the tour guide) couldn't have fit together better!  We all hit it off immediately.  We are all now friends on facebook (a married couple from India - awesome folks! a guy from Denver that was getting ready to try to drive the ring road and Libby and myself) :).  BEST.GROUP.EVER.

The weather was not ideal, but in typical icelandic weather patterns - it changed, every 5 minutes.  We had rain, sunshine, snow and more rain. However, it did not put a damper on our plans.

We got to try Icelandic Malt drinks, fermented shark, lobster soup, black death (Brennivin - an alcoholic drink) and dried haddock.

The shark was...interesting.  Andrew Zimmer and Anthony Bourdain labeled it as the most disgusting thing they have ever tried.  I agree.  BUT I tried it.  At least I can say that.  The shark is hung outside to ferment for 3-4 months.  If you eat it after it's freshly caught and cook it, it will cause you to vomit blood.  So the vikings found you could ferment it and eat it.  Gross huh?

After our food tour, we decided a quick nap was in order.  After our nap, we did a bit of exploring and found out that our Northern Light tour was cancelled due to the cloudy/rainy weather.

We found this GREAT restaurant - http://tapas.is/en/  Tapas Barrin was perfect to continue our foodie adventures!  We got to try puffin, whale, lamb, and some seafood dishes.  The puffiin (below) was interesting.  I was curious if we had tried it cooked a different way, if it would have been more enjoyable.

The whale, by far, was my favorite that evening.  I had some moral issues with eating whale.  But, it was authentic Icelandic food.  So, I did as the natives did, and enjoyed.

Once we finished eating, we were both getting hit with jet-lag pretty heavily and had many plans for the next day, so it was time for sleep.