Paris to Reykjavik, Iceland: Day 19

For our last day in Paris, we decided to get up early, enjoy petite dejeuner with the boys before they left for school, and then walk over to the Rodin museum near the apartment for about an hour. Everything was going along pretty smoothly until we were nearing the museum and the first street that we wanted to walk down was blocked off and barricaded by police. We weren’t very phased since we had seen somewhat the same thing in Prague when the Old Synagogue in the Jewish town was temporary closed off.

We just continued walking- going down another block in order to cut over to the West. We finally made it to the street where the museum was, but as we got closer we realized that there was another police barrier. We walked up and they let us right through. Then we saw the major barricades: police in riot gear behind portable riot fences- hundreds of them just standing in the middle of a major street: Boulevard D’Invalides. Again we were able to walk through on the sidewalk.

After using my favorite French phrase: “Qu’est qui ce passé?” We found out that the fisherman had staged a demonstration about the price of fish in France (and were still demonstrating although we couldn’t figure out where exactly they were). Bed sheets with spray painted messages about Pecheurs being colere (angry) along with the smoke bomb debris in the middle of the street (and the police (gendarmes) being poised for action) was interesting. Maybe not as picturesque as the Rodin gardens, but interesting and a good vision of French life.

After a walk around the gardens of the Musee d’Armee in the Hotel D’Invalides (where Napoleon’s tomb is) we headed back to finish packing and catch our train out to the airport, buying a few sandwiches on our way.

The flight to Iceland passed without much of note other than I was introduced to my new favorite food of Iceland (and possibly overall): Skyr. Skyr is yogurt made in Iceland- a thicker, tarter version of standard yogurt made from skim milk and considered to be a cheese product. It is super high in protein and has no fat. What a perfect and delicious snack!

Once we got to Iceland we took a bus from the airport to another bus terminal where we transferred to a smaller van that brought us to our Guesthouse. Guesthouse Baldurbrau was not all that charming to me, but it fit the bill. We dropped our bags off, grabbed a map and set off to explore the town. Iceland is very cute, with neat houses of all different colors, and very Scandinavian architecture. We walked towards the center of town and found a very quaint but hip city center with restaurants with all kinds of food. We settled on Icelandic/American/French Fusion where we could check our email and pay with credit card. I had fish stew on top of rye bread with a cream sauce very good and hearty.

After dinner it was already past eight o’clock but the daylight looked as though it was three o’clock. You wouldn’t expect it, but it was very disorienting. Being on Paris time- which was already two hours later, and having not slept a lot the night before, we headed back to the Guesthouse for an early bedtime. I wanted more time to explore the very old town set up and look in all the cute shop windows, but felt the draw of some sleep.

The Guesthouse was loud with people moving around all night and the curtains not sufficient to keep out the nearly 20 hours of daylight. At 2 am when husband got up to get some ear plugs I looked outside to see that a street light was the source of “daylight”, but that the sky was indeed only grey.