Taking a day off

Flashback: Thursday, July 29, 2004

After 18 days of travel, today is downtime, until the afternoon bus back to Keflavík. No cameras, no rucksack. Temporarily no longer a tourist, but just living as the locals do.

After the traditional light Scandinavian breakfast, and a slow morning packing up, it's a walk to the Kringlan shopping centre. Of course, today, the skies finally opened up again, and turned it into a long, long walk in the pouring rain.

It's a modern mall, like any other, but I didn't travel all this way to shop. Just looking around, including stepping into the 66° Norður store, then stepping out empty-handed again, one last time. The only products in my price range were rather silly looking fleece hats, for which I wouldn't even pay that price.

Lunch will be in the food court today. The Economist magazine keeps track of what it calls the Big Mac Index. Based on the assumption that a Big Mac is always identical, at any McDonald's restaurant anywhere in the world, it measures the relative consumer purchasing power in each country.

A Big Mac for 439 ISK (about $9 CAD) is out of the question. No Kebabhús today, thank you. I'll stick to the slightly healthier Mexican salad a couple of shops over.

For the return trip back to the hotel, a taxi is the smarter way to go. After checking out, I have a quiet half hour, sitting in the hotel lobby, flipping through the Morgunblaðið. To an observer, I might even have appeared to be able to read Icelandic, perusing articles about the (increasing) comparative price of fisk at Bónus and other outlets, scanning the adverts to marvel at the cost of living, or reading the daily horoscopes (Pisces is Fiskarnir in Icelandic).

Then the airport bus arrives, and I'm on the way out of the country.