Thursday 23 June 2011

Friday, June 17 - Wedding day

13 hours of blessed sleep and we just barely make it to breakfast at 10 am. We have to make it to Hlemmur bus station for 3:30 to catch the bus that will take us to the wedding. That is our time line of the day.

Today is Iceland's independence day. They got independence from Denmark on Jón Sigurðsson birthday birthday of June 17, 1944. Today was a day for family, there was all sorts of kid activities and a fair in the center of Reykjavik. We went to the national museum and spend a goodly amount of time looking at a bunch of Viking age stuff they had. J had been before but hadn't done the audiotour so that is what we did. It was great but we didn't get to see everything since I felt that we should have some lunch before getting dressed and heading to the wedding.

It was odd seeing the street so littered with stuff and filled with so many families. We decided to go to the Laundromat Cafe and I had a fabulous ginger mango smoothie and a club sandwich. The sandwich was big and I couldn't finish it so I didn't even try - big step for me :)

Then off to the hotel to get ready for the wedding. We even took a taxi to the bus station since it was a bit of a walk and we didn't want to be late.

The wedding was held on the roof top of the Lava restaurant at the blue lagoon.
and it was raining a bit but the ceremony was beautiful albeit a bit cold
Here are Neil and Fjola or Njola as their friends have been calling them.

Then back in the buses to the building behind the power plant. It is a meeting hall and quite lovely but oddly situated right beside the power plant, there is nothing else around except old lava fields, the power plant, this hall in about 5-10 minutes by bus the blue lagoon. There was a champagne reception until the bride and groom and bridal party had finished their pictures. It had a slide show of all their friends who were involved in their lives and who had been invited. It was the same slide show that was part of their wedding game on their website. It was nice that it wasn't all about them.

Tom and Carson's plane had been cancelled and they were on the next available plane which didn't land until 12:40 which wouldn't allow them to join in on the reception. We were seated with mostly Icelandic friends of Fjola but they were very nice, we were also seated at the table next to Neil's family - hilarious, insane, boisterous weird family and it makes me understand why Neil is as Neil as he is. There were songs sung by his family and lovely presentations from both the maid of honour and the best man.

I probably shouldn't have eaten the chocolate covered strawberries since by 12:30 am I was done. I had a headache and my stomach was rebelling. I hadn't had much to drink so I blame the strawberries. J had warned me against eating them but I took no heed to his warning. The bus ride home was odd. It was all Neil's family and they were wanting to get back to the hotel but the bus wasn't full and their were no signs that more people were coming on the bus. His family badgered Neil to ask the bus driver to take them back but since it is a 40 min + drive back to Reykjavik they had to make sure that there were enough rides home for everyone. We were on the bus when Tom and Carson landed so we told them to just go to the hotel.

Arriving back at Hlemmur at 1:30, I did not want to get into another vehicle I was feeling horrible enough. So I convinced J that we should walk back to the hotel, since it was only 15-25 minutes away at our amble. The streets were filled with people, broken glass and pink cotton candy sugar it was fairly odd feeling. We made it back to the hotel but J was hungry and so we went out for Nonnabiti

It was surprisingly still light out and I was loosing all sense of time. I had no problems staying up to 3am since it felt rather early in the day. J ordered his sub but he had forgotten his wallet and I had decided at the last minute not to bring mine since J would have his, oh well. So I ran back to the hotel and ran back to the Nonnabiti with my wallet to pay for his sub. I was feeling better for the walk to the hotel and I got my exercise by running to and from the hotel at 2+ am. J went to meet Tom and Carson while I went to bed.

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