What I've learned about traveling and taking photos of your food is that it is never advantageous to eat the cool/weird/illegal in other countries things for dinner. No, not because a night of indigestion is never pleasant, but because the ambient lighting is always terrible for photography.

Regardless, here's what's on my table at Islenski Barinn:

Far left jar: lightly seared minke whale* with rosemary, nut crumble and soy glaze atop a mound of potato purée.

Far right jar: smoked lamb tartar with melon, drizzled with lemon oil.

Top jar: smoked puffin with rye bread crumble, blueberry compote and horseradish.

After this delightful meal, I met my new German friend, Frank for a few Icelandic beers over at the Paris Cafe. Frank and I met in our hotel lobby and became quick friends from there, bonding over my many years of Business German courses in college and a shared interest in solar activity. He also was traveling solo and was in Iceland competing in an international chess tournament! How cool is that?!

After a few rounds of Egils, we wandered back to the hotel, passing girl after girl in short skirts and heels. Do these people not realize the temperature doesn't EVER breach the mid-sixties in Iceland?! That kind of a skirt is NEVER weather appropriate.

Perhaps their bloodlines have been mixed with bears somewhere along the way.

Silly girls in New York, of course, do this as well. This wear-your-summer-dress-in-the-dead-of-winter thing, weekend to weekend, should have been quickly left in the winter of your sophomore year of college. BUT in their defense, at least the sidewalks are mandatorily salted and cleared... unlike Reykjavik.

If I were a dude, I would just think that girl was too dumb for words...

Ohhhh, I get it.

*You read correctly. Whale. Iceland is still a whaling society and thus, many establishments serve whale. As a traditionally Icelandic dish, it was a must try. It was tasty, kind of a cross between yellowfin tuna and a nice cut of beef, but not something I would go to the market to purchase regularly.

I got into it a few years back with one of my dive buddies in the Philippines about shark fin soup and I'm not looking for that kind of an adverse reaction again. To this day, I've never had shark fin soup.

Photo taken on 3.11.11.