Land Ho!

I’m finally back from our trip to Greenland and Iceland, and it was an amazing time. The food and room were excellent, the entertainment was top notch, and the shore excursions—wow! Greenland is incredible and the north of Iceland is like nothing I’ve ever seen before. We went whale watching (saw 3 different humpbacks), toured around with locals, and renewed our wedding vows in a mass ceremony presided over by the ship’s captain. Overall, I couldn’t be happier. But of course, it wouldn’t be a mydangblog trip without some funny things to share as well, so today’s topic is Weird Signs That I Saw On My Trip:

This isn’t technically a sign–it was the name of the pilot boat that helped our ship get out of the bay in New Jersey. “Cape Fear” seemed like a very ominous name for a boat—personally, I prefer boat names like Boaty McBoatFace or Ship Of Fools, because they’re much less prophetic-sounding (I originally had Full Of Seamen but Ken said that wasn’t very PG-13, so I changed it. Sorry.). But we had nothing to fear—we said farewell to the Statue of Liberty under dark but beautiful skies and then we were on our way. (Also, if you look carefully, you’ll notice that the other boat seems to be named Double Skin 27, and I don’t know why but that makes me think of serial killers).

The reason this sign is hysterically funny isn’t found on the sign itself. You’ll notice that from 1875 until 1903, the building was used as a Catholic School for Girls. Beginning in 2001, it became The Cotton Club. What you can’t see is that The Cotton Club is a STRIP CLUB. So it’s still a “school for girls”—just naked, naughty ones. The Sisters of Mercy must be rolling in their graves.

This one is just funny in its simplicity:

Tourist: Whose food is this?
Icelander: Is Moe’s Food.
Tourist: What kind of food is it?
Icelander: Sheep eyes and rotted shark.
Tourist: You eat that kind of thing here?!
Icelander: Já. Would you like some sour milk and fermented testicles?

Yes, according to our one tour guide, Icelanders eat a lot of strange food. About the rotted/fermented shark, she actually said, “It tastes like shit, but we love it.” I can’t really judge though—I’m Scottish, and people say the same thing about haggis. It also explains why the restaurant looks kind of like a dumpster. (And yes, I know that IS is short for Iceland, but seeing it on all kinds of signs made it incredibly funny and had me randomly pointing at things and yelling “Is souvenir shop, Is seal fur processing plant, Is waterfall”, and so on.)

This sign was outside the oldest bookstore in Iceland. I was pretty hyped by the whole “magical world” thing, and it set up some pretty high expectations, which were immediately dashed when we went inside to discover that there was NO magic at all. Just an Icelandic guy selling books, candles, and jam. Still, he was very nice, and the other people in our taxi van were super-jazzed by all the Icelandic refrigerator magnets. We did see an actual magician on the ship who performed in the theatre. He came into the audience to get a volunteer and before I knew it, he’d grabbed my hand and hauled me up in front of about 300 people. Normally, I would have been terrified that he was going to cut me in half or make me quack like a duck but I’d been drinking a lot of free champagne at the art auction, so I went along with it. Turned out to be just a card trick, but it was really cool and fun, and for days after, people would see me in the elevator and say, “Hey! You were the girl on stage” so he made me kind of famous in a cruise ship way.

But now we’re back, and I’m playing catch-up with everything that I missed over the last two weeks, because ship wifi is crappy, as anyone who has ever been on a cruise ship will tell you. Oh, they HAVE excellent wifi, but to get anything other than the basic connection, you have to pay an exorbitant cost. So when they asked if I wanted to upgrade, I just said, “All signs point to NO.”

33 thoughts on “Land Ho!”

  1. Well, you’ve done it again. You’ve gone on an adventure and came back with funny stories to tell. The bit about the Cotton Club in the same building as a former Catholic school for girls is ironic, considering that while the building was erected in 1861, other things weren’t erected on that spot until 2001. 😉

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  2. So it’s family friendly to talk about how a Catholic School for Girls became a strip club, but not naming a boat Full of Seamen? I think it would be a charming name (says the guy who once saw the Seattle Mariners play in Minnesota and giggled the whole game because the scoreboard read “SEA MIN”)

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  5. I believe Anthony Bourdain’s episode of Iceland had him really questioning the culinary choices of its population. He did say the fermented shark sucked, lol. Wow, you sure had one heck of a trip, you renewed your wedding vows, how romantic! The cornerstone building was the cornerstone of many interesting things, lol. So glad you had a spectacular time

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  8. There’s a saying that most Scottish food is based on a dare and it sounds like Icelandic food is the same way. Also I’m intrigued by Moe’s Food. Moe is usually a Jewish name. Is fermented shark kosher? If it’s not then Icelandic food might convince a lot of people to convert. Then again gefilte fish just might be the non-shark version.
    It’s also disappointing that the oldest business in Iceland only dates from 1914. Icelandic sagas are a thousand years old or more! Surely they had bookstores before the 20th century.

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