Icelandic trip awards

In the full disclosure for this post, I was on my bed in our room in the hostel we were staying at one night, updating my journal of the day's adventures, when I suddenly thought that hey, it would be cool to do an awards thing for the trip. This means that you get to see me attempt to do a humorous stab at awarding awards for things/events that happened on the trip. Enjoy!

-Best in Show: The Blue Lagoon. It's basically required for travelers in Iceland to stop by here; hey, it's only about half an hour away from the airport. Thus, there isn't any excuse for you not to go there. There water is amazing and it's super relaxing. Thus it gets the nod for best part of the trip, even if we stopped by about an hour after landing in Iceland.
- Worst Moment: Realizing how damn expensive it is there. Though really, they have to import food from Europe and elsewhere, so we can cut them some slack. Still though, our credit cards took a bit of a beating there.
- Oddest Moment: Realizing that the sun, well, we wouldn't see the sun go down. When we arrived back home yesterday night, it literally was the first time in a week that it wasn't sunny outside. I'm still actually getting used to seeing darkness, come to think of it.
-Most Patient Moment: goes to Iceland, as they've been settled for 1,081 years and yet they only became an independent country in 1944. That takes some patience.
- Food moment: Realizing how unique (and thus better) the food is over there. Seriously, the pizza and hot dogs there pwn ours here.
- Food moment number two: The Fanta. Also, the size and shape of the Fanta-holy cow.
- Food moment number three: Being able to drink the tap water since it's all natural, geothermal water
- Beauty Award: The amazing scenery
- Beauty Award runner up: Collectively, the girls there. They're very good looking.
- The "Japanese Tourist Award: goes to the Germans. We had 3/4 of our roommates in the hostel be Germans (and the occasional Swiss), not to mention it was like mini-Berlin around town, what with all of the German tourists
- The "glad we didn't prepare for them" Award: will be taken by Spain, as there really weren't any Spanish tourists there, as far as I noticed. Though strangely enough, there were the odd Portugese translations around.
- The Icelandic Staff in Hostels Award: Our hostel was, for the most part, staffed by foreign tourist majors. And I think they were mainly Dutch.
- The Vicious Cycle Award: goes to the Norweigans, and even the Danes, for having a fairly large contingent there in Iceland. It's funny and ironic since it was the Norweigans who first settled it and later controlled Iceland, so the cycle has come full circle.
- The "We didn't expect to run into you guys" Award: We ran into some Slovenians at our hostel. Totally didn't expect to run into them. Also, we didn't expect to run into as many Canadians as we did.
- Fashion Award: Icelandic girls, as what I've noticed, range from somewhat fashionable to pretty dang fashionable. And they can pull it off too.
- Fashion Award corollary: Icelandic guys who try to look really fashionable end up looking like tools (IMO)
- Fashion Statement Award: Apparently sandals with black socks is all the rage there for the workers
- Language Award: Iceland, for their fluent English-speaking population
- "COX has nothing on us" Award: Again, Iceland, for being super savvy with technology
- Law of Towns Award: You're guaranteed to find at least a couple of houses out in the middle of nowhere, where you have to think would be totally inhospitable. Yet inevitably there's a house or two there.
- Law of Museums/Wilderness Knowledge Award: You'll also find some museums in very random places, i.e. the middle of nowhere too
- Snacking Award: Expect to pay, at minimum, amusement park prices on the food, drinks, and snacks over there. See the earlier mentioned Worst Moment Award for further detail on this.
- Plastic Award: Expect your credit card to be used early and often; Icelanders use credit cards 95%, if not basically 100 percent of the time, rather than hard cash.
- Informality Award: Methinks the hard cash they print is just used as a) an formality to say we use hard cash and b) to use for the coins used in the snack machines