Reykjavik Culture Night. The 'culture' in Reykjavik Culture night may not have been the right word. Perhaps the most appropiate title for this evening is Reykjavik Drunkfest. LOL What a party! But more about that later....

After the race, cultural night set up and was under way. Dad and I walked around the streets in search of this culture. There were stores with open-house style set up with arists, a lot of gallery openings, plays around the city (at least according to the newspaper), and bands. We watched some belly dancers and a youth hiphop/breakdancing group for a while. Mostly thought the biggest attraction was the streets fulled to the brim with people.

For dinner Team Diabetes held a victory party at a very nice revolving restaurant with a glass dome ceiling perched high on a hill over looking Reykjavik downtown center. The dinner was excellent, the company at our table warm and caring and the 'why I did this' speeches moving. The victory party ended with the cultural night fireworks. I definately think we had the best view in the city!

At this point the night really begun. The way back from dinner we had to get off the bus extremely early because all the roads were blocked. With all the people around I managed to lose dad on the way back to the hotel. I found Hilary (one of the CDA staff) to go out with for the night. She was planning to go out with a group of people so I decided to go along. Not surprisingly it took about 5 minutes to lose this group in the crowd. Hilary, very determined to find this group, looked high and low. We barely saw any Canadians on the streets. I was just happy to walk around and people watch. And people watch I did. The party was not only in the bars, it was on the street, literally. Almost everyone on the street has a beer in their hand, and when they were done with it, threw the bottle. Oh dear! It was only 10:30pm and most people looked like they had had enough. An hour and a half we walked around searching, checking bars and whatnot. At this point hilary gave up and went to bed. I found another group at the hotel and ventured out with them.

Surprisingly in this madness I found Dad again walking around, just long enough to say goodnight. The group and I headed to a club. Two of the girls miracuously convinced the bouncer to let all ten of us in the club in front of the very long line. Impressive. This was the place to be apparently and about 15 more Canadians were already there.
The place was hopping and I ended dancing there until 4am. At this point the group was down to 5 - the "survivors." We went out to the streets again in search of another bar. We went to two before calling it a night a 5:30am. What a night.

Littering in the streets in the morning, doesn't have as much of an effect since you can't see the broken glass everywhere or hear the crunch beneath your feet. I slept in but dad said they had an army of cleaners out in the morning and the city was spotless by 10am. A miracle!



More pictures of the late night madness to come.....