Iceland: a long, meandering watch story. Kind of.

As a few of you may have gathered, I recently spent some time in Iceland.  And as I’m a watch nerd, I have some watch-related things to share.  

First, there was the ever-present issue of what watch(-es) to take along.  I decided that I wanted to go with one watch, and after some consideration, the bronze Oris won out.  To me, it’s just a great combination of tool watch and not completely not dressy.  Give it a second, it’ll make sense.  That said, I did take my Vaer field watch along so I could track the time at home.  And you’d be wrong if you think I didn’t take every opportunity to bemoan the fact I don’t own a GMT.  I’m not half the man Swartzkopf is, so I only wore the Oris, while the Vaer stayed strapped to my backpack.  For reference...

Not much to say about the trip there, it was a fairly painless 6 hour flight.  The best thing that happened was this.

We landed at like 0400, which I gather is a normal time to land in Iceland.  Weirdos.  Seriously, we had to wait a couple of hours until the rental car company opened, at which point we learned that the wind will literally rip your car door off.  No, for real, they gave us this warning thingy.

So just to review, the wind will literally rip the damn door off your car if you park in the wrong direction.  So yeah.

Our first stop was breakfast, but our first interesting stop was the Blue Lagoon which is a gigantic hot-spring-pool-thingy.  It’s pretty awesome and they have alcohol.  No, you can't see pics of me and the Mrs. in our bathing suits, sorry.  We spent a couple of hours there, then got on the road.  Driving was pretty normal except for the use of kilometers, whatever those are.  The second stop was a series of waterfalls.  If you’re not familiar with Iceland, the main thing to know is that their water loves to throw itself off cliffs.  It generally looks like this.

And if you hold a watch in front of it, it can look like this.

Should you choose to stand behind it, it will look like this.

Should you sit under it, it will look like this.

Sometimes your wife will have a cat on her hat and also meet a different cat, and that will look like this.

So after all that water and cat, we got back in the car and drove to our hotel.  A fun thing about Iceland is that they just put hotels where ever the hell they feel like it, Iceland don’t care.  They’re the Honey Badger of countries.  Anyway, ours looked like this.

Actually, before that we went to a black sand beach, but since I’ve got other pictures of that nonsense, I won’t bore you.  I’ve got better things to bore you with.  Such as hiking on a glacier.

Looking at icebergs.

Looking at tiny pieces of ice that used to be icebergs.

Let me just pause to mention that, yes, this piece of ice literally used to be a giant-ass iceberg.  Go figure.

Seeing this rock that, much like the rest of Iceland, looks like it belongs in Colorado.

Looking at the terrible little houses that people in Iceland used to have to live in.

I’m glossing over a lot, it was a really great trip, and we saw a ton of cool sh*t.  The country is beautiful and full of so many different types of terrain.  While driving, we kept talking about how we’d just crossed into what could be yet another location for a science fiction movie.  We saw at least 5 completely different landscapes, and there was a lot of the country we didn’t get to.  Unfortunately, I was driving the whole time so I didn't get many pictures, and my wife just couldn't be bothered.  She doesn't love you guys like I do.  She's the worst.

As that’s way more of my travel journal than anyone wanted, I’ll bring it back to watches.  When we were planning this trip, my wife said “hey, there’s a watchmaker in Reykjavik, you should get a watch while we’re there”, which obviously made me wonder why I’d married her.  I grudgingly allowed that I could maybe make room for another watch.  She's the best.

For those of you not aware, that watchmaker is J S Watches ( https://www.jswatch.com/) which has been mentioned by @Yamilernestoin a post about his trip there.

My wife, being a keeper, had already emailed them to ask about stopping by.  She’s a peach.  Now, I’m not big on salespeople so I mostly buy online.  That said, it was pretty cool seeing their shop/store.  First off, it’s tiny.  They have a couple of cases and a room in the back for putting watches together.  Unfortunately, Gilbert, the founder of the company is recovering from knee surgery (his second this year, good luck Gilbert), so we weren’t able to meet him, but I did get to talk to his son and grandson who are both part of the business.  Sigurdur, the second-generation watchmaker spent some time talking about their watches with my wife and I.  My wife, who rarely if ever has any watch-related questions for me, was full of questions for Sigurdur which is probably good as I’m not much of a talker.  We learned that most of their watches are sold to US residents and that they have actually recovered several watches for their owners through their registration program.  All the watches have serial numbers on the case.  Mine is 1,xxx of the 101 series and 6,xxx of the total watches they've made.  Pretty cool.

One highlight for me, and I’m kicking myself for not getting a picture, was when we talked about inspirations, and Sigurdur pulled out a case of vintage watches that he’s collected.  It was getting close to closing time so I didn't insist, but I should have made him go through every one of those, there was some good stuff.  I noticed a Rolex OP and a bullseye Tissot in particular.  I asked about the Tissot, and he mentioned that it had inspired one of their watches.  As close as I can remember, the Tissot and their watch are pictured below.  

While looking for a picture of the Tissot he showed us, I thought it was interesting that almost all the ones you see like this have small seconds.  Also, it was a 32mm which  @Aurelian  will appreciate.

The watch I really had my eye on was a 44mm, and that’s just bigger than I want to wear, so that was out.  I eventually settled on a black 101 at 38mm.  I may do a review of it at some point, but to be honest, I’m really tired, and I’m guessing anyone who’s made it this far is as well.  I’ll leave you with a picture of me, Sigurdur, and his son in their shop.  Cheers.