Time to do the tourist thing and wander the shops in Reykjavik. Though we took some time to watch “puffins” too.I put quotes around puffins because the ones we saw were both very small AND very far away. Most of the time we just took it on faith that what we saw were puffins. We hopped on the boat quite early to get out to the island to see where the puffins where. The sea was quite choppy and there were a few green faces in the main cabin (the waves were going over the boat so no one was allowed on the top observation deck). En route we got a pretty interesting run-down of puffins (their jaw joint can ‘unhinge’ to make their jaws almost parallel; this allows the puffin to stack loads of fish in it’s mouth while underwater. Record-holders were around 60 fish in their mouth at once!) plus some information about the island itself.
When we got there, the puffins were pointed out to us but as I said before they were pretty far away (so we didn’t frighten them). We got buzzed by puffins once or twice but most of the time it was about grabbing a pair of binoculars and hoping for the best. We all all managed to see brief glimpses, including my youngest who required a little help with her down-sight targeting. I was happy to be her spotter though 🙂
After getting back we settled stomachs with a hot-dog (a medically approved cure for seasickness, surely) and did a bit of souvenir shopping.
The girls has spotted an old-fashioned video-game arcade and wanted to have a look inside. Weird to think they’d never been into one! Was cool inside with some old cabinets and pinball machines. My youngest managed to get further in Mortal Kombat than any of the rest of us 😀
Hard a gorgeous catch-of-the-day sampler for tea; three types of fish and 9 dips! Very nice indeed.
XCOM Update: As I said, my men could cope with aliens fine. Lunatic human Fifth-Columnists? Not so much 😦 I got an EXALT mission where we had to stop them hacking a computer. The contested area was on the other half of the map so I made the mistake of rushing. Mistake #2 was breaching a room when most of my men had already had their turns.
I triggered two large groups of EXALT and a third patrol soon joined. I paniced and moved my MEC in (the only unit with movement) to try and take some down, which he did.
And then it was their turn.
EXALT cut lose with the AOE. Rockets and grenades did serious damage but more critically destroyed everyone’s cover. The follow burst of 6-8 lasers shredded everything.
We tried to stabilise but as the reinforcements dropped in the whole thing turned to failure.
Full team wipe followed by a lethal terror mission where I only had 2 semi-experienced troops.
Game over.
Aaaaaannnnd we start again.
Herring's Fishbait 