Charlie vs. Iceland 2017: A Whale of a Time

I know I said that I haven't been doing many adventurous things, but that's not completely true. Last weekend was an amazing weekend. After spending all of Saturday walking around downtown with Jack (really awesome person and friend from Virginia who goes to William and Mary) and working on my paper for most of Sunday, I got to go whale watching at 9 pm on Sunday night.

We get down to the pier, pay for our tickets (they were really cheap which is awesome), and THEN Jack decides to tell us that he gets really seasick on boats. Fun fact about me: I am a sympathetic puker and hypochondriac (I think that's when you feel sick just because other people say they feel sick?), just like my dad.

Also, the lady at the counter tells us that conditions are "very rough", at which point my mind is instantly transported back to my whale watching experience with Dad, Kate, and Kelli in Boston where the entire boat (literally the entire. boat.) besides us was vomiting all over the place. Terrible.

We board the boat - one much too small for comfort - and are told that we must sit inside unless we want to be soaked from head to toe. They also make us put on these jumper thingys that I actually really dig and now kind of want to own. Apparently it is too cold outside not to wear them. When we go to sit inside, we are looking right out at the ocean level and can't even really see the horizon because we are sitting so low down in the water.

The ride out to sea is as bad as they made it sound before we boarded the boat. With me is Mack (really awesome girl from Colorado who goes to school at Whitman College in Washington), Carter, Megan, Larry (you know them), and seasick Jack, who is sitting right across from me. I had never seen someone get really really seasick before, but it was really scary watching him go from bad to worse to downright awful. He was pale white and shaking, I felt really bad. So he went to the bathroom to vomit as soon as we slowed to a halt, and was fine for the rest of the trip. Larry also vomited apparently, even though the entire way out to sea he kept talking about how "this isn't even that bad, I feel totally fine."

While we were out there, we saw soo many dolphins and I almost cried. Mack and I were on cloud nine. It was blissful, especially listening to the sounds of the ocean as we patiently waited to see whales.

Which we did! 2 humpbacks that got really close to our boat once. We also saw a bunch of puffins, but the highlight for me was definitely the dolphins. <3

Another unexpected perk of going whale watching so late at night was seeing the most amazing sunset I have ever seen in my entire life.

Overall, a really really beautiful night :)

Here are a bunch of pictures: