Two more days in Iceland

We got back to Iceland at the end of a mildly harrowing experience at Luton airport,.. and arrived in Reykjavik in the middle of an Icelandic version of a Nor'easter. Except this was in the southwest of the island, so whatever. It was winds between 30 and 50 mph (That's 48 to 80 kph for you metric types, which includes Icelanders. It was mildly jarring going from metric to the only other nation stupid enough to use Standard and then back to metric) and driving rain. Combined with the wind, when the rain hit our faces, it was actually painful, so that was fun. When we landed, we were supposed to go right to the Blue Lagoon, but because of some confusing email traffic, we missed the bus. $90US for a cab ride later, we were at the famous Blue Lagoon (another hot spring with a lot of blue silica in the water) and it's always fun being in a hot spring and wading up to the bar... except when you're constantly trying to not face at least one direction to keep your eyes from being hammered by the stratospheric bullets. So, yeah.

The day was mildly rescued by finding a place to eat that night that was the best food we've had on the entire trip: Salka Valka. It's down on the western end of the city, a little off the main drag of Laugavegur, and there's not a ton of seating. But it does traditional Icelandic food with modern preparation. There was a fish soup with a chickpea base that was astounding (especially fitting for a day when a nor'easter has been drenching us the whole time) and their fish stew and lamb shank were also excellent. Seriously, this was beyond everything else we've eaten. If we ever come back, we're eating there again. Maybe twice. The day was also rescued by our being able to find that weird candy shop with the salty licorice: Taste of Iceland. If was trying to find anything I could on Google and then went down to Laugavegur to see another more famous candy shop (Vinberio) because I knew we'd passed that at some point. I started walking east and was about to give up when we found Taste. Of course, I later discovered their wares in Keflavik airport, so maybe I could've saved us some of the hiking.

On our next (and last) day, we took a tour of what Iceland tourism refers to as the "Golden Circle", which is an area in this part of the island that has the most tourist attractions. We went to the continental divide, where you're standing in the 5 km gap between the North American and Eurasian plates, the first named geyser (Geysir, which is where the word comes from), the most impressive waterfall we've seen here, and yet another hot spring, known as the Secret Lagoon. It was a worthwhile way to spend the day, but followed with some less than impressive food at that same food court we visited last week. Seriously, the fish and weak-ass fries thing (instead of chips) just has to go. I realize it's a lot cheaper for restraurants to just get already-produced stuff, rather than asking staff to slice into dozens of potatoes a day, but it's really disappointing. 

On that somewhat down note, I will say that the transportation options in Reykjavik are a little aggravating. In Liverpool, we just Ubered everywhere and had a driver within one minue almost every time, no matter where we were going. In London, we had the Tubes and still had three other options (bus, taxi, Uber) if we wanted it (The service we used to get to the airport on our way out is called Bolt.) The bus system in Reykjavik is divided between city buses and tour buses with no seeming connection. Also, taxis seem to operate strictly between airport and city, as we never saw one sitting on a curb waiting for a customer and failed to find a way to call one when we weren't interested in walking a dozen blocks in the driving rain. And there is no private driver service like Uber yet operating. So, if you want to get around, you're either walking or renting a car; the latter of which is something that our friends, Katie and David, recommended to us so, y'know, they were right.

So, anyway, that's a wrap. We're leaving at the crack of dawn (that's a joke in Iceland around this time of year, where it stays light outside for around 20 hours out of the day (we have to draw the curtains and blinds to blot out the light at 11 PM so Tricia, at least, can get some sleep.)) There were a lot of highlights to the trip (Liverpool game, attending a Shakespeare performance in Shakespeare's theater) and no genuine lowlights, so a success, overall.

(First) Two days in Iceland

Since there hasn't been much that's been genuinely compelling in the theater or on TV these days, I figured I'd use this space which hasn't been touched in two months to give a rundown about our recent vacation to Iceland and the UK. I've already posted rough versions of these entries on the message board at the end of the Internet, so these will just have some mild updates but also a lot of pictures, which I've never felt like bothering to learn on that site's HTML format.

Iceland is an interesting combination of the hyper-modern and the extremely aged. Since tourism became the leading industry circa 2010, many aspects of the aged are mostly for curiosity-seekers, rather than a declaration of culture. For example, in a small cafe right next to the Hallgrímskirkja (the gigantic Lutheran church that you can see from the majority of the capital city of Reykjavik), I tried fermented shark. It's a weird, very umami-forward flavor that I wouldn't seek out but was at least interesting to try. I was advised by our server to chew and swallow within about 10 seconds to avoid the overwhelming ammonia flavor that gives most the reason to avoid it. In the four bites, I took, I encountered that only once but it's still more of a stunt than encouragement to try out something Icelandic from the 13th century. As one tour guide told us on a two-hour walk around Reykjavik, the place where I had the shark (Cafe Loki) claims to serve "traditional Icelandic food" but he'd never seen an actual Icelander eating in there. That doesn't mean the food isn't genuine because, again, the stark mix of the modern and the old. But it was just one example of the internal cultural divide. One American we met there who's a resident by marriage (he's a former native of NYC) kind of corroborated a few of my observations when he mentioned what he perceives as a cultural self-esteem issue, in that Icelanders see themselves as the red-headed stepchild of Scandinavia; carrying a chip on their collective shoulder because they want to be more like Sweden, but they're not. On that note, the evidence of Swedish and Danish culture is quite dominant in things like architecture.

The main thing I thought about was the young people. With the emergence of the Internet, it's easier than ever to see how vibrant things could be and compare them to how they're not in one's own hometown. Reykjavik is the biggest city, by far, on the island but they still kind of roll up the sidewalks at 10 PM and don't open a lot of things until 12 hours later. That's not exactly the recipe for a vibrant night life for the younger crowd. That American told me that a lot of them do leave, as you might expect, but a lot of them come back because the small population creates familial bonds that are stronger than many other places. As another tour guide mentioned to us, they don't have much serious crime because everyone knows one another. If someone committed a serious offense, even when they were done serving their sentence, they might still be socially ostracized because so many people would have been intimately familiar with the victim.

We ran into a lot of non-Icelanders out of the obvious places (tours, etc.) because, again, tourism is the primary industry and a lot of people stick around. One of our bus drivers was a Japanese man, still speaking English with a prominent Japanese accent but also perfectly fluent in Icelandic. A server at the Cafe Loki spoke to us in English and then had to call out another customer who came in speaking Icelandic, telling him that she couldn't understand him.

We saw a lot of Reykjavik, as it really isn't that big. That one walking tour was led by a guy who spent an hour telling us about the history and societal origins and changes (he pointed out where the original edge of the harbor was, before a few million tons of stone were added to create the land for more buildings) and another hour being the local chamber of commerce, pointing out where you could get the best pasta or the cheapest drinks and so on. We spent a fun couple hours in The Lebowski Bar, the most notable feature of which was a menu with at least two dozen different variations of a White Russian (Kahlua and some kind of cream were the basis, but then they went in all different directions.) We got in at the last minute when someone else left, right before they started the weekly music trivia contest, at which we completely bombed, since neither of us are as familiar with pop music from the last five or so years as was needed.

We saw at least a half-dozen family-owned, "been here for years" Italian restaurants, which is understandable as an alternative to the generally bland traditional food. The food at the Loki was good and we had some fish and chips later and it was OK, but both were kinda lacking in ways that a lot of modern palates might expect; most notably salt. This is completely aside from the fact that in both Iceland and England, two places noted for their fish and, thus, their fish and chips,. all forms of the latter have become bog-standard American fries. When I order fish and chips, I want potatoes, not something that just came out of a McDonald's fryer and doesn't taste as good. Oddly enough, the best place we found on our initial two days in Iceland was part of all the latest rage in town: food courts. As opposed to the American perception of them (collections of franchise food), these are apparently all independent operators or local chains. The one we stopped into was across the street from our hotel and it was solid. They stuck to the usual primary ingredients, like lamb and Arctic char, but enhanced them with much more elaborate preparation and presentation. There are at least four food courts that we found in the city. We also had an excellent lamb goulash in Wik, which is on the south coast. Hot dogs are also apparently a popular thing, at the moment.

Aside from Italian, Icelanders are also apparently fond of licorice. On that walking tour, we ended in a local candy shop that specialized in elaborate licorice concoctions, including one that starts with an extremely salty layer (like, burning your tongue salty) and then went to licorice and then a much more mildly salted licorice. It was cool because it was totally weird. Apparently, various tariffs and restrictions prohibited the entry of many other sweets from around the world for a long time, so candymakers in Iceland had to become creative with the one thing they could produce: licorice. There was another version that was licorice mixed with black pepper, which was also quite good. Both ice cream places that we stopped into also had various licorice flavors (chocolate licorice, etc.) so it is a cultural marker of sorts.

We stopped into the Sky Lagoon, which is right near town. It's a heated lagoon (hot tub temperature) with a swim-up bar, There's also a side path where you can walk from cold plunge to dry sauna to cold rinse to skin scrub to wet sauna. Invigorating, at least. Then we took a trip down to the south coast to see a number of waterfalls (walked behind one of them; bring rain pants), one of the quickly-retreating glaciers, and one of the black sand beaches, so all of that was pretty cool (and most of the pictures of same are above.) It's an interesting place and I'm glad to say that we'll be back to see more of it before heading home.