Iceland – Day 6

Our last day in Iceland started with our hotel’s breakfast buffet, a pricey affair that we’d been holding out on all week and decided to finally gorge on. Sadly, it wasn’t the culinary masterpiece we’d hoped for, but it wasn’t terrible either. We might have been heard to utter the following:

“Is this a chopped liver of some kind? I think this is a chopped liver of some kind.”
“Quick, steal all of the Smjor. All of it.”
“Oh, bangers and mash. You’ll never stop being hilarious.”
“Where are the pancakes? YESTERDAY THEY HAD PANCAKES.”
“If I see one more tub of yogurt, I’m going to hurl all over this buffet.”
“Mini chocolate muffins? I’ll take 53, please.”
“SMJOOOOOR!”

And so on.

After breakfast we packed up our stuff, said goodbye to our hotel room, (which, I don’t think I have yet mentioned, consisted of two twin beds shoved together, complete with TWO skinny little comforters! What the what?), and marveled at the elevator one last time.

Icelanders are so nice, they don’t even HAVE a ‘close door’ button to spite people with!

Downstairs, we checked out and boarded a bus to set forth on the pilgrimage that it seems every single tourist who comes to Iceland must undergo: the traditional visiting of the Blue Lagoon on the way to or from the airport.

The Blue Lagoon is a very, very, very BLUE body of water in the middle of nowhere that is heated geothermically and enjoyed by lumpy tourists of all ages and nations. I’m pretty sure border control won’t stamp your passport unless you’ve been. So we piled off the bus, stored our luggage in an adorable little cabin that I’m going to call the Baggage Barn, and headed inside.

That’s all it was. This sign.

Accustomed to the Icelandic spa drill by now, we stripped naked and hit the showers. (That’s how they do it there – WITHOUT bathing suits, the signs all scream at you. Do not even ask how awkward this was or how many saggy old lady boobs I saw.) Then we ran into the lagoon, literally, because it was freezing out and the lagoon was oh so warm and delicious.

RJ, flapping majestically in the breeze

The water was fantastic, and really was very blue. It was rich in silica and other minerals, and unlike that terrifyingly deep crack I went snorkeling in, visibility here went only an inch or so deep before disappearing into yet more blue. I should also mention that the place was gigantic (photo once again courtesy of RJ):

What is this, a lagoon for ANTS?

And perhaps most amusing of all, they had this silt that you could put on your face to make a mud mask, because supposedly it had restorative qualities and smoothed your skin and all that. But I think it was all an evil scheme by the Icelandic government to make tourists look like weird, goopy aliens.

Really, Gina? Ridiculous faces in every other photo, and this is the one you choose to smile for?

I could make several jokes about everyone swimming around with a white, sticky substance globbed on to their faces, but instead I will take the classy route and show this picture of me in the gift shop, making a Portlandia joke:

PUT A BIRD ON IT!

Happy, exfoliated, and with hair more fried than a bale of hay, we piled back on to the bus and headed for the airport. When we’d arrived in Iceland it had been dark, so along the drive we saw a couple more cool things, like Iceland’s version of the Hollywood sign:

…Yeah, that!

And these cool stone figures looking out toward the water:

“Winter is coming.”

At the airport I made sure to have one last tender moment with my favorite Icelandic snack:

Clearly.

And with that, we said goodbye to the land of fire and ice. The flight was uneventful, except for when I got up to go to the bathroom while the ‘fasten seatbelts’ sign was lit, and the flight attendants gave me the scolding of a lifetime. Icelandair: they don’t take your shit.

If you squint real hard, you can see me being tossed from the cargo hold.

So that’s it! I have to say, despite all the poking of fun I’ve been doing in these blog posts (which, thank you for reading, by the way), Iceland was really a very lovely country, with even lovelier people and horses. I would jump at the chance to go back – maybe in the summer next time – and check out even more of the country, as we barely scratched the surface in the time that we were there. But if you ever get the opportunity to go, I highly recommend. And if not, do yourself a favor: head to your nearest Whole Foods and pick up a brick of Smjor. SMJOOOOR!

At long last, a nice one. Happy, Mom?

Iceland – Day 5

What I forgot to mention in my last post was that Day 4 also contained a fair bit of hemming and hawing over what to do on Day 5. There were no solid plans and all of us wanted to do different things. I wanted to go caving, as I’d been caving in Australia and I’d loved it with the fiery passion of a thousand headlamps. So I was looking over my caving options amongst the myriad of brochures, and I think something like this conversation happened, though the details are fuzzy:

Me: “I think I’ll do this tour – it’s a half day, just caving.”
Will: “Or you could do this one – caving AND snorkeling.”
Me: “Why would I want to go snorkeling in below-freezing waters?”
Will: “I don’t know. It sounds awesome. You should do it.”
Me: “Hell no.”
Will: “Fine. Do what you want.”
Me, five minutes later at ticket counter for some reason, I assume because Will hit me over the head with a blunt object: “CAVING AND SNORKELING, PLEASE!”

See, the draw of snorkeling in Iceland is that the diving site is that gap between the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates that I mentioned a few posts ago. You can actually see the giant trench, and you can see it really well; the water in the lake has been filtered by lava rocks – over a time period of 30 years! – and by the time it reaches the lake, it’s so clear the visibility can be up to three miles deep, for maximum terrifying-ness.

So clearly, I was no longer of sound mind. But I watched myself pay for the tour and that was that, so the next morning I woke up at the crack of dawn (which, in Iceland in the winter, is like 9:00am) and headed down to the hotel lobby for my frigid adventure of a lifetime. I was picked up by a bearded man named Gulli (oh, if I had a dollar for every time I’ve uttered that sentence) and taken with the other human sacrifices participants to a creepy-looking warehouse. Gulli handed us the roughly seventy different components we’d be wearing to prevent immediate onset hypothermia, and since it all seemed very complicated and worrisome, we began to get nervous and have second thoughts. “Is this really a good idea?” we asked, as Gulli poured hot water into the gloves we’d be wearing – you know, so that our fingers wouldn’t instantly freeze upon entering the trench.

“Throw your stuff into the van!” Gulli yelled. “Off we go!”

Off we went. When we got to the site, we unloaded and got into our dry suits. This basically meant that we got to keep our clothes on underneath, plus a layer of what amounted to a human-shaped sleeping bag, then the dry suit, which is basically one of those vacuum-sealed food storage containers that makes you look like this:

If I ever go missing, this is the photo I want distributed on flyers.

So we got into the water and it…wasn’t bad! Except for the lower half of my face that was exposed to the elements, and my hands because the gloves weren’t waterproof, and my feet which are always cold, it really was quite tolerable. Of course, I floated like a cork and my flippers didn’t get the memo that they had to work that day, but other than that I think I did a decent job. The trench was very cool – it was basically like swimming through a tall, narrow hallway, with canyon walls on either side. Here is a picture I have shamelessly stolen from the interwebs, since my camera is not a strong swimmer.

Just pretend that’s me, flailing like an injured bird.

Gulli swam in front of us wearing nothing more than a dry suit and a cheeky wool cap, because he was crazy. We ended up in a very cool little lagoon with the clearest water I have ever seen. Then we got out and Gulli informed us that there was a place for us to cliff dive into the water, and while most of the people on my tour said something like “Oh, that charming bearded man has lost his mind,” I said, “I WILL FOLLOW THAT CHARMING BEARDED MAN RIGHT OFF THE CLIFF.” So I did, and it was fun.

Back in the van, I took this picture to show that I survived, and while I enjoy the fact that it makes me look all sultry and badass:

…let’s keep in mind that my true nature is way closer to this:

NEVER FORGET.

We had a brief lunch outside – because picnics are always best enjoyed at a balmy 30°F – and headed on to our next site. Along the way, the sun was setting (though, to be fair, the sun is always setting in Iceland) and I got some cool shots of the landscape that I would have seen three days prior, if not for that world-erasing snow.

 

After Gulli took a small detour to show us some racks of hanging fish:

Thanks…Gulli…?

…we headed to our next destination: this pile of rocks.

Don’t stop believin’, little buddy! One day you, too, could become a mountain!

The pile of rocks was just there to signify the entrance to the cave we would be exploring, which was actually more of a lava tube – or, to the layman, a tube that is formed by lava. *SCIENCE* We began by dropping down into this suspicious looking hole.

“Sometimes I have to bring a shovel and dig it out!” Gulli cheerfully explained.

Inside, as you may have guessed, was a cave. Though ‘tube’ really is more of an apt description; I felt like I was in a tunnel formed by a gigantic earthworm, a comforting though if there ever was one.

There was a balrog running around somewhere in there too.

Gulli took us through, and I thanked my lucky stars he’d given us helmets, because my exceedingly clumsy head gave that thing the bumping of a lifetime. We crouched our way through the cave, and Gulli stopped every few minute to point out cool things, like this stalagmite:

The cave was excited to see us.

And this VERY cool-looking skeleton of a sheep that had wandered into the cave centuries ago and suffered a bit of bad luck.

“This is so embarrassing.”

Aaand these awesome drippy lava formations, the name of which means “cow titties” in Icelandic.

“Cow titties!” Gulli told us. “Because they look like cow titties!”

We then headed for the back of the cave, where fans of slime mold signed their names in the slime mold:

“I LOVE WINDOWS ME AND I DON’T CARE WHO KNOWS IT!”

And Gulli gave us some chocolate chip cookies the size of dinner plates and told us some fun Icelandic elf stories, as one normally does in a cave. When we got moving again, the ceiling got so low that we had to crouch down, then crawl on our hands and knees, then lay down flat on the ground and roll our way through, which now that I’m typing it out sounds certifiably insane, but I assure you, it seemed perfectly reasonable at the time. Thus were the persuasive powers of Gulli.

After that we clambered out and Gulli took us all home, but not before passing some of the most gorgeous scenery I saw all week:

Except that those mossy rocks were so much greener than they came out on camera. They assaulted my eyes with their greenness. GREEN

Gulli: the most stunning landmark of all.

Gulli dropped me off at my hotel, where I stuttered and fumbled like an idiot as I explained I didn’t have any cash on me for a tip (having once been a tour guide myself, I HATED myself for this), which resulted in this conversation:

Gulli: “Are you going into town later tonight?”
Me: “Yes. Oh – can I drop some money off at your tour office?
Gulli: (waving that off) No, no don’t worry about that. I’m DJing a set tonight at a club at 1:00am, if you want to drop by.”
Me: *gaping in surprise*

So, Gulli: man of many talents.

While I spent my day snorkeling and caving and sticking myself in various cracks, Will and RJ decided to get their exercise by going on a brewery tour (jerks), so I met up with them afterwards and we all went to Einar Ben, purportedly one of the best restaurants in Reykjavik. There we splurged on a five-course meal and it was amazing and we died and went to heaven, all while feeling slightly guilty that it was a fancy restaurant and we were wearing jeans, hiking boots, and in the case of Will, a Ghostbusters T-shirt.

And because they had to roll us out of the restaurant, we were way too stuffed and exhausted to go out on the town that evening, so sadly I never did get to see Gulli spin some bitchin’ tunes. We did, however, annoy some geese in the town pond while waiting for the shuttle bus to arrive. They seemed to particularly hate Will, squawking and honking at him at a volume not suitable for 10:30 at night. Smart birds, those.

Tomorrow: Blue Lagoon! Flight home! Icelandic Doritos!

Croak is real!

We interrupt our continuing coverage of Iceland: The Musical to bring you this late-breaking news: Final copies of Croak arrived upon my doorstep this very afternoon!

Why is it shining as if R’hllor, Lord of Light, has himself blessed it? Because the cover is all metallic and shiny and badass, and can conveniently double as a mirror:

For those dreaded Grim Reaper-y hair days.

And the perfect emo MySpace photo prop:

YoU’lL nEvEr UnDeRsTaNd mY pAiN!!!1!

Let’s get some reactions from the field:

Will mustered up as much enthusiasm as I think he humanly can, and, true to character, responded calmly and coolly to my blithering excitement.
Me: IT’S AMAZING I LOVE IT SO MUCH I WANT TO SLEEP WITH IT.
Will: I’ll take the couch tonight.

Via email, Dad had this to say:
“YAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!!!!!!! How great is that!!!!!”
He went on to use a total of exactly 34 exclamation points.

And the best reaction came from Mom, who happened to call just a short while after I received them:
“Well, that is SO exciting, I’m just SO – Kitty is going nuts because there’s a chipmunk in the yard. Wait, the chipmunk turned into a squirrel! Now there are two squirrels! It’s like a nature center over here! Honey, I’m so proud of you.”

Iceland – Day 4

As the saying goes, “Day four, eat a pound of Smjor.” So we did, and then headed off for a lovely morning of Icelandic horseback riding!

We were picked up at our hotel and taken to a charming little stable on the outskirts of Reykjavik, where an ebullient blonde woman named Bergljót Rist swept us inside, sat us down, and explained everything we needed to know about Icelandic horses and how to ride them. (“Call me Begga,” she said. “Or Becca. Or whatever you want.” I guess Icelanders really don’t give a fig what you call them.)

Icelandic horses, you see, are small. But they’re not ponies, and if you call them that the Icelandic Horse Police will swoop down from their flying stallions and immediately deport you. They are, however, gentle and kind, and have this incredible long, flowing, model-esque mane that swishes and flies about in the air like a shampoo commercial. I submit to you that it is only a matter of time before Tyra Banks invades to produce Iceland’s Next Top Horse Model. Would it really surprise anyone, at this point?

Here is me and my horse, Freyfaxi.

Begga told me the name comes from faxi, which means “eye-catching mane” (a good match for my “eye-catching raincoat”), and Freyr was one of the good old Scandinavian gods, and now that I’m looking all this up on the internet I see that there’s a whole story about the legend of Freyfaxi, so clearly I was dealing with a very important horse here.

“There she goes, mugging for the camera again. I’m a goddamn LEGEND. What IS this shit.”

The extent of my knowledge about horses pretty much begins and ends with anything I retained from The Scorpio Races, but what I can tell you is that Icelandic horses are known for being the only breed in the world that is able to pull off a gait known as the tölt. It is fast, comfortable for the rider, and famous for being remarkably steady. Begga told us that to demonstrate this, people have held up glasses of champagne while riding an Icelandic horse doing the tölt, and not one drop was spilled. Which raises several questions surrounding tölting while intoxicated and whether the good people at Tempur-Pedic got their stacked-wine-glass-bowling-ball commercial ideas from this, but I digress.

We set out for a peaceful  jaunt across the Icelandic countryside, which included a lot of stunning lava fields and rock formations covered in moss, none of which our cameras were able to adequately capture. But trust me, it was gorgeous. Not as gorgeous: me, being kidnapped by Freyfaxi, who at one point decided to break from the group and run in the opposite direction down the path, then off the path and into the brambles, running back toward the stables as if to say “I know you paid money for this tour and all, little American girl, but there’s a salt lick back there with my name on it so you’re just going to have to deal with this.”

Luckily, before Freyfaxi could run me straight off the edge of a cliff, Begga caught us, scolded me gently for not scolding him harder, and led us back to the group, who had been waiting patiently for God knows how long. So we continued forth and Freyfaxi seemed to behave himself from that point on, presumably because he knew of the upcoming photo shoot:

ATTENTION ICELAND: BEHOLD YOUR NEW QUEEN OF THE HORSES

Yes, Begga brought a camera along to photograph us (and emailed the images to us a few days later, free of charge; if this were Disney, I bet they’d be fifty bucks a pop), so here are some glamor shots of us insanely talented equestrians:

Of course my favorite photo is this one, because if you ignore our smiles, helmets, and retina-burning raincoats, it looks like a promotional still for a gritty badass TV series:

Coming this fall to HBO: Horsewalk Empire

But the best part of Begga taking photos of us were this series wherein myself and this other guy on the tour ended up near the front together, and it looks as though I’ve secured myself a new husband.

“Honey, wave hi to the grandkids!”

“Oh, new husband, you are the living end!”

But all fun horsey times must come to an end, so we returned to the stable, dismounted, and then Freyfaxi rolled around on the ground like a friggin’ cat, which is apparently something Icelandic horses do:

“SWEET FREEDOM!”

On our way out, Begga wrapped us all up in enormous hugs, and I bought a used horseshoe. Good times.

***WARNING! ADULT SITUATIONS AHEAD!***

In the afternoon, we decided to visit a museum. But not just any museum. This was a museum unlike any other in the world, an entire gallery dedicated to a single human body part.

Not the nose.

Not the heart.

Not even the spleen.

Yes, this museum features EXACTLY WHAT YOU THINK IT DOES. Hundreds of them, in fact, from every corner of the animal kingdom. Whales, seals, dogs, bulls, dolphins, cats, rats, bunnies, humans – you name it.

Can I interest you in some new gym equipment?

Needless to say, I can’t post many of the photos we took here, as I am purportedly a children’s book writer, and as you can imagine we simply couldn’t help ourselves. But here’s a relatively tame one of the exact facial expression I wore for the duration of the visit:

“You doing anything later?”

This museum also contained “Ode to an Oosik“, quite possibly the best poem about a well-endowed walrus that I’ve ever read in all my years of poring over such things, plus a very strange room full of specimens from imaginary creatures. Yeah. Chew on that for a moment. There was an invisible one from the “hidden people” (aka elves), one that was covered in green algae that allegedly belonged to a merman, and this, which I had to take a picture of in honor of Maggie Stiefvater:

Poor Corr!

After perusing their woefully barren gift shop (talk about a missed opportunity!), we went back to the hotel to get ready for our outing to a really fancy restaurant. But just as we were about to leave, we passed by the tour booking center and heard this little tidbit, like a money-grubbing fairy on the wind:

“…better chances tonight…still  not great…but less cloudy…Northern Lights…”

The magic words: Northern Lights. The friggin’ reason we CAME to Iceland in the first place. As you may remember from Day 2, we’d already searched for the Northern Lights. We didn’t find them. Because as it turns out, countries that feature endless hours of snow and rain and ice tend to be a bit on the cloudy side. But there was a better chance tonight, they were saying, due to less cloud cover and increased solar activity – though of course, still no guarantees, a statement that I’m now thinking must be Iceland’s motto.

“Fine,” we grumbled. “Delicious dinner another night. Tonight, we shall stand outside in freezing temperatures for several hours and futilely gaze at nothing.” So we emptied our wallets yet again, paying for a tour we had already taken, in the hopes that magic might strike.

And who’da thunk it? It did.

The bus stopped in the middle of nowhere. We piled out and looked at the sky.

“Again, so glad we came to Iceland. The exhilaration of it all.”

“Over there,” our trusty guide, Ellir, told us. “That little bit of white.”

There was a little bit of white, but it looked a hell of a lot like a cloud. But then the cloud grew. And GREW. Other little spots of white started popping up in other places and connected with each other in long streaks, shimmering like ribbons. The Northern Lights at last!

Courtesy of RJ Buenvenida, whose camera was much better than ours.

I know it’s hard to tell from the Paranormal Activity-ish quality, but trust me, they were awesome. They weren’t bright green or any of the other colors that you see in those crazy pictures, though fancy Ellir seemed to have seen it all. “Damn, girl,” we imagined him bragging to us, “I’ve seen green, purple – shiiit, I’ve even gotten MAGENTA all up in this piece!”

And so, having finally completed Mission: Iceland, we headed back to our hotel to gear up for the next day, but not before RJ got this shot that I’m hoping he wins some sort of award for:

This photo is licensed under this fun legal stuff.

I’m going to take the weekend off from blogging (looking at photos of those yellow raincoats for a prolonged amount of time has temporarily seared my eyeballs), so I’ll be back on Monday with: Caves! Fancy restaurants! Activities that my mother is glad I waited to tell her about until after I arrived home safe and sound!

Iceland – Day 3

(I posted Day 2 earlier today, so if you missed it, here. Or, you know, just scroll down. That’s how blogs work.)

I’ll be honest – we didn’t do much on Day 3. We awoke early, for no reason other than “Hey, we’re in Iceland! We should leave the hotel and go do stuff! And things.” So we went out to breakfast and ate a kleina, which is a yummy twisty donut.

Plus a little salad in the background there, as one regularly consumes with breakfast.

I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again: the coffee in Iceland did nothing. But Iceland! Things! And so, barely conscious, we dragged our asses over to the harbor and attempted to wring some fun out of that. We found a fisherman statue:

“Avast, more sleep-deprived Americans! Empty their wallets!”

…opera houses:

And this moss-covered rock chained to a pallet.

Is the rock preventing the pallet from escaping? Is the pallet preventing the rock from escaping? ICELAND: LAND OF MYSTERY

The opera house was pretty fascinating. It goes by the name of Harpa, does a fun little light show at night, and has this crazy honeycomb design that seemed almost hypnotic (at least, it did under the influence of jet lag):

 

“This would be a pretty cool place for Björk to perform,” we joked, seconds before stumbling upon this waking nightmare:

Also the Icelandic flag

Well, this was just so exciting, we promptly returned to the hotel to sleep for a few more hours. But we had a good reason: we wanted to be well-rested for…the Vikings!

Only a short walk from our hotel (up a hill made of sheer ice) sat Perlan, which, much like the cathedral in town, also resembles a spaceship. It’s a building that…okay, to be honest, I’m still not sure what Perlan is. It took us a full five minutes to find the entrance, was built out of old hot water tanks, and contains a couple of restaurants, a museum, and a gift shop, but also…offices? A conference center, maybe? There were a large number of Icelandic senior citizens gathered at the top of it, so…bingo hall?

“They already called G56, Agnes. For Björk’s sake, pay attention.”

But the best part of Perlan was the Saga Museum, Iceland’s very own version of Madame Tussaud’s. Now, if you know me at all  (or even just met me in passing, as this is often the first thing I tell people about myself) you know that I am a total sucker for a good wax museum. So when faced with the prospect of wax Vikings instead of wax Will Smiths, and nearly triple the inadvertently hilarious facial expressions, I happily drained my camera battery.

“No, no, I’m glad you never asked for directions, dear. I’m sure running the ship aground on this arctic wasteland is the best thing that could have ever happened to us.”

Weight Watchers clicked for Samwell Tarly!

WRITERS

“Dude! What is the deal with airline food?”

The award for best face goes to this nun, who, while being burned alive, kept trying to figure out the plot of Inception to the very end.

“Wait, wait – was he dreaming the whole time?!”

And then, without warning, boobies.

What the SHIT

But perhaps most amusing of all was the end of the exhibit: a big screen set up in front of a bench where you could sit and watch a Making-Of video about the museum. Some guy was sitting there, totally engrossed, and we took great pains not to walk in front of him as he watched, until–

Will: “Hang on a sec.”
Me: “What?”
Will: “That guy’s not real.”
Me: “What? Yes he is! He’s wearing headphones. He’s on the tour. Look how interested he is in that video!”
Will: *waves hand in front of the guy’s face*
Guy: *continues to be made of wax*
Me: *continues to be made of stupid*

BESTIES FOR LIFE

Welp, that concludes our trip through Perlan, the Saga Museum, the wax Vikings, and — IS THAT A PILE OF CHAIN MAIL AND HELMETS AND SWORDS JUST SITTING THERE WAITING FOR US TO PLAY WITH THEM?

Yep.

 

My new author photo

Since each square inch of chain mail weighs roughly as much as an oil tanker, we immediately overexerted ourselves, were forced to return to the hotel to haphazardly throw some food at our faces and  – you guessed it – sleep like the dead.

Tomorrow: Icelandic horses! Museums of a questionable nature! Northern Lights hunt, Take 2: SUCCESS, OR YET ANOTHER FLAGRANT WASTE OF MONEY?

Iceland – Day 2

Sorry for not posting this yesterday – I could say it’s because my work computer wouldn’t let me log in, but let’s just blame it on trolls instead, because trolls are a thing in Iceland. They supposedly live everywhere, but I found their populations to be congregated mostly inside gift shops.

Anyway. Day 2. We started out by eating a metric ton of Smjor, naturally, for today was our big 12-hour long tour through geysers and waterfalls and broken engines, oh my!

We were picked up at the hotel by our trusty guide Stefan (“You can call me Ste-fan, or Ste-fan, or however you want to say it,” he told us. Stefan was a pretty chill dude.) So Stefanupagus started up the old van, drove it out of Reykjavik, and immediately steered us STRAIGHT INTO OBLIVION.

Let me start by saying there is not much in Iceland to begin with. I don’t mean that as an insult – it’s just that once you leave the city, this is what you’re left with to stare at out your car window:

But once the snow starts, that view changes to this:

Folks, I am from Syracuse, New York, snowman capital of the northeast. I’ve seen a lot of snow in my life. But hot damn, this was a lot of snow. Right, past self?

“This is indeed a goodly amount of snow.”

Right, Will and RJ?

“We are teh drunk!”

So then we stopped at Þingvellir – oh yes, let me explain. That letter that looks like an emoticon sticking its tongue out is called a thorn. It’s pronounced ‘th’, and Icelanders like to Þrow it into as many words as Þey can.

So Þingvellir is notable because it is where the very first parliament was held, when a bunch of vikings got together to decide how to govern their land and also that from now on the official uniform would include pointy horned helmets. In addition, Þingvellir is the valley where the Eurasian tectonic plate and the North American tectonic come together (or rather, are splitting apart, a few centimeters a year), plus it contains a lovely lake that some people like to go snorkeling in in the dead of winter – a fact that you should take note of, because who in heaven’s name would do something so clearly batshit?*

*foreshadowing

Þingvellir is also where Stefan told us we would be able to go on a half-hour-long hike, and our entire tour group laughed in his face because the skies were raining down snowflakes the size of my fist.

Seconds later Will was devoured by a Yeti.

From there we kept driving and — OH MY STARS LOOK AT THE PRETTY HORSES WAITING ON THE SIDE OF THE ROAD FOR US TO PET AND LOVE THEM!

I will talk more about these guys in tomorrow’s post, but for now I’ll just say that Icelandic horses are a small, sturdy, delightful breed of horses that are made of pure sunshine and have a remarkably high tolerance for Americans who act like this:

If Will tries to tell you I made him do that, he is a LYING WHORE.

After the horsey-squealing faded, we drove to Gullfoss, a bigass waterfall. It’s so big, it’s two, two, two waterfalls in one. And, as it turns out, is incredibly difficult to photograph in a blizzard. But let’s try anyway, shall we?

It’s in there somewhere, I think.

The waterfall was cool, but I think we can all agree that this sign was even cooler.

In an effort to make sure we still had fingers and toes (because we sure couldn’t feel them anymore) we headed into the Gullfoss gift shop for lunch, and proceeded to have the hands-down BEST meal I had in Iceland. It was a traditional lamb stew called kjötsúpa, though in my opinion it should be called CrackCocainesúpa. And I don’t have a picture of it, which I regret more than anything because I’d really like to blow it up to poster size and put in my office à la Ron Swanson so that I may gaze at it fondly whenever I want to. Instead I got these photos of a geyser, at a place with the truly inspired name of: Geysir.

Before

Geyser!

Which was nearly as exciting as it looks. That is to say, not very. There were some other geysers in the vicinity that shot hundreds of feet into the air!…every decade or so. However, the Geysir gift shop had a giant Viking teddy bear with a treasure chest full of tinier Viking teddy bears, so that provided some suitable amusement.

“BOW BEFORE THORBEAR, KING OF THE BEARS!”

“THORBEAR’S CHARMS ARE IRRESISTIBLE TO THE HUMAN WOMANS!”

After that we headed to the Laugarvatn Fontana, an outdoor menagerie of hot tubs, steam baths, and saunas, all perched on the edge of a lake. And lest we forget, it was still snowing. Here is a picture of me thoroughly enjoying said hot tub, courtesy of my friend RJ, who is not my husband, which made this awkward for everyone.

Including my thighs, which is apparently where all that delicious lamb stew went straight to.

Because Iceland really messes with your ability to tell time, we left the spa roughly five days later (or in real human time, an hour and a half) and headed to Lindin, reportedly one of the best restaurants in Iceland. As you can see, Will and I couldn’t have been more thrilled.

“I hope the food is as exciting as our marriage.”

Chef and owner Baldur Öxdal Halldórsson, who was awesomesauce, came in to tell us all about the impending deliciousness, and he was pretty spot on. Perfectly cooked lamb (noticing a theme?), something called a potato hamburger, and finishing up with what was bandied about as “the best chocolate mousse in the world”.

To which I say: “That is a correct assessment.”

After THAT, it was time for our Northern Lights tour! Because, you know, that was the whole point of going to Iceland in the dead of winter. We might lose a nose or two to frostbite, but dammit, we’re going to see some Northern Lights!

Well, not only did we not see a single Northern Light, but as we drove back toward Reykjavik in utter defeat, the van broke down. In the ceaseless blizzard. Luckily another tour bus that was part of our group happened to have enough room for us, so we piled in and – get this – just abandoned the van (and my favorite water bottle, dammit) for the mighty winds to sweep up, fly it across the lava fields, and presumably carry out to sea. And this might have been a semi-happy ending, were it not for the unimaginable agony I was in for the hour-long drive back, as I had to pee so badly I very seriously considered begging the driver to pull over so that I may urinate into the snowy Icelandic night. Alas, I chose to wait it out, resulting in what I’m sure was the oddest, most ecstatic groan the Reykjavik Natura hotel lobby has ever had the pleasure of hearing.

Be sure to stop back later today for: Vikings! Vikings! Vikings!

Iceland – Day 1

Oops, I lied yesterday about today’s post containing blizzards and waterfalls and car troubles. That will be tomorrow. Actually, this serves as a prime example of how Iceland screws with your sense of time. I NEVER knew what day it was in Iceland, nor how many days had passed since I arrived. After 24 hours, I thought I’d been there a week. After a week, I thought I’d been sitting on the Icelandic Parliament for years.

Anyway. We crashed hard on Tuesday morning but only slept for a couple of hours because we didn’t want to sleep the whole day away – after all, it was thirty degrees out and raining, and who could pass up that sort of excitement?

So we headed into Reykjavik to check out the city. And by city, I mean sleepy seaside New England village, because that is pretty much what it felt like. In a good way, of course. Plenty of charming shops, cafes, museums, and, just like in every other world capital, a sculpture of a vaguely humanoid giant attempting to lift some buckets.

“If only the missus would learn to fetch her OWN fish heads.”

We had lunch at a cafe and I got my first taste of plokkfiskur, which is an insanely delicious mush made of cod, potatoes, and cheese. Look, I know it sounds revolting, but basically it’s like angels dancing all over your tongue. This was also the site of our first encounter with Icelandic butter, or Smjor. How to describe Smjor? Let’s see – if plokkfiskur is angels dancing on your tongue, then Smjor is GOD HIMSELF TAPDANCING ACROSS YOUR TASTE BUDS, COMPLETE WITH JAZZ HANDS. Every time we were brought Smjor, we had to find a way to eat it all. I put some in my plokkfiskur. We scavenged some Wheat Thins, just to have something to eat it with. We put it in hot soup, even though that scientifically doesn’t work out. It is that good. I also drank roughly a liter of coffee whose caffeine seemed to have no detectable effect on me, a trend that would unfortunately continue throughout the entire week and lead to several instances wherein I thought it might be a nice idea to take a nap atop a dinner table.

We continued our trek through the city and found some cool graffiti featuring:

Children dressed as monsters!

Robot wrestling smackdowns!

Geese looking mournfully out of windows!

Our losing battle against the RIDICULOUS amount of wind landed us at Hallgrimskirkja, the largest church in Iceland. It looks normal enough when viewed from the side:

But from the front appears to in fact be a spaceship:

“BRING US ALL OF YOUR SMJOR.”

However, when we went inside to welcome our new alien overlords, we found it to be a pretty regular-looking church with a massive organ. Heh.

     

We took an elevator up to the top of the tower, which I assume is inhabited by a healthy team of ghosts, based on the unearthly wind noises that constantly whipped through the place. Nice views of the colorful roofs of the city, though:

 

Not pictured: THE GHOST FLOATING RIGHT BEHIND YOU

After that we stopped into a few shops where we found this little gem of a board game that, had it not cost roughly fifty bucks, I would be forcing people to play this very weekend:

I highly encourage you to visit pukemaster.com, which is exactly as entertaining as it sounds.

The day ended with us eating a plate of Icelandic cheese at our hotel, getting sloppy drunk on Icelandic beer, and then making the highly intelligent choice of visiting the hotel’s hot tubs whilst drunk on said beer, where I learned that if you are so tired you can barely keep your eyes open, it is a bad idea to sit in a steam bath for more than, oh, say, five seconds.

Tomorrow: REAL blizzards! REAL waterfalls! REAL disappointment!