To Iceland, with Love

I just returned home from my first trip to Iceland.  It is one of the most beautiful places I have ever visited.  I’m a sucker for mountain landscapes with waterfalls.  Also, I really like cold weather, as I am a well insulated woman with an internal combustion engine that I can’t shut off.  I’m the one wandering around in January in a tank top.

My travel agent (husband) decided that we would take a trip to London to see the Philadelphia Eagles play football against some other, less important team.  During his research, he stumbled upon this free stopover offer from Icelandair.  He’s willing to do just about anything to break up the long flight across the Atlantic, so we decided to check out Reykjavik.

To be honest, Iceland has never been on my list of places that I wanted to visit. I didn’t know anything about it, other than that it is white on the map.  Seemed pretty boring.  I was wrong.

*There is no quilting in this post.  I did work on some small handwork projects, but I will share about them as I complete them. There is plenty of inspiration, though.

We arrived really early in the morning, after a very pleasant flight.  I’m not good with time zones – the sky was dark, and I was tired.  We rented a car, and drove to our hotel.  We unpacked and napped until lunch time.  This is standard behavior for me when traveling.  We wandered around the city on foot that day.  Not too much – it was a bit rainy and cold.  Basically we had lunch, explored a few blocks, then went back to the hotel to relax some more, and decide how we would structure our visit.

Architecture in the city was refreshingly diverse.  There were all kinds of buildings – colonial, modern, and the ever popular concrete box.  The buildings were all fairly short, at least for someone familiar with New York City.  I especially liked the colored balconies on this otherwise boring building.  

There was a lot of graffiti in the city, along with lots of murals.  Sometimes the dividing lines between the two got blurred.  There seem to be some very talented folks running around with spray paint.

I did some research, and discovered that there are no quilt shops in Reykjavik.  There used to be one, but it has closed permanently.  There is a yarn shop on the other side of the country that has some quilt fabrics, according to the owner of the closed shop.  Alas, that wasn’t on our agenda.  I did check out the wool that was available, but it felt pretty scratchy.  Also, I’m not really into yarn work.  So, no crafty shopping for me.

We alternated driving adventure days with city adventure days.  I am very lazy on vacation.  I try to sleep in, and lure my husband back to bed with all manner of absurd promises.  He likes to get me out of bed and march me around foreign territory, then feed me and put me to sleep.  It’s good that I let him be in charge, or all of my photos would be of hotel rooms and my writing would just be evaluations of bedding.

I did discover some interesting design motifs in our hotel.  (We stayed at the Canopy.)  There was a mural in the atrium that clearly served as an inspiration for the hallway wall paper and the bedroom carpet.  I was quite pleased with myself for noticing.

We did two different trips outside of the city.

The first was a drive around the Golden Circle, with a stop at a Fridheimar tomato farm for a delicious lunch of tomato soup and fresh bread.  We walked around Kerid, a volcanic crater lake.  We saw Gulfoss, one of the largest waterfalls in Iceland. Unfortunately, it was foggy and cloudy, so it was more like we saw Monet’s interpretation of a large waterfall.  We stopped at Geysir, and were not disappointed.  We saw the geyser erupt,  and bubbling puddles that suggested we not go swimming in them.  We also visited the Pingvellir National Park, the place where two tectonic plates meet.  There was a path to walk in the crevasse, but I took Geology in college, and I’m not a fool.  It is just a matter of geologic time until that thing snaps closed like a Venus flytrap.

Our next city adventure day was walking.  Again.  Sad face.  I was sold a hop on bus thing that all tourists do, but somehow the boss marched us off on his own tour.  We walked through Harpa, which was a cool modern design, and also had heat and no wind.  The exterior of the building is modeled after the hexagonal basalt columns which you can see in a bunch of places around Iceland. We wandered around the waterfront, appreciating how f***ing cold Iceland can be in the winter, and escaped into the Whales of Iceland museum.

Now – I will warn you, I entered the museum full of cynicism and bitterness, based on the fact that Icelanders participate in whaling, and whale is on the menu all over the place.  (We did not eat any whale that we are aware of.)  The museum was more of a kindergarten field trip place.  Imagine life size paper mache models of whales hanging from the ceiling of a dimly lit warehouse.    Now imagine you are listening to an audio tour of a non-native English speaker explain about different whales, without telling you which one is which.  Good times.  But, in their favor, the heat was on, and there was no wind.  Also, no whale snacks in the little restaurant, which felt like a missed opportunity to me.  If you are going to embrace whaling, then embrace it.  Don’t pussyfoot around it.  As for whale consumption, it was mentioned briefly, but it was along the lines of “we only eat the little ones anymore”.

We walked back through town, doing some window shopping.   After a disappointing lunch of “Chinese” food, we decided to take a nap.  (I win!)  Dinner was much more interesting.  We went to GrillMarkadurinn.  Dessert was amazing.  I think I had fish for dinner, but who cares?  Check this out!

The second day trip was a drive up to the Jökusárlón glacier. The drive was 5 1/2 hours.  My husband is a crazy man, but he was determined to get us out of the city to have a shot at seeing the aurora borealis.  (After that dessert, how could I say no to anything?)

Our destination was Diamond Beach.  It is a black sand beach with chunks of glacial ice that sparkle in the sun.  There is a lagoon at the top of diamond beach with chunks of glacier just floating around.  Jeremy is a talented photographer.  We saw a gajillion waterfalls on the way.  This is Skógafoss.    This is Seljalandsfoss – you can walk behind the waterfall.  Probably more enjoyable when it isn’t winter.  There were two big ones, but lots of the others were unnamed in our guide book, and just fell down the mountain uncelebrated.  There were even some interesting ones that were on windy spots, where the water was constantly being blown upwards.

I finally took some photos of all of the horses we saw.  Icelandic horses are smaller than horses I am used to seeing at home.  Also, they are eaten, so every time I saw them I felt a little bit sad.  I don’t have these feelings for sheep or cow, and I don’t really understand them.  I have a list of meats I don’t eat, and I’m not willing to branch out at this point.  If my choice was between horse or cauliflower, the horse will live another day.   If it was horse or nothing, the horse and I could maybe work out some kind of transportation situation, where we could both find something other than horse to eat.  I hope I’m never confronted with those choices.

Can you believe this scenery?

We did see the aurora borealis on the last night, but it was extremely underwhelming.  As we were driving back, I noticed some wispy white clouds in the dark sky that did not behave like normal clouds.  They undulated and changed shape too fast.  My friend Pat had told me to take photos, because the greens would show up.  She was right!  The photos are more interesting than what we actually saw.  The locals told us that they do not know how to predict when or where there will be great aurora displays.  So, I appreciated what I was given.  I would very much like to go back to Iceland in the future.  In the summer to see how beautiful it is when growing, and in the deep winter, too, to appreciate the harsh beauty.