Enjablog

We started our day off walking around Reykjavik, parting ways mid-morning so Ian and I could visit Vikin, Iceland’s Maritime Museum, and everyone else could go to the National Museum.

On our way to the museum, we saw a sign indicating hard hats and steel-toed boots were required to go down a side street. It seemed that Reykjavik had a dry dock! We were able to get a closer look later from the other end of the street that did not require safety gear.

We spent about an hour in the museum learning about the history of trawling and then another hour in Óðinn, Iceland’s decommissioned Offshore Patrol Vessel.

Definite highlights were having the tour guide tell us about all 3 Cod Wars and pointing out that the gun on the ship was built in 1898. Oh, and Óðinn was decommissioned in 2006.

We met up with Cassia, Sune, and Julia early afternoon to head out to Þingvellir and learn about Viking parliament! We saw the law stone, which was lost due to earthquakes, but a flag was placed in the approximate location and stadium seating was available to listen to the speakers.  The continental drift between the North American and Eurasian Plates (which cause the earthquakes) can be clearly seen in this region.

For dinner, we tried some “authentic” American-style dining at Grillhusid.  The burgers were pretty adequate, but their “cold slaw” was not cole slaw.  They claimed it was mayo and sugar, but it tasted a lot like whipped cream.  Weird. And Ian’s meal was somewhat noteworthy for how old his potato looked, like it had been baked, frozen for months, and then re-heated. So, if you’re looking for low-end dining in Iceland, go for the fries.

We took a gravel road down the middle of the country with instructions to fill up on gas before leaving because, well, there aren’t gas stations in that part of the country.

We passed between 2 glaciers, Langjökull and Hofsjökull. Along the way, we stopped to look at a map and found some sheep a few meters away hiding from the wind. They stuck around long enough for me to take a picture and then walked away. We also stopped in Hveravellir to see the hot springs and mud pools.

This video is kinda boring, but it’s a synopsis of our ~6-hour car ride. I used my camera’s time lapse setting to make a video using a picture taken every second and included videos I took in the places where we stopped. Because of the distance and areas we traveled that day, this video shows a lot of the different landscapes in Iceland. Most of the roads we traveled on were gravel, with some areas worse than others as becomes apparent in the video when it looks like I’m filming an earthquake.

Coming back into civilization, we made stops to visit Gullfoss and Geysir. Gullfoss is a popular tourist attraction, since it’s more easily accessible than Dettifoss. It’s also a pretty strong waterfall, averaging 140 m³/s of water running over this waterfall in the summertime.

The word “geysir” is derived from the Icelandic word for “to gush.” According to the tour book, it’s the only Icelandic word that has made it into the English language (I guess Bjork doesn’t count). Iceland’s Geysir, or The Great Geysir, was the first geysir found, but is now only active following earthquakes. The active geysir remaining in the area is Strokkur, erupting every 8-10 minutes.

We made it to Reykjavik just in time for dinner (the hotel knew of 1 restaurant that was open). The wait staff at Þrír Frakkar (3 Coats) were super nice and seated us without a reservation and brought a book out for Julia to play with while we ate. The decor was very fishy, including a cod clock and other types of fish mounted on the walls.

Ian and I shared the Arctic charr appetizer, while Sune and Cassia tried the whale sashimi. The Arctic charr was served with scrambled eggs and chantilly sauce, which was good, but definitely did not sate our craving for scrambled eggs. For our entrees, I had the cod in mustard sauce and Ian had the redfish with wasabi sauce. We got a couple desserts to share and they were garnished with a fruit I’d never seen before: gooseberries. They taste like a tart plum, but with the texture of an apple, the size of a blueberry. Craziness. All around, very good!

photo by underbunny

After dinner, we got back to the hotel for Internet! Granted, we only had connection from the stairwell to the lobby. But it was worth the trouble after going days without!

We got a lot more site-seeing in the next day, since we were staying in the area for 2 nights. We spent the day visiting the Myvatn lake area.

Our first stop was Goðafoss. This is the waterfall where statues of pagan gods were thrown in to symbolize Icelanders’ adoption of the Christian faith.

Skútustaðagígar Pond is adjacent to Mývatn lake and surrounded by pseudo-craters formed by steam explosions when lava spray hits water.  This was our first introduction to Icelandic gnats. They didn’t bite, but they were attracted to heat, so they swarmed our faces as we walked around.

Next, we went to Dimmuborgir. This area had a lot of interesting rock formations created by lava pooled over a small lake. As the lava flowed across the lake, the water started to boil, the vapour rose through the lava forming lava pillars. As the lava continued flowing towards lower ground in the Mývatn area, the hollow pillars of solidified lava remained.

We got lunch at Gamli Bærinn (The Old Farm) in Reykjahlíð before moving on to Námaskarð to see the sulfur fields. The sulfur fields were super stinky, but pretty cool to see. I kinda rushed through the lower area because the wind would blow the steam into the valley and get trapped there.

Next, we went for a swim in a nature bath.

The last stop of the day was Dettifoss, the northern-most point in our trip. Dettifoss is the largest waterfall in Europe in terms of volume discharge, having an average water flow of 200 m3/s.

We got dinner at the Gamli Bærinn again on the way back since we expected everything to be closed by the time we got back to Akureyri (and it was the only place still open in Reykjahlíð). We saw the start of sunset on the way back to the hotel, but didn’t stay up to see it “fully” set.

The next morning, we got up bright and early to get in on the breakfast buffet. What we had not prepared for was the typical Icelandic breakfast:

- corn flakes
- meusli
- skyr (a yogurt-like product that I later found out was Iceland’s national cheese)
- sliced hard-boiled eggs
- platter of sliced sandwich meats and cheese
- breads
- crackers, salty and sweet (like animal crackers, but in round and rectangular forms)

I think Ian summed up best what we were all thinking, “All I wanted was a plate of scrambled eggs the size of my head!” Seems the entire country is unfamiliar with scrambled eggs. We didn’t find any the whole trip.

After breakfast, we explored the Snæfellsjökull area. There were a few easy trails nearby with interesting scenery, so we went to see some volcanic craters and waterfalls.

Around noon, it was time to hit the road for Akureyri. We decided it would be prudent to find a grocery store for some emergency rations and possibly a restaurant for lunch before we got too far away from civilization, so we made a stop in Olafsvik — the largest town on that peninsula.

Olafsvik was a really cute town. We went a little overboard at the grocery store, but we all had our hungry memories of the night before fresh in our minds. Ian and Sune searched for high-protein snacks, and not being able to find any jerky, settled on some dried fish. I’ve had chinese dried fish and it looked very similar, so I vouched for its edibility. (To be continued…)

We had lunch at Olafsvik Hotel, which had somewhat small portions, but really good food. Ian had their monk fish and even I thought it was delicious! Though, I did find a lot of fish entrees that I enjoyed throughout Iceland; maybe I just haven’t been trying the right kinds of fish at home.

From there, we drove west across 2/3 of the country and made it to Akureyri in time to pick up Ian’s bag from the airport before they closed.  We even made it to Hotel Edda with a half hour to spare before their dinner buffet ended.  Down side: no internet! It was broken and they had no idea when it would be fixed.

So, this was our first experience with Icelandic dinner:

- a few typical salad options, breads, rolls, crackers
- 3 kinds of pickled herring
- reindeer pate
- tuna pate
- smoked salmon
- salted cod
- smoked whale
- smoked puffin
- roast beef
- ham
- roasted potatoes
- french fries

I tried a little of everything except the smoked puffin.  I accidentally got smoked whale twice, which wasn’t particularly noteworthy.  Everyone else thought the puffin was very strong, but mixed response as to whether it was good. I didn’t much like the reindeer pate.  It had an odd texture to it.  The pickled herring was pretty good, though very strong. It’s traditionally a breakfast food, but I definitely would not eat it for breakfast. I think it’d make a reasonable side to a lunch, like a pickle would. The salted cod was alright, but I didn’t know what it was and was really unprepared for how salty it was. And I <3 potatoes.

After dinner, we settled in for the evening. Ian and I both ended up staying up way later than we thought because we missed the sunset and sunrise… and thought it was still evening.  At that latitude this time of year, there’s about an hour between sunrise and set, which means dusk and dawn overlap and it doesn’t actually get dark. We started to learn not to use the sun as a guage of time after a while.

On Day 2 of our trip, Ian woke up with the 4am sun… to find that the Red Sox game he had been waiting to start the night before hadn’t finished yet.

Around 8am or so, we decided we would make some oatmeal for breakfast. I went with Cassia the day before to the grocery store, so I knew she got some, but couldn’t remember what the package looked like. After searching much of the kitchen and some strategic googling, we concluded that Morgen Knas (Morning Bone) was cereal and not oatmeal.

At that point, I used google translate to see what oatmeal was in Danish, then did an image search to see what some common Danish oatmeal packaging looked like. This was when we discovered the flour-style paper sack we dismissed as cornmeal was actually oatmeal. And the “Korn Bord” and “Full Korn” label on it referred to the Danish Grain Board and whole-grain nature of the product.

Easy from there, right? Well… we translated the cooking instructions (in deciliters), looked up Quaker Oats to find out how much a serving was, converted that to deciliters, searched for a measuring cup (measuring liter?), and were ready to go. Oh, except for turning on the stove. They had a gas stove that didn’t have an auto-starter on it. Searched all over the stove area and kitchen counters — no matches. We finally found a stick lighter under some dish towels which didn’t have gas in it. Assuming they used it just for the spark to light the stove, we gave that a try. The first 20+ tries didn’t work, so we tried the burner next to it and it lit up on the first try. Four minutes later (approximately 90 minutes after we started our journey), we had hot bowls of oatmeal in front of us!

Soon after, we were packed up and ready for Iceland! Headed back to the airport for the second day in a row, landed in Keflavik, and went to retrieve our luggage only to find that Ian’s bag got left behind. The plane wasn’t full or anything. They just failed to put his bag on the plane. The airline people said they’d bring it to us the next day, but we’d be over 400 miles away by then. (Stayed in the mid-western peninsula of Snæfellsjökull [Snow fall glacier] the first night and then in the northern city of Akureyri the next day.) So, they flew his bag to Akureyri, the country’s second largest city (about the size of Old Town Alexandria) and it was waiting for us at the “airport,” i.e. runway with a building at the end.

When we got to Snæfellsjökull, it was about 8:30 pm, which we soon discovered was half an hour too late to get dinner. The grocery stores close around 5, so we were just out of luck. There weren’t really any other restaurants in this area. The bar was still open; they just didn’t serve food. So we had a few Viking beers and the remainder of the bread the wait-staff was kind enough not to throw out.

After “dinner”, Sune, Ian, and I did some exploring. These pictures were taken between 10pm and midnight (you know, midnight — an hour before the sun sets):

Our first night in Copenhagen, Ian and I joined his cousin’s family and a friend to celebrate the Midsummer Festival. This is comparable to America’s Independence Day, but instead of fireworks, they burn a witch!

Before the witch-burning, they sing the Midsummer Hymn. In the third verse, they talk about the witches and trolls they burn to rid their towns of evil:

Midsummer song
We love our country
Text: Holger Drachmann, 1885
Melody: PE Lange-Müller, 1885

We love our country,
when it is redesigned in July
teeth star of wood with brilliance in each eye,
when the spring of each bird
over fields of beach
let the voice of greeting trills themselves bend:
we sing your law over the road, the street
we wreaths your name when our harvest is in charge,
but the most beautiful wreath
just can not wait, however, your, Midsummer,
it is the bottom of this summer’s hearts so warm, so happy,
- But the most beautiful wreath
just can not wait, however, your, Midsummer,
it is the bottom of this summer’s hearts so warm, so happy.

We love our country,
but by midsummer most
when every cloud over the field blessing transmitter
when flowers are most
and when the cattle in bucket
gives rigeligst gift for hardworking hands;
when we do not plow and harrows and drums,
when the cow’s dinner munching clover:
then go to the youth dance
on your bid Midsummer!
right as a foal and the lamb who freely across the meadow to tumble,
- Then go to the youth dance
on your bid Midsummer!
right as a foal and the lamb who freely across the meadow to tumble.

We love our country,
and with sword in hand
each udenvælts enemy dressed us know
but against the spirit of strife
over fields, under the beach
we will fire on fathers barrows turn:
each city has its witches, and each parish its trolls,
them, we will from life with joy torches hold,
we want peace in this country,
Midsummer, Midsummer!
it can be won when hearts just can not wait never doubting cold
- We want peace in this country,
Midsummer, Midsummer!
it can be won, where hearts never doubting’s going cold.

We love our country,
and we welcome the king,
who have tried and elected himself the right princess:
on his adventure castle
can every woman, every man
an example of life in love find!
Let the times grow old, let the colors fade,
a memory we will be in the heart us subscribe:
from narrative rich north
shows a gloss over land -
It is a wonderful reflection of its enchanting meadows
- From narrative rich north
shows a gloss over land -
It is a wonderful reflection of its enchanting meadows!

Checked out the Maritime Museum of San Diego yesterday on Drew‘s recommendation.

There was a lot to see there and I only ended up wandering around for an hour and a half or so. The subs were definitely the highlights for me! The USS Dolphin is just super cool. And it was interesting seeing inside a foreign sub. The B-39 is way more cramped than any other vessel I’ve seen. Bunks in the machinery spaces? Really?