one last day

Yes, it's our last full day in Iceland. In Europe really. Early tomorrow, we board our flight back to Minneapolis and from there, if there are no hiccups, we catch the flight to Madison. Some people really pack in there last moments, doing all that they want to still accomplish before heading home. You know what Snowdrop and I say to each other? Let's go lazy today!

A late last breakfast at the hotel...

A chat with the waitress, who is from Barcelona. Naturally, we talk about over-tourism. She came to Iceland because she felt that her home city was being destroyed by reckless visitors. "And, too, the pay is better here! But I have to adjust my mindset to the long and short days!"

And then we have a rest in our room. I had booked a "cat walk" for the morning with some group of random people. I'm not quite sure what it is -- I've seen no cats in the city. Small wonder, it's so wet here! I do know it was to end at a cat cafe. I was sure this would be attractive to Snowdrop who loves cats above all animals, but in the end, when I asked if we should back out of that, she responded with an enthusiastic "yes!" So we stayed "home" instead and only tremendous guilt made me get up and insist that we go out for a late morning walk. Which cost me some. The girl is in love with souvenirs here and even though I throw out my share of "no's" there is always one that she gets me to agree to. 

 

 

(an Icelandic hound?)

 

 

 (the BakaBaka Bakery, where I pick up a cardamon bun for my "lunch.")

 

And the girl's lunch? Well, it has to be early, because we have an activity to go to just after the noon hour. At the same time, we had a really late breakfast. How about just some fries at "home?" At the little coffee shop in the hotel? I have to use up my vouchers here. 

And at 12:30, we take a cab (there is no other transportation option) to Ishestar stables. 

When I was in Iceland last (in 2018), I had wanted to try riding one of the Icelandic horses. Do you know their history? They were brought here by the Vikings in the 9th/10th centuries. The finest horses from Scandinavia. The very last one came in the year 982. After that, a law was passed forbidding the import of any horses from the continent. As a result, the Icelandic horse has uniquely avoided globalization! In fact, if you brought in a horse now, the Icelandic ones would quickly pick up diseases that are completely unknown to them. They have lived here in isolation for more than a thousand years. (Though it is possible to purchase and take an Icelandic horse to your country of choice. If you do that, he or she will never be allowed back on Icelandic soil.)

I asked Snowdrop if she wanted to try riding an Icelandic horse. She has no horseback riding experience and it isn't exactly a sport I would like to see any of my grandkids take up (too dangerous, too expensive), nevertheless, trying something new is part of our travel mantra and she is eager to give this sport a go. 

There is a misty drizzle now but unsurprisingly, they are prepared for this: we are given oversized rain pants and rain jackets (in addition to the standard helmet). If they stopped rides due to rain, they'd never get a day's worth of business here!

 

 

The Ishestar tables have really beautiful animals. The Icelandic horse is compact and strong, but it is in fact shorter than the standard horse you'd find elsewhere: 13-14 hands (as opposed to 15-17 hands for your average horse). But don't call it a pony! It is anything but that.

 

 

Snowdrop asks for a calm horse. She gets gentle Fidla. 

I get the older but definitely more spunky Svigna. 

 

 

 

Still, I promise to stay with her walk and only occasionally do I hold back and catch up with a trot. (I don't think our guide appreciated these pauses so I kept them to a minimum. Svigna, of course, caught on to my strategy and allowed herself a munch on the delicious roadside grasses with each pause. We were a good team!)

As for Snowdrop -- she is a cautious girl, but once she gets the hang of an activity, she really gets into it. She loved her ride, loved her horse, loved the gentle sway in the saddle.

It was a wonderful ending to our Nordic adventures.

On the cab ride back, we once again found ourselves in a political discussion with the driver. This has happened a lot in Iceland. I do believe that they are much more angry here at America's leadership than elsewhere and a little more puzzled about the support our government still receives among voters. They really press me on that. These are hard discussions to have and honestly, I wont miss them when we return home. There's only so much that I can say to provide reassurance about the future of my country which carries such an outsized influence on the fate of other nations.

Toward evening, I pack up our suitcases. This should be easy: I've been careful not to purchase any large items. We dont need to segregate out warm clothes or light ones. And yet... 

It takes a while.

For our last dinner, we do not try anything new. I tell her we can go back to any of the four places where we've had dinners. She chooses the Seafood Grill -- from the first night of our return. I have to agree with her -- it was my overall favorite as well. True, she preferred the catch of the day from before (wolf fish), but the fries were awesome as always and my salmon, which I shared, pleased her no end.

(timed release) 

(walk "home:" let's just call this an "art installation!")

 

 

(we developed a very comfortable walking habit: her arm lopped through mine)

 

One last night with light streaming in through our window all night long. One last Icelandic exhale. Tomorrow, we should be back home.

with so much love... 

south along the coast

Plans for our stay in Iceland took so many forms and permutations that my head spins at the recollection. Snowdrop had read a book about Iceland and she told me early on that she wanted to see this country. Especially the puffins and the black beaches! Those were her wishes. 

You don't actually have to leave Reykjavik to see puffins. Between mid-May and mid-August, there are plenty of boat tours a day, right from the city dock. The catch here is the mode of transportation: by boat. Did I ever tell you how much I hate boats in choppy waters? I had actually taken a boat trip off the coast of northern England to see puffins a few years back. I felt sick most of the way there and back. In Reykjavik, the companies use RIBs (rigid-hulled inflatable boats) that seat about a dozen passengers. The tour companies supply you with life jackets and binoculars. They keep their distance for reasons of safety but also so as not to disturb the colonies. You can't have dozens of people traipsing around or even getting close to the island puffin homes. 

I looked for a better way to do this.

I read that some of the largest colonies of puffins (and mind you, Iceland as a whole has the greatest concentration of puffins, hence all those puffin souvenirs around town) were to the south of the city. As were the black beaches. I thought of renting a car. I booked a car. Then I changed my mind. I'm not shy about driving in any and all countries of Europe, but I don't like doing it with Snowdrop. It's hard to pay attention to her and to my surroundings. Too, I wasn't quite sure where to look. The literature kept pushing boat trips. Can't I stay off of unpredictable sea waters??

In the end, I booked a guide. A person with a car, so I wouldn't have to drive. A person who knew about puffins and, too, how to avoid crowds which surely must be there on the Icelandic roads. I booked a day with Pall.

Pall helps out at Arctic Exposure -- a small company that provides tours with a helpful emphasis on photography. It is not cheap to have him take us south for the day, but then nothing in this country is cheap and I am saving by not renting a car (saving, too, my sanity by not trying to do this by myself). 

We start the day... wait, was there an end to yesterday? I was up at midnight and looked outside. Cloudy and wet, but still pretty light, if you ask me!

 

 

 

Okay, morning breakfast. I tell Snowdrop to eat a lot because I'm not sure how lunch fits into the deal.

At 9, Pall is at the door of the hotel waiting for us. (He would have picked us up earlier, but I balked at that!)

How to describe our trip south with Pall... Perfect? Perfectly exciting? Evocative and with diverse weather? Delivering exactly what I hoped for?

The excursion gave us Iceland. Pall, who is a professional photographer, someone who has spent his life between Reykjavik and a southern town, drove us to places where we could experience the country as he has experienced it. And he did so without unnecessary chatter -- of the type a tour guide normally hits you with. It was an incredible day!

Snowdrop, too, was happy as a puffin!  

To get to the cliffs where puffins hang out, you need to go south for about two and a half hours. But there are good stops on the way. The first one, at Urridafoss Falls is just lovely! Snowdrop is bouncy and exuberant. 

(fishing)

(there has to be one of us!)

 

Another pause -- just to photograph these falls from afar. Because they are pretty from this roadside space. (We will get closer to them on the way back.)

We stop then for a snack at a gas station/store. For candy, really. Snowdrop loves that! And we pass a glacier -- coming straight at us! Only in Iceland are these slow moving ice packs almost ho hum. The country has about 270 named glaciers.

And now we get to the cliffs where puffins hang out from late spring through mid August. (After nesting here, they move up north again, staying on the waters of the North Atlantic for the winter months.) This is when the weather really deteriorates. A mist spreads a layer of moisture, eventually changing to light but persistent rain. And the winds! We've come from toasty Reykjavik (temp about 55f/13c) to blustery air and a drop to maybe 5c/40f. There aren't many people up here and I have to think the weather has something to do with it. Though, too, this isn't a place for tour buses. We are at the top of the cliff -- Dyrholaey. And below us? The black beaches of Iceland. This is shattered volcanic rock and Iceland is full of it. Indeed, Pall tells us the whole island is made of basalt rock.

We were to walk on those beaches, but the weather is just too ferocious this afternoon. More importantly though, we are here for some puffin spotting.

Adorable and full of personality!

How can such small guys have so much to offer?!

We are wet. We are cold. And yet... there are the puffins.

 

This bird surely is a national treasure.

(in the rain: cliffs full of puffins)

 

 

We are really wet. Time for a hot lunch. Pall of course knows where to find that. Not a small matter -- this part of Iceland is sparsely populated. Farms, a couple of small hotels. I see nothing else. 

 

 

 

We stop at a place full of wet diners. Snowdrop of course eats her fish and chips. Our friend goes with the burger. Me, I'm tempted by something called marriage cake. Apparently it's a combo of rhubarb and oats. Delicious! 

 

We head back now. And as soon as we leave the southern coast, the weather improves. Significantly! Pall suggests a pause by the Falls we saw from the road -- the Skogafoss.

The girl can still surprise me: I do believe this is her favorite moment from the day. Yes, there are the falls, very nice, lovely in fact. But what she really wanted was to leave her mark: to build a rock promontory, running into the river. A viewing platform of sorts. She set to it, picking heavy rocks to carry into the rushing stream.

(I watch a brave soul get closer to the tumbling waters; I'm glad Snowdrop isn't quite that adventurous.)

 

The girl may have gone on like this for a long time. Maybe until she crossed the river, but I said perhaps this much was enough. Okay! At least it's longer than any of the others here! 

And we have one more stop -- a popular one, with good reason! These are the Seljalandsfoss -- falls that are both tall and uniquely formed so that you can actually go behind them, if you're willing to climb along slippery rocks and then walk through the tail end of cascading water!

We are both drenched!

The adventures end here. We're back in Reykjavik in the evening and we say goodbye to Pall. Honestly, it would not have been possible to do this without him -- the perfect guide, with a perfect eye for the beauty of this country.  

In the evening, Snowdrop and I eat at the Fish Company, yet another seafood place! This one is perhaps the closest we'll come to fine dining on this trip, without totally destroying my budget, though it also has the promise of simple fish and chips for Snowdrop, which takes away the fear of excessive and esoteric sauces poured over her beloved seafood. Me, I go for the Atlantic char. Like a salmon only gentler!

 We have one more day in Reykjavik before us and yes, we do have an activity planned for it! We'll see how that goes. Adventures can be... adventuresome!

with so much love... 

 

Iceland

This really is a uniquely fascinating country and I'm glad we got to explore it in an in-depth fashion today. And we didn't even have to leave Reykjavik to do it.

But first, the obvious: happy summer solstice! (And happy anniversary to my younger girl and her love, and to my good friend in Florida and her love!) 

My choice of dates for Iceland was not accidental. I wanted to be here for summer solstice because, well, it's cool to put yourself this far north on the longest day of the year. This moment in the planet's movement has always held a good dose of wonder for me. I love long hours of daylight! So here we are, reveling in the beauty of the earth's orbit. Scientific, but magical nonetheless.

 

We wake up to window washing. This is certainly in the hotel's favor: the rooms are full of windows and they are close to the sea and to bird activity. Clean windows we shall have. More interestingly, we watch the guy do his task with the longest washing stick I have ever seen. We are on the fourth floor. He has no trouble reaching us there.

Breakfast: again, the hotel is well organized to handle a sizeable crowd. And the foods are good. The girl is thrilled that they have hash browns. Give her a potato in some form and she is happy. (Too, she likes their smoked salmon and croissant. I'm up for some deeply seeded bread which I imagine to be Nordic.)

Next, I booked us a visit to Perlan. This place is hard to explain: perched on a hill, a significant walk away from the hotel (we take a taxi to it), it is a very modern museum that tries to give you a feel for Iceland's wonders -- both in the sky and on the ground. They call it a natural history museum, but it is not at all a typical natural history place, or at least not like I've ever seen. I wasn't sure what to expect. Snowdrop was skeptical (you had to walk through parts of it with a group). We entered.

Surprisingly, it was not crowded. Reykjavik is packed right now. Of course it is. How could you resist it on this day, in this season! But most visitors actually do not stay in the city for long. (I think this is part of the problem at the hotels: people don't much care about their overnight. They move on to do tours, take cruises; in other words, they leave pretty quickly.) And clearly most do not make the trip up to Perlan. What a shame.

We walk through the more traditional museum exhibits, though they're done with flare, and the space is so beautiful that you almost forget to look at what's displayed. Still, we do not read all that's there. Not sure why. Perhaps there's just too much. 

Moreover, I took almost no photos. Again, not sure why. Though I did snap one of this significant animal -- the Arctic fox -- Iceland's only native mammal.

 

 

 

Snowdrop loved this next display. Puffins are one reason why she wanted to come to Iceland. We haven't seen any, but we have a couple of days to go!

 

 

And I learned something interesting here -- with the help of the museum rep who answered some troubling questions for me:

 

 

Polar bears are not native to Iceland, but they have been spotted in a number of places. They come here afloat on an ice brick. What happens to them? Well, a concerted effort is made to catch them once spotted, and to take them back to their native Greenland. But the effort often fails and the guide tells me that they then have to be euthanized. Why? Because they stay by the shore, where most of the country's population lives and they pose a real danger to communities and to local wildlife. 

Now come the three segments that proved to be a whopping highlight for Snowdrop and therefore for me as well. First, there was a movie -- just 7 minutes long -- that showed the eruption of Eyjafjallajökull (I cannot pronounce this!) in 2010. This volcano had a slow lava spill and so people could actually get pretty close to the eruption. Too, it's near Reykjavik -- again, easy access. The videos were nothing short of spectacular. The girl was wide-eyed throughout.

The second segment was a surprise. The museum is testing a new exhibit and as our small group was first in the museum today, we were asked if we wanted a pre-show of sorts (it's not yet open to the public). Of course we did!

They took us to a room with a wide screen below, in front and above. They warned us that some viewers may get dizzy. We would be going inside the eruption of the volcano. We were told that if we got lightheaded, or nervous or claustrophobic we should close our eyes. (Yep, several times I closed my eyes!) None of these shows permitted photos let alone videos, but here is Snowdrop, waiting for it to begin.

 

 

It was unbelievable! Obviously filmed by drones, the film engulfed you with its bursts of flame, its lava flow, its sheer seismic force! We all burst into applause at the end. 

Finally, there was the ice cave. Recently opened, it is made out of ice and snow, transported from the glaciers and mountains of this country. It was a cold experience!

 

 

 

 

 

One more display -- of glacier debris...

 

 

 ... and we're done.

Upstairs, there is a gift shop, an ice cream shop, and a viewing platform, allowing us to look out on Reykjavik. We partook of all three! 

 

 

The girl wrote postcards to her friends and her brother and then it was time to go back. 

I was delighted that she opted for walking to the hotel -- a mere 45 minutes and downhill all the way. It was raining, but I had an umbrella (which she refused, claiming she liked getting wet). I want to reach my daily walking goal -- she tells me. Well me too! 

And the walk, especially at the beginning, is absolutely gorgeous. The lupines that we saw out the window speeding from the airport, are right there by the path, flanked by golden buttercups and birch.

 

 

 

 

 

 

(And back in town again)

 

 

 (all the way down, to that splendid concert hall -- and their gift shop)

 

 Back at the hotel, we hit a wall of different desires. The manager called and told me he had a room ready for us -- one that actually matched the website description. No useless corridor and weird arrangements. An actual sitting area as promised. I said -- let's do it, I'll pack us up. Snowdrop hates room changes. We'd had one out of necessity in Copenhagen. It was a "here we go again" moment for her, just as she had found her comfortable spot. She begged to stay with what we had. I thought about it, but in the end, I couldn't just let it go. I was paying so much, for something that should have cost so little. 

It took a whole lunch of fish and chips to convince her that this was the right thing to do.

 

 

The young man who helped us with luggage was from the Ukraine. He'd left just as the war started. His family is stuck there. Listening to him talk about this made you really feel incredibly sad. He had no one but his cousin here. He could not even think about his grandparents left behind -- it brought him too much grief. 

He is not the first immigrant we met here. The salesclerk from Latvia, the taxi driver from an Arabic nation. The young man who delivered us some flowers, here from Portugal. The waitress from Greece. They must feel so far away from home in this very cold and uniquely isolated country. And yet they come, because they must.

(in our new space -- perhaps smaller, but so much more functional and as promised, with a place to sit)

 

 

We eat dinner at the Messinn. Another fish place. This one prepares individual pans of fish (many local varieties!), with added sauces, veggies and boiled potatoes. Here's my Arctic char:

 

 

 

And here's Snowdrop doing one of her favorite kill-times: creating characters on my iPhone. But I do tear her away from it by describing the Tana French mystery that I am reading. We come up with possible solutions. I ask her to read the ending when we get back and tell me if we are on the right track. Gaga! I'm a child! I love talking about this, but I don't enjoy reading about murders! I smile and tell her -- you know, kids your age do like Sherlock Holmes. (Do they? This is a guess...) She asks -- do you know if Holms dies at the end? Ha! I have to look it up. And the answer makes us laugh! (He is killed off in the final story in the series, but readers were so outraged by this ending that Sir AC Doyle resurrected him again, claiming that he had faked his death.)

 

 

Evening comes. Well, not really. Or only if you go by the clock. Like on New Year's Eve, there is the temptation to stay up, to see what it's like then. It's supposed to stop raining, but it will be cloudy. But, for that moment of wakefulness, we would pay the price, with tiredness tomorrow. And we're to have an early day. (In fact, I'm not quite sure when I'll be able to blog. I don't see a window for it!) 

I convince her to go to sleep. Maybe you stayed up? Played music? Had a lovely long evening with your beloveds? I hope so.

with so much love...