Iceland: "We're not drowning!"

Our final day in Iceland began with a trek up through some little, slightly confusing back streets to the enormous Hallgrimskirkja. Named after a poet. Apparently. It's pretty impressive from the outside, but I couldn't help thinking the inside looked a lot like papier mache. It's not. It's concrete. Very plain. I'm too used to English churches and all the nice carving.

Anyhoos, we decided to check out the view from the top of that there massive tower. Toddled up in a lift and then up into the chamber just below the bells. At about 10:55.

Here are some pretty views from the top.

And then it hit 11am. And we were deafened. Almost. Jesus Christ, it was loud. Yes, I know this is to be expected when you're standing almost directly below the bells, but damn.

Then it snowed on us when we left. Snowy snowy snowy. Pretty sure it barely stopped snowing the entire time we were there.

Slightly deaf, we headed back into the shopping area to pick up some little souvenirs. I acquired... well, not a lot. I was looking for something in the same vein as my manaia necklace from New Zealand - something quite traditionally Icelandic. I settled for geologically Icelandic instead and found myself a nice little necklace with a lump of lava. Funny looking little thing. Full of holes. It hasn't yet taken the place of my manaia which has become one of those rare things that I wear daily.

Moving on. It was still snowing on and off once we'd completed our perusal of the shops so we found somewhere to have lunch instead. Little place just along from the Laundromat Cafe called Cafe Paris, where we had lovely tagliatelle. Om nom nom. I wasn't quite so enamoured with the place when I spotted whale on the mains menu. Grr.

Lunch nommed (regardless of the fact that had I realised they were serving whale, I would have insisted on going elsewhere), we headed off again, this time in search of the National Museum of Iceland. Very interesting, if a little bit small. Some really amazing artefacts from the early period of settlement. Plenty to satisfy inner child who was in love with the Vikings.

Amusingly enough for me, one of the last exhibits in the museum was a set of wire cutters used during the Cod Wars. Being from Grimsby, this was endlessly amusing, especially since we'd spent the last few days joking that I shouldn't tell the Icelanders I'm Grimbarian in case the Cod Wars came up. Don't know what they are? Go google it. Basically our fishing fleet had an argument with the Icelanders about who could fish where and then the Navy got involved and it got a bit... fraught.

Warmed up and full of random knowledge about Iceland we headed back to the hotel to grab our things for the evening. We stopped at the bakery again on the way and acquired some more pastries/cakes for tea. Om nom.

And then we drank tea. Because we're English and this is what we do when there's nought else to do.

All nicely relaxed, we got picked up to go to the Blue Lagoon, the famous geothermal spa place. Much as I wanted to go, I'd been expecting some disappointment - it's always seemed so overhyped.

I was wrong. Such a lovely way to spend the evening. Lovely warm water (hitting 36 degrees plus in places, which was a bit burny), relatively clear skies and then it snowed. It's a bizarre experience, lounging about in such warm water with snow falling on your head. Definitely worth it.

Not so great was the lifeguard who (understandably) kept shining a massive searchlight across the pool to make sure no one was drowning. We got a bit giggly about that. We weren't drowning. Did get beached at one point attempting to see if it was snow or salt on the rocks at the side of the pool, but no drowning. (It was snow, by the way).

Note to self: the mud they put in the pots around the pool is for your skin. It does wonders for your skin, at least in the short term. It is not for eating. I repeat: NOT FOR EATING. Urgh, salty.

Several relaxing hours and a random chat with an Irish dude (who gave us tips for our planned trip to Ireland) later, we clambered back onto the bus and headed back to Reykjavik. Bags all packed, we sort of fell into bed, horribly aware that we had to be up again in about 3 hours. Urgh...

Iceland: "At least it's friendly snow"

On the Thursday, our third day in Iceland, we went on an epic trip. I say epic. I'm talking 8:30am pick up from the hotel, getting battered by ice-snow at the bus depot and only then setting off across the snowy winter wonderland that is Iceland in January on a 200km round trip to take in some of the most beautiful and awesome sights.

Yeah. Epic. A lot more epic in my head than in words.

Anyhoos. We first faced an hour and a half trip out to Geysir. Which is, as the name suggests, a geyser. The original geyser from which all others get their name. Of course, this being a bus outing, we couldn't just drive for an hour and a half. We had to stop somewhere. So we stopped at a farm. A tomato farm. In Iceland. In January. Where everything is covered in feet of snow.

This is surreal. I enjoy gardening and growing my own veggies, so it was pretty interesting - all these massive greenhouses full of tomatoes in the middle of bloody Icelandic winter. Even better, it's all geothermally heated and powered. The Icelanders are amazing.

Aaand, then we set off again. I feel I should mention that at this point I was beginning to feel like I'd fallen into an episode of Ice Road Truckers, what with the un-ploughed roads and bobbing along in a bus... and all the cars stuck in the very deep snow just off the edge of the tarmac... and the sticks to mark the edge of said tarmac which were in places only just protruding from the snow drifts... yeah. Ice Road Bussers.

Just realised bussers actually means something in North America. Oops. Whatever. Moving on.

Beautiful scenery started appearing at this point, it now being pretty much light. I think I've neglected to mention so far that Iceland being so far north means it doesn't get properly light in January until about 10 or 11 in the morning. Which meant that as we were leaving the surreal surrounding of the greenhouses, we actually managed to see the beauty of Iceland.

And it is beautiful. Not that I have any photos from this point. Scroll down for them if you're bored of my rambling.

Anyhoo. At last we reached Geysir. Only, there's a catch. Geysir doesn't really erupt any more. It's pipes (yes, geysers have pipes. Awesome geological ones) got all clogged up. Luckily for us, Geysir has a little brother called Strokkur. Strokkur does erupt. And it's anything but little. Observe.

Having enjoyed the amazing spectacle of an erupting geyser, we headed for the little cafe to grab a spot of lunch, passing more little geothermal wonders on the way. Oh the glory of bubbling pools of hot water in the middle of snow.

Anyway, lunch was had and then we headed off on another leg to the Gullfoss waterfall. Plenty of photos of this. Enjoy.

There is something very odd about such a huge waterfall being partially frozen. It's a good job we decided to head down to the falls first before checking out the little shop. See those nice pics up there? That lovely sun and the relatively clear sky? This is what happened about 2 minutes later.

It's that bloody storm! That bloody storm just keeps coming back to get me. Guh. We fled to the shop, Gemma grabbed a cuppa and I dripped all over the floor. By the time we got back on the bus to head to our final stop of the day, I'd almost dried off. That's how warm the shop was.

Final stop of the day was Thingvellir National Park. This is in the rift valley where the American and Eurasian tectonic plates meet and is thus awesome. It's also the place where Iceland's parliament, the Althing, first used to meet from 930AD. It's the oldest parliament in the world (save for a 45 year hiatus at the beginning of the 1800s). Basically, it's got amazing geology and amazing history, which is all good in my book. Also, look how pretty it is!

OK, I'll admit, walking up through that rift towards the visitor centre, I was just thinking how much it could have been something out of Lord of the Rings. All together now...

It was a lovely 20 minute walk up from the lower car park to the visitor centre and on the way up it decided to snow. For the first time since we arrived in Iceland it actually snowed nice, friendly snow. You know, the fluffy white flakes we get in the UK that stick to your clothes instead of stabbing you  in the face. Ahhh...

And then it was back on the bus and a leisurely drive back to Reykjavik. On the way we got the brilliant news that the Northern Lights tour, run by the same company, was going ahead. Finally! So when we got back to the hotel we grabbed a bite to eat at the bar - a lovely salmon burger - and then piled on the layers in expectation of the ridiculous cold of the Icelandic night.

The guide for our evening tour was called Sigurbergur. Or Sigi. It soon became apparent that he was a little bit unhinged - put on for the tourists, or actually slightly mad, I'm not sure. He began with this:

"Our driver is Ragnar. He's just got his licence back."

We giggled. On the drive back out to Thingvellir National Park in search of the Lights, he gave us some advice regarding trolls (don't look at them?), elves and ghosts (don't talk to them and don't make eye contact with severed heads). And he kept singing. Space Oddity came up at one point...

Anyhoos, we parked at the lower car park again and all piled off the bus, fluorescent wristbands attached (so Sigi could find us if we got lost in the dark). Warnings again about trolls and elves and ghosts and then we all stood around in the cold craning our necks to see if the Lights would come out. This is the photo I took.

Note the lack of Lights? Yeah. No Lights. 2 hours I think we waited? Something like that. And no Lights. Disappointing but not altogether unexpected. Sigi helpfully pointed out that the tickets we have are valid for a year and you can just keep going back until you see the Lights. We might have to take him up on that.

Iceland: "It's still better than the average Icelandic pavement."

Hurray for massive continental breakfast selection at hotels. Just what we needed to keep us going in the bitingly cold Icelandic weather.

After said hearty breakfast (and rather large quantities of tea) we headed out into the city. We had nothing planned, so just aimed to wander about till we found something interesting. A few metres outside the hotel we discovered something very interesting.

Well, I say interesting. Dangerous might be more appropriate. Namely that pavements don't get gritted in Iceland. Not as far as we could see. Even with our walking boots we were slipping and sliding all over the place.

Eventually we managed to make it to one of the bridges over the lake in the middle of the city, Reykjavikurtjorn. I think I've missed some accents off that... Umm... Anyhoo. Looked like a nice stroll across the bridge. Really not. The Storm came back again. In fact, it came back so strong that we decided not to argue with it and went a different way. Believe me, ice rain smacking you in the face is not a pleasant sensation.

So we fled from the Storm and took refuge, eventually, in the tourist information centre. I acquired a whole assortment of leaflets and Gemma suggested maybe we should head to the harbour and see if we could go whale-watching. This sounded like a wonderful plan to me (even if I rather suspected it was going to be too windy).

As I suspected the two main operators of the whale-watching boats both said it was too rough to go out today but if we came back tomorrow or Friday we might be able to go. Tomorrow (Thursday) we were going on a full-day tour and Friday... well, the boats went out in the afternoon and we were heading off for a nice relaxing spa trip at just the wrong time. Ah well. Whales will have to wait.

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At this point, it still being rather cold and both of us struggling to stay upright, we decided to find lunch. Which took us to the Laundromat Cafe, a nice little place which really does function partially as a laundromat. Amazing potato wedges and a pretty damn good burger followed. Om nom nom.

Energy stores replenished (if a little sluggish after all the stodge), we wandered up the road and found our way, largely by accident, to the Settlement Exhibition. Amazing. Really amazing. It's below street level, the result of an excavation while they were widening the street (or something). The centrepiece is an original Norse longhouse. I love stuff like this - I grew up watching Time Team - and this, this was just awesome. There's not a huge amount to the exhibition itself, but there's plenty of information about the early settlement of Iceland, plus a whole bunch of little interactive bits. Hurray for touchscreen technology in museums.

Seriously, if you end up in Reykjavik, go check it out. Moving on.

Geekery fulfilled, we decided to brave the weather again and headed for a walk along the bayfront at which point I finally took my first decent photos of the trip. ALL THE PRETTIES.

This delightfully ridiculous looking building is Harpa, home of the Iceland Symphony Orchestra. It lights up at night. I think it's supposed to be the Northern Lights. Just looks trippy to me.

Iceland has different traditions regarding when to take down Christmas trees to the UK. Which meant this straggly looking specimen was still up and Gemma wanted a photo.

And then we slipped and slid around up the road for a bit. I say a bit - it decided to shower ice from the heavens again so we took refuge in the side streets where it was less blustery. Even more slipping and sliding later, we made it back to the park which surrounds Reykjavikurtjorn and discovered that walking on the sodden, frozen grass was easier than walking on the path. Better than the average Icelandic pavement, that grass, according to Gemma.

Chilly and a bit bored, we left the park and aimed for Listasafn Islands, the National Gallery of Iceland. Partly for the art, but mostly because we needed to warm up. Nice big cup of tea in the cafe fixed that. The Gallery itself... not to my taste. Largely "modern" art (yes, I'm sure there's a more accurate term, but I'm not an artist) which I don't get. Ah well.

Now that I'm writing this up it looks like we did more than I thought we had... how odd. Anyhoos, we decided after leaving the Gallery we'd head back to the hotel - after all, the Northern Lights tour might be going ahead. Snapped a few pics of the lake and downtown Reykjavik on the way past.

Still slidy as hell on the way back. Mitigated slightly by a trip to a lovely little bakery on the corner near the hotel where we picked up some pastries for tea. We'd had a big lunch. Pastries seemed like a wonderful idea.

Aaaaand... then the Northern Lights tour didn't go ahead. Bugger it. Try again tomorrow.

Iceland: "It's like Taranaki all over again!"

After taking 6 hours to get to Gatwick and then getting a relatively good night's sleep at the hotel, we set off again, this time to the airport proper. Check in was possibly the easiest I've ever dealt with - the advantage here of taking cabin baggage only. Early morning tiredness and grouchy mood seriously helped by the little baggage labels which proudly proclaim "YOU SHALL PASS" in happy letters. Aww.

A leisurely stop at Costa for breakfast (mmm, bacon buns) and then a massively uneventful flight to Keflavik Airport. The view was gorgeous on the descent, but unfortunately I have no photos.

Only downside of the nice view was that I could quite clearly see the army of snowploughs trundling merrily around the runway. I imagine it goes something like this: plough runway, plane lands, plough runway again. Repeatedly. All day.

By this time it was about 2 in the afternoon. It near enough took us less time to get from London to Keflavik than it did to get from Grimsby to London. Why is that? WHY, UK? Why?

Ahem. Moving on.

Quick airport lunch and then a shuttle to Reykjavik proper which is about 45 minutes' drive away. It started snowing while we were waiting on the bus. It did not stop.

I fell asleep on the bus and by the time I woke up again it was properly dark and we were almost into Reykjavik. Considering it's not that big a city (200,000+ people), it spreads a bloody long way. Passing through the outskirts I started imagining the nice comfy hotel waiting for us. Suffice to say said hotel was actually almost another hour away.

Reykjavik is pretty at night. I have no photos of this. Bugger it.

The hotel was also rather nice. Having spent three weeks hostelling round New Zealand, this was a nice change. You know, no low-lying bunk-beds out to give you concussion, no queue for the bathroom... Mmm.

Anyways, the receptionist was also super awesome and pointed us in the direction of a Thai place down the road to grab some tea. So we wrapped up, by now realising just how cold it is in Iceland, and trudged off down the road in search of food.

I should point out here that the Icelanders don't seem to have discovered the concept of gritting pavements. Or roads for that matter. It's a good job we took walking boots.

The Thai place was a little take away with a tiny little bar to sit if you wanted to eat in. Despite initial appearances it was actually really rather good (and massively filling) and lulled me at least into a false sense of security regarding Icelandic prices.

Nicely full of spring rolls and noodles, we turned to brave the cold again. Which was fine - layer upon layer of clothes was keeping that out. We weren't so prepared for the sudden onslaught of the ice rain which hit us part way back to the hotel. I can but presume I was a bit delirious with tiredness by this point because I just kept giggling and telling Gemma it was like Taranaki all over again and I'd have to tell my sister when we got back. I'm not sure she heard me - too wrapped up in her scarf and whatnot. See this post 'yur regarding the adventure at Taranaki. Bloody storm, following me around the world. Gah.

Any vague plans we'd had to do a little exploration round Reykjavik went on hold and after the planned trip to see the Northern Lights got cancelled because of that damn storm we ended up spending the evening channel hopping.

Great, aside from the fact that the only English-language channels in the hotel room were news channels and Cartoon Network. I introduced Gemma to the Powerpuff Girls. It was glorious.

Iceland: "Mind the gap"

Finally! Finally getting round to writing up my notes about the trip to Iceland. It was only... 2 months ago? Ah well. Here goes.

The short trip to Iceland began with an epic journey down from Grimsby/Scunthorpe to Gatwick. OK, so it's not actually that far, but given that I left work at 4:30pm and didn't reach the hotel till 10:30pm, I'm counting it as epic.

In short, it happened like this: my train was at 5:30pm. I got twitchy and left work at half 4 and ended up waiting at the station for 45 minutes. Then I worried that I'd miss the connection at Scunthorpe and Gemma would be left with no train tickets because I had them all. This (amazingly enough) did not happen. Woo. Then we got the little local train from Scunthorpe to Doncaster which looked just like one of my old school buses. The really rattly old one which we always worried would breakdown.

The leg from Doncaster to King's Cross was uneventful. Then I had to get a tube ticket and the damn machine gave me £15 change all in pound coins. Ack. I feel I must point out here that the short tube trip between King's Cross and Victoria is the most relaxed I have ever been on a tube train. I hate them. I have a phobia of crowds and anyone who has ever been on the tube will tell you this is not a good thing to have in that situation. As it was, it was about 9 in the evening and there was no one around. Do you know the joy of actually being able to sit on a tube train? Amazing.

Ahem. Moving on. There was an angry man at Victoria station bollocking the conductor. Not interesting. Finally arrived at Gatwick and then had to wait for a shuttle (very reasonably priced, I do believe) to take us to the hotel. Which meant not arriving until nearly 10:30pm. Bearing in mind the early start the next morning... urgh. Oh yay.

On lost notebooks and more planning

I fully intended to write some posts about Iceland. Lovely long rambling posts which no one will want to read save to look at the pretty pictures. Same as always.

Problem is, I've managed to misplace my travel notebook. The little stripy one that I keep all my diary notes in. Things like "Amy burned her bum on a hot rock". That sort of thing. I know I had it when I got back from Iceland, but now I can't find the damn thing anywhere. I'm pretty certain it's in the house somewhere... just not sure where... hmm...

Just as soon as I find it I'll sling up a couple of really badly written posts. Until then, let's just settle for me rambling about other things.

I have a new job earning more money, so my long held dreams of going on an epic round-the-world trip are turning more into plans. Obviously I still need to do a lot of planning and save up more money so for now I'm bridging the gap with another self-drive holiday. This time to Ireland with Gemma (who came to Iceland) and Claire (who came to New Zealand). It will be wondrous. We're not going till September (most likely), which gives me loads of time to write stupid blog posts about things that no one will have any interest in whatsoever. Because I can and I'm awesome. Obviously...

Ireland. Ireland... Umm... If Iceland was the land of fire and ice and New Zealand was Godzone, what's Ireland? Ah, the Emerald Isle. Of course. I shouldn't have had to google that...

Anyways, I've wanted to go to Ireland for years. I spent two weeks near Dingle on a field trip while I was studying and it is one of the most beautiful places.I'm sure it's different across the island but I loved how wild the Dingle Peninsula and Killarney National Park felt (despite knowing, as an ecology student, that large parts of it are anything but).

Stupidly though, the thing that really sparked this desire to go to Ireland is a book I read when I was maybe 7 years old. One of the Animal Ark books called Ponies at the Point. It's set in Connemara on the west coast of Ireland and there are, as the title suggests, ponies. Wild Connemara ponies to be precise. I was massively in love with ponies and horses as a kid, so it makes perfect sense that the main reason I want to go to Ireland is to see actual Connemara ponies (wild or not, I don't mind). I mean, look at them. They're gorgeous.

[PIC]

Even better, I think certain friends who are coming with might be open to the idea of going riding. I haven't been riding since before I read that book, so no doubt I'll fall off and injure myself, but hey. Experiences.

Ahem... enough rambling about ponies...

Currently the plan seems to be to fly into Dublin, hire a car and then drive around for two weeks, mostly around the coast with a couple of detours in land possible. We're also intending to head into Northern Ireland so that we can visit the Giant's Causeway (and I can geek out over awesome geology). There will be no Guinness drinking. Well, probably not. Eurgh, stout.

Going off on a tangent again. What else? Claire wants to go to a hurling game, so if anyone can point us in the direction of such a thing happening in September, that would be cool.

All right. My brain's given up. I'm writing this in my lunch break at work and all that's going through my head is a whole load of spreadsheets. Yick. I give up. I'm going to stick helpful tabs in my Lonely Planet guide to Ireland instead. Oh yeah. I'm so cool.