USA: 1am is a great time to fly...

Woo, 2 weeks done in the USA! I am now in the lovely city of Seattle, Washington, enjoying the remarkably good weather.

So, things that have happened in the last week.

Hablo un poco de Espanol...

Yeah, last Saturday was spent learning yet more Spanish. I am excusing myself for not doing much that day because my roommate managed to keep me awake until gone midnight with rustling around packing her bag. I was knackered on Saturday morning and pretty sure I was coming down with something.

So, yes, I spent all day learning Spanish and trying to get blog in order.

I also nearly fell into having the gun debate with one of the American guys who worked at the hostel. Fortunately, we both went "uhh, let's not have that conversation" and moved swiftly on. In my defence, I didn't set out to have the debate with him - he made some comment about how back home in Texas, folks shoot their guns in the air on New Year's Eve and I made a perfectly innocent comment that we don't have anything like that in the UK. At which point we realised where the conversation was heading and both did a swift subject change. Well done, us.

Wolves and tigers and bears, oh my!

I spent Sunday at the Alaska Zoo. It was lovely. The zoo is more of a sanctuary, taking in injured and orphaned animals from across Alaska and the US. That said, they do have a few animals that aren't rescues - the aforementioned tigers, for a start.

The zoo is mostly focussed, due to its nature as a sanctuary, on Alaskan fauna. I have to say, though, I think this alpaca was my favourite.

Alpaca just have such expressive, silly faces.

Urgh...

After thinking I was back on track with actually doing things and not sitting around all day,  I woke up on Monday feeling disgusting. It was absolutely pissing down, which didn't help, but as the day wore on, I was definitely coming down with something.

This of course meant that I spent yet another day doing bugger all aside from learning Spanish. Oh, and this might have been the day where I booked absolutely all of my transport and accommodation for the rest of my time in the US... maybe. I don't remember.

The one good thing about this day was having a long chat with one of the English guys at the hostel who is possibly interested in meeting up with me in Peru. That'd be nice.

ALL THE GLACIERS

My time in Alaska came to a glorious end, fortunately. Yep. My final day definitely made up for the many wasted days that came before. It started with an early walk to a public bus stop, where I did my best not to look like a petrified tourist. This was followed by, courtesy of me arriving way too early in the city centre, with a cuppa from a little cafe.

At this point, I discovered that the concept of a cuppa is somewhat lost on Americans. Maybe not all of them, but in the nearly 2 weeks I've now been here, the vast majority of my bought cuppas have been a styrofoam cup with a tea bag handed over separately...

Anyway, there was nothing wrong with the cuppa, not that I would have noticed because I was in desperate need of caffeine.

Then I boarded the Magic Bus. Yes, that was it's name. No idea why. Anyhoo, the Magic Bus, driven by former pilot Tim, was going to take me to the tiny town of Whittier on Prince William Sound. Along the way we stopped a couple of places. First at this little pull in to see if we could spot any beluga whales.

I think I might have seen a couple. Beluga are white, so even through the rain, they should have shown up reasonably well. And I'm pretty sure I saw a couple of white backs that weren't just rough water. Indeed, the water was pretty calm, hence why I'm fairly sure the white patches were whales. I would have liked a better view though.

After that we pulled in for a rest break, at which I successfully resisted the call of the delicious smelling bakery. On mentioning this to Tim, he offered to buy me a doughnut, which sorely tested my resistance. Still not sure how I managed to say no. Possibly because I was somewhat embarrassed by the idea of my sweet old bus driver buying me a doughnut...

Then a stop at a pretty glacial lake. I think it would probably be a gorgeous colour like the lakes in the Rockies - I could see a sort of blue tint - but the clouds were drowning it out.

Our final stop of the morning was at a little platform overlooking a river to see the salmon running/spawning. These salmon are up the river quite late in the season, I believe and you can see that they're well past their best. All of those salmon are probably dead by now.

After that, it was just a case of driving through the tunnel to Whittier. Only... well, the tunnel to Whittier is shared with the train. It only has a single lane. So, on the hour it opens to let traffic out of Whittier, often followed by a train. On the half hour, it opens in the other direction to let traffic into the town. Also often followed by the train.

Much to my disappointment, we didn't get followed by the train, but it was kinda cool driving on top of the rail tracks.

From there, it was just a case of getting onto the boat. Yup, time for a cruise - my first boat trip in quite a while (not counting canoeing and rafting in the Rockies). First things first, I had to find my table, which I turned out to be sharing with a family from Indiana. They were very welcoming, which was great.

And then off to see some glaciers! To begin with we couldn't see much - the rain was still coming down and there was heavy fog in the Sound. Did spot a few sea otters, but the cute fuzzballs moved too quickly for me to get any photos of them.

First photographed spot of the day was a group of Steller's Sea Lions on a rocky haul out.

Following a passage between an island and the mainland, we also spotted some bald eagles. More fuzzy photos...

And then, finally, we started seeing glaciers. Loads of them. I'm not sure we saw all 26 as advertised, but we saw a pretty decent number of them. First up, Harriman.

Followed by Surprise. I have no idea why it's called Surprise. It did have some pretty fucking huge icebergs.

And finally the trio of Cascade, Coxe and Barry.

After that, it was pretty much just a case of heading back to port. Of course, this being Alaska and the weather being seriously changeable, the sun decided to make an appearance as we were motoring home. So we saw another glacier or two.

Also, this beautiful waterfall.

Pretty good end to my time in Alaska, I'd say!

Although, that wasn't quite the end... after all, I had to get to Seattle. Which meant getting a flight, because the ferries are bloody expensive. So I had to get another bus on arrival back in Anchorage, this time to the airport.

And there I sat for a good two hours, because in a moment of genius I had decided it was a great idea to book a flight that left at 1am. I probably figured that meant I'd have, in effect, an extra day in Seattle. Never mind the fact that I find it nearly impossible to sleep on planes.

Or that I figured I couldn't check in for my flight until 2 hours before departure. And I turned up at the airport just after 8. So I dossed for a couple of hours, learning Spanish and reading, before I finally gave up and approached the ticket counter. To my utter joy I found that they were checking in my flight, so I pootled off through security (which required removal of jumper, belt and boots, ugh) and then went in search of somewhere else to doss for another couple of hours.

Oh, and there was also the fact that I hadn't eaten since about 1pm and it was at that point approaching 11pm. So I ended up in Maccie D's. I haven't had a proper "meal" as such in MacDonalds for a very long time, so chicken nuggets and chips was... interesting. I'm sure the portion sizes over here are bigger...

Anyways, after another hour or so at the airport, in which time I somehow snagged an exit row seat (woo, short legs and ALL THE LEG ROOM!), I finally got on the plane and proceeded to try to sleep.

Don't ask me how, but I succeeded! I took the lead of the girl across from me who settled down with her tray table pulled out, head and arms resting on it. I figured I'd try the same in the vague hope that I might catch a few minutes doze and woke up nearly 2 hours later. This is pretty amazing for me.

It is too early

Of course, that 2 hours was still only 2 hours. First stop at Seattle airport was a cafe where I drowned my fatigue in a massive cup of tea. Somehow I managed to then stumble out to the light rail station and get on a train to the city centre. I even managed to get off at the right stop, despite getting motion sick and having to force my eyes to stay open.

Obviously I was too early to check in to the hostel, but I did arrive in time to make the most of the free breakfast. More tea for me! I then made vague plans to head to the Seattle Art Museum until my room was available, figuring that the museum wouldn't require too much brain power and I could just look at the pretties.

Said plan got scrapped after I got talking to a fellow guest who invited me to join him for the day. Fair does. As long as it keeps me awake. So I toddled out with him in search of the first Starbucks.

Oh, yeah, I should mention that Seattle is the birthplace of Starbucks. Also; THEY ARE EVERYWHERE.

I had no idea where the place was, so just followed my new friend, which meant we ended up getting directions from a friendly guy at a glassblowing studio. Said friendly man also gave me a whole load of suggestions for places to check out in the city. Nice guy.

Anyways, we ended up at the Starbucks eventually. It's in Pike Place Market, an awesome public market near the waterfront. While my companion joined the hideously long queue to grab a coffee, I decided to support the local economy and grabbed a cuppa from a place a few doors down.

I have no idea how I was even awake at this point. Possibly my brain had pulled its magical trick where it gets so tired it wakes up again. Anyways, we spent some time wandering through the market and then made a stop at the lovely Rocky Mountain Chocolate shop just down the road where I had yet another cuppa and a big slab of gooey chocolate brownie.

Oh my god, the fatigue. At this point, my brain pulled a big fat nope on me, decided it needed to sleep and ordered me back to the hostel. So I had to abandon my guide and head in search of bed.

Mm. Sleep is lovely when you're that tired. Unfortunately, I then woke up at about 7pm starving hungry and with no idea where to get food. I ended up at one of the many Starbucks nearby and downed yet another cuppa. And then straight back to bed. Hurrah.

Eating my way through Pike Place

Even through my sleep-deprived fog the previous day, I'd managed to notice the many food options at Pike Place Market. Which meant first stop the following day was back there for breakfast. I settled on Piroshky, which sells... well, piroshky. These are basically stuffed pastries from Eastern Europe - in the case of this store, Russia. Their potato and mushroom piroshky was delicious as well as being super filling.

Hunger satisfied, I toddled up the road a ways to the Seattle Art Museum that I'd meant to visit the previous day. They have a pretty cool collection that ranges from Renaissance to Native American to modern art. There's even a small gallery of Aboriginal Australian contemporary art. A few favourites include some awesome masks used by a clan local to the Pacific Northwest.

An amazing and sometimes bizarre range of masks and headresses from across Africa.

And of course, I saw some ancient Mesopotamian artefacts, so I have to include some cuneiform.

I have a weird fascination with cuneiform script. No idea why. It's not like I can read it.

After spending the morning in the museum, I popped to a cafe across the road to meet up with John, who I lived with for a while when I was at university. We spent a couple of hours catching up, which was nice, plus I got even more suggestions of thiings to do! I'm liking this whole "being able to talk to people" thing.

By the time I left John it was approaching 5pm. My piroshky had gone a long way down and I didn't really fancy cooking. So I made my way back to Pike Place Market and grabbed a pot of clam chowder to take away. Amazingly it stayed hot all the way back to the hostel and it was delicious. Yum.

And then I spent the evening chatting to another of my fellow guests. Definitely getting good at this.

All the geekery

Friday began with taking advantage of the free breakfast at the hostel again, where I was told by a Canadian lady that I'd gone about my US trip planning wrong and was going far out of my way... I'm not sure I agree with her, because I know there's logic behind why I'm going to the places I'm going in the order that I'm going to them, but I wasn't in the mood to argue over breakfast. And she was otherwise very nice.

Anyway, stuffed with free bagels, I went for a walk along 5th Ave and up to the EMP Museum which had been suggested by several people (John and the guy from the glassblowing studio for starters).

It's a pretty cool place. It was founded by Paul Allen, co-founder/creator of Microsoft and hosts an awesome array of geekery, from horror to sci-fi, fantasy to music. As a fan of most of those, I managed to spend most of the day there. I even enjoyed the horror film gallery, partly because the props in the collection are pretty awesome. I mean, they have the stake known as Mr Pointy from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I love Buffy. This is cool.

In the fantasy area there are props from The Princess Bride and Lord of the Rings, which meant much squeeing from me because these are among my favourite films. Look, they have Inigo Montoya's sword, used to duel the Six-Fingered Man.

Also, Gimli's Axe, Sting and Anduril from Lord of the Rings. Bearing in mind these are all original props from the films, please attempt to understand why I was so in love with this place.

The sci-fi gallery was also amazing. A huge range of stuff in here, including lightsabers, costumes and this Dalek.

And then onto the music galleries, which focus on Jimi Hendrix and Nirvana, for the obvious reasons that they both originated from the area around Seattle. There's also this awesome sculpture made out of guitars and stuff.

Which leads nicely into a little gallery about the evolution of the electric guitar. Some pretty cool things in there for those with an interest. There's this early Gibson experiment.

I finished my visit to the EMP Museum with a trip into their current special exhibition which is all about Star Trek. Seriously, this place is amazing. Although, stumbling across Data's head in the floor was just a little bit creepy.

But again, they've got loads of original props and costumes. Oh, and a case of tribbles. They should probably do something about that...

Completely overdosed on glorious geekery, I headed back to Pike Place to grab something for tea. I ended up this time with delicious falafel. Om nom nom. And then I actually braved a supermarket and stocked up on supplies. And Tim Tams.

Yes, Tim Tams. You can't get them in the UK as far as I'm aware and I thought you could only get them Down Under. Turns out they have them here and I couldn't resist. More deliciousness.

One more day in Seattle and then I'm getting on a bus to Yellowstone, via Salt Lake City.

Any tips on how to survive long distance bus travel?

Iceland: Waterfalls, volcanoes and rain

OH MY GOD THIS IS ACTUALLY HAPPENING.

Ahem. Anyway. In magical events this week, my Grand Tour which has been in the planning for the best part of 18 months (if not longer) has finally begun. I've spent the last few days in the beautiful city of Rekjavik. Well, actually, I've only really been in Reykjavik to sleep. Here's a quick recap of what I've been up to so far.

My trip started with the usual farting about with trains and then a lovely afternoon in London with Claire who gifted me this little chap

His name is Harold. He is now my mascot.

From London, I had to head to Gatwick to catch a flight the next day. All went well until I arrived in Reykjavik on Monday morning. See, EasyJet have these new-fangled bag drop machines so you don't even get to talk to someone when you dump your bag. All well and good, but when I arrived in Reykjavik my bag was nowhere to be seen. An hour and a half later, I thought, fuck it, I'm going to go and complain to the baggage people. Which took me past the oversized baggage area (which is just a dumping ground next to the carousels) and lo and behold, there was my bag. Fuming.

Aside from that, my first day in Reykjavik was lovely, if a little marred by sleep deprivation. I took a walk along the bay front.

And then, because I was still feeling a bit grouchy, I treated myself to fish and chips instead of cooking. Lovely little restaurant near the harbour provided me with ling, crispy potatoes and a mango flavoured dip. Different, but pretty good. Sorry, Grimsby!

The Golden Circle

My first real day in Iceland began much too early for my liking. Don't ask me why, but I clearly thought it was a great idea to book a tour that started at 7am when I'd had very little sleep and a very long day the day before.

That said, my trip to the Golden Circle was great fun. There were only 2 other people on the tour - everyone else was presumeably sensible enough to decide against such an early start - so we had the minibus to ourselves. Also, as I noticed at our first stop, setting off so early meant we got most of the sites to ourselves as well.

Said first stop was Fridheimar, a farm which grows tomatoes, mostly. I should maybe point out that I actually did the Golden Circle tour 18 months ago, so the idea of Icelanders growing tomatoes year round is no longer new to me, but it's interesting nonetheless. Also, a box of bees, which they get shipped from Holland every week to keep the tomatoes pollinated. Woo for bees.

From there, we headed to Gullfoss. I was especially looking forward to this because 18 months ago, the waterfall was mostly frozen over. Not so this time.

All of the pretties. There isn't much else to say about Gullfoss, so let's move on to the next stop, which was Geysir, the geyser from which all other geysers get their name. Geysir itself doesn't go off much any more, but its younger neighbour Strokkur does.

I should have quit while I was ahead with geyser photographs. Because just after I took that one, I decided to have another go. And the wind caught the plume just at the wrong moment. And poured it over me. Pretty sure I spent the rest of the day smelling of rotten eggs.

From there, we drove down to Thingvellir National Park, where Iceland's parliament, the Althingi, used to meet for about 700 years. Beautiful place.

Unfortunately, just after I took that photograph, I took this one.

And realised there was something seriously wrong with my camera, which after that shot just took pictures of funny coloured lines and splotches. This meant I spent much of the drive back to Reykjavik frantically trying to connect to the minibus WiFi to work out what was wrong and then had to traipse around the city to find a camera shop.

Which I did. And discovered that, as I feared, the camera was beyond help. So I bought a new one. At Icelandic prices, that's money I'd rather not have spent, but I can't be doing without a camera. Ugh.

My day was significantly improved by the lovely Icelandic chap who'd been in the camera shop at the same time and caught up with me as I was leaving. He gave me some suggestions for cool places to photograph, complete with directions and suggestions of the best times to be there to exploit Iceland's weird summer light. I'll say this - so far, I've found the Icelanders to be very friendly people.

South Shore Adventure

In the second of my early starts (although not as early as the day before) I headed off on another trip, this time to Iceland's beautiful south coast. Yet more hours stuck on a bus were more than made up for by the wonderful sights. Take Solheimajokull for a start.

It's a glacier. Coming off a volcano. Hence the black colour, I presume - from the ash? And then there's the tiny town of Vik and it's amazing black sand beach. I made the nistake of getting a bit too close to the sea and ended up with soggy boots. Fortunately said boots are waterproof so at least my feet were dry.

Vik was the furthest point of the trip from Reykjavik, so from there we headed back the way we came, stopping first at Reynisfjara, also a black sand beach. It also has these wonderful basalt columns - a bit like the Giant's Causeway in Northern Ireland.

While we were at the beach a lovely Canadian lady collared me after overhearing me mention going to Canada and proceeded to give me some suggestions on where to visit. Apparently I am capable of having conversations with strangers!

Then on to the little village of Skogar and its folk museum. Very interesting and I would have liked to have spent a bit more time there. Lots of information about traditional life in Iceland, including these funky two-thumbed mittens the fishermen used to wear.

They have two thumbs because their hands would get warm rowing and they could just flip them round to the cool side. Or something like that... Or maybe the thumbs wore out quick? It was something to do with rowing at any rate.

They also had a tub of bezoars, so if anyone gets poisoned, Skogar is the place to go.

Then just around the corner is beautiful Skogarfoss. It's a single drop waterfall and I couldn't resist the temptation to get as close as possible without getting soaked.

Which was going great until the wind changed and all the spray came in my direction. Oops. But hey, it was an experience.

I also got a bit drippy at the next stop, which was another waterfall called Seljalandsfoss. This one was especially cool, because you can actually walk behind the waterfall. Unfortunately, behind the waterfall is also spray-central, but at least this time I was wearing my waterproof. Clever me.

And from there, home. Well, back to the hostel.

Wonders of Snaefellsnes

Day three proper in Iceland dawned horribly early again. Fortunately, the tour I took turned out to be another minibus one with a lovely guide up to the Snaefellsnes peninsula. First stop proper was at Ytri Tunga where we attempted to do some seal-spotting. Unfortunately, the rain had set in and there were no seals to be found, although we did get divebombed by a couple of angry arctic terns.

Then the tiny settlement, if you can call it that, of Budir where there's a lava field and a pretty old church. And more rain, if you must know.

With the rain showing no sign of letting up, we hurried off to our next stop at Arnarstapi where we took a walk along the cliff top to admire the basalt formations. And get rained on some more. And shrieked at by more terns. I will admit that at this point my attempts to stay positive were beginning to falter.

Oh, and there's a troll on the hill.

Fortunately for my flagging morale, the next stop was lunch. I've been trying not to buy meals in Iceland because it's so very expensive, but at this point I didn't give a damn any more, so treated myself (ha) to a bowl of mushroom soup which came to 1500 krona. In case you're wondering, that's bloody expensive for a bowl of soup.

However, the soup was delicious and came with lovely fresh bread and really, it was just what I needed. That and a chat with the Irish chap on the tour who later kept me updated with the England-Wales Euro score. Nice chap.

After lunch, the stops became shorter - quick little photo stops along the north coast of the peninsula. The first of these was inside a volcano. Well... a pseudo-volcano.

You have to admit, it does look quite... volcano-ish. And it did form because of all the volcanism. And sod it, I just want to say I've been inside a volcano. So there.

Then we stopped at another lovely black sand beach, complete with surrounding lava field at Djupalonssandur. I had a bit of a moment on the beach when I realised the bits of old wreck lying about on the sand were from a Grimsby trawler. If anyone knows anything about a trawler called Epine, can you let me know?

And then I fell asleep and we stopped at Kirkjufell, which is a funny pointy mountain. My new camera, which had been behaving up until this point, decided it didn't like the light conditions so I've only got a couple of sort-of-decent photos from here.

From there, a quick stop to use the facilities at Grundafjordur and another at a place I couldn't pronounce (and can't even guess at) to see some more basalt columns. As Xavier, our guide, liked to keep pointing out - "this is not in the programme."

And then home. I think I might have fallen asleep again. During the drop offs, Xavier informed me that my hostel appears to own the last Big Mac sold in Iceland before MacDonalds pulled out. I'll have to see if I can find it.

In Cod We Trust

Or so went the saying at the Maritime Museum when I visited earlier today. They have an exhibition on at the moment about the cod wars, which my hometown was rather involved in. So I got to playing the game of "how many references to Grimsby can I find?"

Turns out to be quite a few. Overall, a great little exhibition, if understandably Iceland-biased. I spent the hour after that watching a great documentary about fishing in Iceland in the late 1800s, and then enjoyed the rest of the museum. Some funky little bits.

Basically, I've had a great start to my trip, even with the few little mishaps. Aside from yesterday, the weather's been great too, which I wasn't expecting. And, importantly, I've managed to have conversations with people. They might have been short and mostly someone else instigated them, but I don't care.

Tomorrow I have yet another early start because I've got to catch a bus up to Akureyri on the north coast where I'll be staying for the next few days before heading back to Reykjavik on Tuesday in time to catch my flight to Canada on Thursday.

So far, so good.