ICELAND DAY 2 – FIRE AND WATER (AND HAIL)

 

(readers note: I changed the format so the pictures follow the relevant paragraphs.  Be sure to read all the way to the end.  Click on any picture to see all the pictures in full size)

After our marathon first day, we wake to the single best continental buffet we have ever had.  The local smoked salmon is finished with dill, the freshly baked rustic bread is lightly seeded, the Icelandic yogurts are beautifully topped with a variety of fruits and nuts, the coffee is strong and rich and served in big chrome carafes.  

We need a hardy breakfast for the long hike we have planned.  If you follow the news or you’ve seen the 60 Minutes piece, you already know about the recent eruption of the Fagradalsfjall volcano, and today we’ve hired a private guide to take hiking to see this natural phenomenon.  Together, Mandy and I have been in a 6.1 earthquake, driven 114 MPH from Glacier to Yellowstone, seen the tulips in bloom in Amsterdam, and swam alone in the Blue Grotto, but even for us this is an exciting bucket-list kinda day. 

We meet Thalis, our guide, around 10am in Grindavik and ride in his big 4WD Mercedes van to the start of the hike.  He is a wealth of information, not just about todays hike, but about the entire country.  It’s the best reason we’ve found to hook up with a local guide early in any adventure trip.  It’s a moderate 45-minute hike with a 1000 ft elevation to the top of the mountain with the best vantage point of the eruption.  It’s cloudy, 50 and windy as we start up the trail.  15 minutes in, on one of the steeper inclines, it starts to rain.  The rain turns into RAIN, big cold drops stinging our exposed faces.  Then the noise against our hoods changes and the trail turns white as we’re pelted by hail for a solid 5 minutes.  Oh, Iceland summer, what a bee-atch.

We reach the edge of the first lava field.  It looks like a 10 foot tall wall of warm black crystal and makes a constant sound of crushing glass.  This lava is about two weeks old.  The crust is cool enough to touch, but in the open gaps under, the molten rock still glows bright red.  Thalis explains that this lava is actually hundreds of feet thick and is steadily filling what was a deep valley just a few weeks ago.  We are taken aback by the sheer scale of the transformation.  The volcano is spewing about 10 cubic meters of lava every second, that is, spitting molten rock the size of a cement truck every second and has been since March 8^th.  If you can imagine dropping a cement mixer into a valley every single second for 83 days, you can imagine how full it would get.  And volcanologists (yes, that’s a real field you can make money at) believe this eruption will go on for years.  It will profoundly change the landscape for miles around, creating new mountains in it’s wake. 

We push the last 15 minutes up the steepest part of the trail to the main event.  The rain on the hot lava has caused a massive steam cloud, swirling like the ocean in the unpredictable air currents.  Just as we think today may be a bust, the skys clear, the steam dissipates, and the bright red molten lava stream reveals itself.  It’s pouring out of the top of the crater like a pitcher overflowing under the kitchen faucet, finding the lowest point in the spout to escape.  Today, the lava drops about 100 feet, splashes up 30 feet then drops another 100 feet until it’s out of site.  It’s a magnificent site, demonstrating the raw power of the earth.  We can’t take enough pictures, shoot enough video, or bond with enough fellow trekkers.  There’s about 150 other people up here with us and it’s better being a shared experience with travelers from around the globe.  Time to go, we are we hike back to the van discussing our experience like reliving a championship win play-by-play.

Back at our hotel, we’re in need of a pick-me-up.  Fortunately, our hotel is adjacent to Sandholt, the best bakery and café in the country.  Somehow the thick cappuccino is conducive to a nice nap, and we sleep soundly for a few hours.  Happy and rested we head out to dinner.  Destination Hlemmur Matholl, Reykjavik’s original foodies food hall.  Hip and casual, it’s all about the food here, fine-dining with none of the pretense of fine-dining.  Specifically, we’re headed to Skal!, a farm-to-table with amazing reviews.  They absolutely live up to their press, starting us with beautifully crafted cocktails at their 24 seat bar/restaurant.  We’re seated in front of the chef and watch him carefully create dish after dish expertly preparing and plating each.  Our Artic Char is the freshest we have ever eaten and their twist on in-front-of-you-made gnocchi starts with local rye flour.  We’ve eaten light and bounce up the street for our final course at Old Iceland, one of the town’s classic eateries in a cozy ground floor space.  The dish to get here is the shellfish soup, their well-honed version of the Icelandic classic.  It’s the perfect last bite.  It’s almost 10pm, but this is the land of the midnight sun, so it looks like mid-day outside.  Needing to walk off a few calories, we wander the dozen blocks to Hallgrimskirkja, the massive 250’ high monolith of a church that dominates the city’s skyline.  It’s stunning in its unique architectural style and pure scale.  Running out of steam, we hoof it to the hotel and add this day to the record books.

 

ICELAND DAY 1 – PICKING UP WHERE WE LEFT OFF

(readers note: I changed the format, so the pictures follow the relevant paragraphs.  Be sure to read all the way to the end.  Click on any picture to see all the pictures in full size)

It has been way too long since we’ve had a trip to blog about.  766 days to be exact, and our travel muscles seem to have atrophied.  Packing, which had become such a simple task, is quite the challenge.  It doesn’t help that we’re going to Iceland in June with expected highs in the 50s and we’re looping the entire island country in a couple of weeks.  My usual stack of nice shirts has been traded for rugged, waterproof gear, suede loafers for Columbia hikers.

This is the rescheduled adventure from 2020.  Fully vaccinated and with the pandemic on the decline, travel is back, but with new twists that we start learning well before the trip even begins.  Our first stop is in Reykjavik, one of the worlds hottest travel destinations.  Pre-rona that is.  A month before the trip, Icelandair moves our flight from Newark to JFK.  Curious.  A week before we leave, I get an e-mail that the hotel we booked is Reykjavik simply closed.  Sorry. We panic book another property, but I’m struck that there is availability at such a nice place this late in the game.  A few days later, that hotel sends a “sorry, closed” email too, but bumps us to an even nicer sister property.  Curiouser and curiouser.

We take a long Uber to JFK.  It’s the cheapest option when you consider parking and schedule it early.  Good thing too, as the torrential downpour grinds traffic to a halt.  It’s not stressful because we left plenty of time.  It’s completely stressful anyway cause it’s just taking so long.  At the airport we find the next curveball.  Iceland is requiring a vaccination “precertification”.  Easy enough to do from their website from the phone, but we can’t imagine why the airline didn’t have us do this days ago from home.  Once done, we sail through check-in and security with no lines.  No lines on a Tuesday afternoon in a New York airport.  Inside, the terminal is a ghost town.  Most of the newly renovated restaurants in Terminal 7 are shuttered, so we sit at the only open bar.  We can see half a dozen gates from our stools and can only count a few dozen people.  Turning to the woman seated next to us, I ask if she is going to Iceland.  Turns out everyone in the terminal is and we break into easy conversation in this uneasy situation.  Even with the empty terminal, we’re shocked with how empty the plane is.  On the tarmac, the skys clear and we’re treated to a double rainbow.  Maybe this trip is actually going to happen.  Once in the air, most people take a whole row to themselves, lift the arm rests and lay on their makeshift couch.

Above the weather now, we take a moment to reflect on the shear improbability of us being here now.  Mandy loves traveling but still dislikes flying but takes some comfort in the beautiful sunset out the port window.  It’s 10pm.  The sun is still setting, barely cresting the horizon an hour later.  We flip through the onboard screen to find the progress map and realize that the flight plan tracks almost perfectly along the sunlight/darkness sine wave.  We’re treated to a four-hour sunset and get some amazing pictures.

Landing, passport control, covid testing and car rental all go smoothly.  It’s 7:30am, we’ve been awake for 21 hours and need breakfast.  Good thing Mandy has a plan (she’s good like that) because we’re not up for too much thinking.  Max’s at the Northern Lights Inn provides us much needed nutrition, great coffee and even better views.  Well caffeinated, we drive a half mile to the famed Blue Lagoon.  We made 9am reservations back in January, but due to limited tourism, they now open at 10.  We call and a few apologies later they send someone to open early for us.  When you read on-line reviews, the Lagoon loses some points for being overcrowded.  We have the exact opposite experience, the entire place to ourselves and the staff doting on us, and we get that rarest of all Iceland pix, a serene, empty Blue Lagoon.  The lagoon is a series of interconnected thermal pools and water features that shimmer with an iridescent milk blue color.  Just the site of it is instantly calming.  Our host takes us to start in the massage area, where our masseuses are waiting.  We get onto thin blue float mats and are covered with warm, wet, heavy towels, including our eyes.  I understand quickly that this is not just an in-water massage, but an exercise in letting go, a thirty minute trust-fall, with an experienced guide rolling you this way and that as she rubs the sore and tired out of your muscles.  When done, they park Mandy and I next to each other when we just be for a while.  Once we finally move, we head towards the mask bar, where we slather our faces with thick white silica mud that goes on like whipped cream cheese and stays there for 15 minutes.  It’s quite the site, dozens of us in the same Kabuki paint.  Relaxed, refreshed and showered we head down the road.

We’re taking the back roads to Reykjavik with a few stops planned.  It’s tough going as the fog is thick and dense, limiting visibility to a few meters.  First stop is Graenavtn, the Green Lake just a few yards off the road.  It’s a bust - even though we’re right next to it, we can barely see it and hop back into the car.  It clears a bit by the time we get to the Seltun geothermal feature.  Still foggy, but the deep gray bubbling earth and multi colored rocks make this quick 20 minute hike feel oddly like exploring a underwater reef.  The last planned stop is Kleifarvatn (CLAY-vahr-VAHT) lake.  The black sand beach is enticing, but Apple maps takes us unexpectantly down “unnamed” (un-PAVE-ed) road.  Readers of this blog know that it is undisputable proof of why you should never, ever, buy what used to be a rental car, but on most trips were many days in before we subject our car to such bumpy, rock throwing, bottom scraping abuse.  But here we are and suddenly I do feel like we picked up just where we left off.  Mandy is white-knuckling it and not holding back on the colorful language as we bounce, swerve and splash our way down the well-used path.  The payoff comes about a mile and a half down the trail as the sky clears a bit and we reach the “beach”, a thick, sugary lava sand in a deep shade of black that boarders the large body of water.  Now that we can see it, the landscape is straight sci-fi, with only thick moss covering the loose lava rocks.

We check into the Sand Hotel in Reykjavik, a lovely boutique in the hip city centre.  Our room is on the top floor with views of the shopping district and the super-yachts in the harbor beyond.  It’s 2ish and we change and decide to explore the city a bit.  We explore the shops and the murals and end up at Salka Valka, a locals joint out with good local beer and great food.  The city is fun, but our adventure only lasts for a couple hours  as we’re going on 29 hours awake.  We nap for a few hours then get up to try to set our body clocks to local time.  We wander out the front door, window shop for a dozen blocks and end up at Forsetinn, an unassuming bar with comfy couches unintentionally decorated like your grandmother’s rumpus room.  Floki, the locally distilled spirits, make the perfect nightcap to our 35 hour day.

Amsterdam, Holland, Belgium and London Day 9: The War Rooms and Other Underground Surprises

We have 9am museum tickets, so we’re out early.  London is a later town, so the streets are quiet on this cool sunny morning.  We get to the mall, the long, wide boulevard that runs from Buckingham Palace to Trafalgar Square and it’s eerily empty.  The palace, so packed with people for yesterday’s Changing of the Guards, rests, exposing the beauty of the manicured gardens.  We slip into St. James Park, the huge green space bisected longways by a quiet lake.  At the eastern edge of the park we come across the exotic birds, gifts to the royals over the centuries.  Today, the park’s famous pelicans are sunning themselves on the rock formations in the middle of the water, posing for our pictures and making me wish we had carried our longer lens.

Out of the serene park and into rush of the morning commuters streaming out of the tube.  We only fight the crowds long enough to score some coffee, then double back out of the fray.  Promptly at 9, we are let into the Churchill War Rooms, the underground bunker where Winston Churchill and his staff ran Britain’s war effort.  Because the government’s defense buildings were such obvious Nazi targets, Churchill had a maze-like work and living complex built deep below Whitehall (now Her Majesty’s Treasury) and fortified beneath with several feet of reinforced concrete.  He and his staff would spend weeks at a time in the space, planning, strategizing and executing their war plan.  The tight working/living quarters made for some very unusual moments between the proper secretarial staff and hard-charging military men, most of those moments involving attempts at modesty around bed and shower times.  The radio room, perhaps the most important space in this important space, was crucial to communicating the leadership’s commands to the field.  Churchill also used this equipment to deliver some of the most important speeches of the war over the BBC airwaves.  The Cabinet War Rooms became operational in August of 1939 and were occupied 24 hours per day until August 16^th, 1945.  On that day, the lights were turned off and doors were simply padlocked.  Decades later, someone finally realized the historical significance of the labyrinth, the doors unsealed, and a careful inventory of the contents was performed.  In 1984, the War Rooms were opened to the public as a museum.  It’s a place so complete and authentic that the sense of history is tangible.  It’s easy to imagine yourself stationed in this claustrophobic space, cut off from family and friends and sunlight, immersed in the most important work of a generation.  We are moved by our visit, and we find ourselves strangely relieved when we emerge into the daylight after only 90 minutes or so.

We’re only in town for a few days and we know it’s a fool errand to try to see the whole of London in such a short period of time.  It was our plan to just stick to the neighborhoods close to the hotel and see other parts on future trips.  Walking after the museum, we change courses.  London’s double decker busses are the stuff of legend, so we think that if we’re ever going to do a hop-on/hop-off tour bus around a city, this is probably the place.  We buy our tickets and regret our decision as soon as we board.  The bus is very crowded and there are no seats on the upper deck.  After a few stops, we do secure seats upstairs.  The seats are too small, the kids too loud and the tour guide inaudible.  Traffic is awful, more stop then go, which would be OK except that the stop is dictated by the traffic, not by the location.  That means that our bus zipped by points of interest and made long stops at random places with none.  The trip did take us by the Tower of London and over the London Bridge, but overall this type of sightseeing has been removed from our playbook. 

We get off the bus by Big Ben, currently being held prisoner in a shroud of scaffolding, only his big face visible.  It’s afternoon in London, time again for tea.  Mandy has researched tea services and on the top her list is Fortnum and Mason, a luxe gift and gourmet food shop cleverly disguised as a 5-story department store.  We head to the top floor Diamond Jubilee Tea Salon.  This is more indulgent then yesterday at the Orangery, more swank.  Our waiter was top notch, doting on us, explaining the menu and making suggestions with an easy sense of humor.  We order two different services, a traditional sweet and a savory, so we can try more things.  Of course, the optional Champaign is mandatory for us.  Two of the traditional three-tier trays appear, finger sandwiches, scones and desserts from bottom to top, and our waiter explains each item on each plate.  These are more modern, more refined and foodie, then the classic dishes we had yesterday.  More tapas than snack, served on their famous robin’s egg blue china.  Our favorites are the Crab Salad, topped with cheese mousse and served in a perfectly sheared eggshell and the Coronation Chicken, a curried chicken salad finger sandwich with a slightly sweet finish.  Our waiter offers us “refills” and we pick a few faves even though we’re near bursting.  The people watching is great and we enjoy the scene as much as the food. 

We need to walk.  What better place to start then the four floors below us.  I head to men’s accessories and choose a fantastic pair of socks at an embarrassing price.  I don’t find Mandy until the first floor, where she’s tea shopping.  About half the first floor is dedicated to the leaf and we spend half an hour picking just the right blends.  Out into Piccadilly we have fun admiring the architecture, window shopping and generally being in London.  I don’t remember a trip where we have walked, and enjoyed it, this much.  A well-earned nap ensues.

Our last night in London we have three goals: a proper pint in a proper pub, traditional English food in a (different) proper pub, and one more bar we have heard about.  Finding a good pub in London is a pretty easy task, se we just pick one with good energy and where we can get a seat near the bar.  It’s different then the American bar scene, but you can see how one evolved from the other.  We’re sampling tonight so we wander to find our next stop.  It’s a busy Tuesday, the weather is nice, and it seems that every pub and restaurant spills out onto the street, guests through open doors and windows and onto café tables.  We get a table at restaurant on the edge of Piccadilly and Soho and order a couple of pints and the fish and chips.  The classic, deeply fried, piping hot and very satisfying in that crispy sorta way.  After dinner, we walk to the end of Greek Street and into Milroy’s, a whiskey bottle shop selling fine brown liquor from around the globe.  Walk past the tasting bar, hang a right at the back wall and give the bookcase a mighty shove.  Aided by a big weight on a pully system, the bookcase swings away giving access to a flight of stairs.  Walk down and we’re greeted into The Vault, a basement speakeasy with an unpretentious staff serving finely crafted cocktails.  Dark walls, dim lighting and cool jazz set the scene and we let the friendly bartender mix at his pleasure.  His drinks are complex and delicious, his conversation engaging, and we feel right at home.  We linger a bit longer after our drinks, enjoying our final night here.

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Amsterdam, Holland, Belgium and London Day 8 - Cars and Tea (and London)

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Stephan drives us back into Bruges to make the early train to London.  We stop for coffee and finally get our elusive Belgian waffle.  We figure the train station is a fine place to get an authentic example, where the average Belgian would have one.  Like the beer and the chocolate, who knew waffles were a thing here?  Besides the airport like security scramble at our transfer in Brussels, the train is very civilized like all our other European train experiences.  Nice breakfast service with fresh croissants and good coffee.  I’ve always wanted to go through the Chunnel.  We do.  It’s pretty much like every other subway tunnel. 

Arriving at Waterloo station (now called St. Pancras International because the mention of Waterloo hurt the French feelings) we get into one of London’s iconic Hackney Carriages, the odd little black taxi cabs seen in so many movies.  Traffic is pretty much always brutal in London, but our hack (slang for taxi driver, derived from Hackney) demonstrates a level of patience that only a combination of zen-like peace and decaf can provide.  On the way to our hotel in Mayfair, I notice the insane car show that is London.  In the last few blocks, we lose count of how many Bentleys and Rolls Royces we see.  Exotics abound, including the Audi R8 5.2 Plus curb parked half a block from our Hotel St. James that remains there for our entire stay.  The St. James is a grande dame of a hotel adjoining Green and St. James Parks and a just a short walk to Buckingham Palace.  The hotel is elegant, the location is terrific, and our room is very clean, but the place is in obvious need of maintenance.  We waste an hour changing rooms to get into one where the air conditioning works.  We very much like the doorman who has a very British formality to his duties, and he greets us warmly as we head out.

The park has the early-spring-in-the-city energy, plenty of activity, dogs off leash following their owners loyally.  Mandy realizes it’s almost 11am and somehow she knows that Monday at 11 is the Changing of the Guards at Buckingham Palace.  She hustles me along and I lift her onto a high stone railing for a view of the ceremony.  The palace grounds are packed with people from all over the world who are as excited to see the royal spectacle as Mandy is.  The columns of marching guards and columns of horses looping around the massive fountain mark the end of the ceremony.    

London is the “greenest” city in the world, with over 47% of Greater London being parks, gardens and other greenspace.  It is a beautiful day so we decide on the long walk through Green Park and Hyde Park to check out London’s legendary gardens.  We stumble across the Diana Princess Wales Memorial Walk, which happens to be right on our way.  Spring is a good time to be here as it is sunny and warm and in bloom.  We make our way to the far end of Hyde, and continue on into Kensington to the Churchill Arms for a well deserved pint (ain’t they all?)  Churchill arms is a traditional British pub, but one of the most beautiful.  It’s said that the extensive flower boxes covering the exterior are in bloom all year long and certainly they are today.  At the bar, the lovely Irish barmaid pumps us a few Fullers and gives us the lowdown on the place.  We sit taking in the scene.  It’s just as we hoped, mostly locals with a few of us tourists mixed in.  It’s not like an American bar scene.  Here the intimate tables with stuffed chairs are the place to be, to talk work and politics and life with your mates. 

Finishing our beer, we head back into Hyde Park.  We’re having tea at the Palace. Specifically, high tea at the Orangery at Kensington Palace, the most traditional tea service in the most traditional place to have such a meal.  Apparently, in the early 1800s dinner was becoming later and later, 8pm or 9pm being the fashionable hour for the nobles to dine.  Anna, the 7^th Duchess of Bedford, wasn’t digging the late dining so she started having tea and snacks snuck up to her room.  Soon friends were asked to indulge with her, and quickly this became a coveted invite among the court.  Today, we’re invited.  Or at least we have reservations.  The Orangery is a dining room set in a glass fronted garden pavilion built for Queen Anne in 1704, and today Princess Mandy makes her debut.  We pick a nice tea, a good Champaign and the standard three tier tray.  You eat up, finger sandwiches on the first floor, scones on the second and finish with the cakes on the penthouse.  Our table looks out over the sunken garden in all it’s spring splendor.  A very proper afternoon.  Followed by a very proper nap.

Our hotel on St. James Place really is a great location.  The walk to Soho takes under 15 minutes.  

Soho is significantly more funky then Kensington, but funky in that English sorta way.  The atmosphere is relaxed, the pub goers lifting pints leaning on the outside walls of every pub we pass.  The pubs show football matches on a single screen near the windows, and the pubs are segregated by club fans.  Like wearing a Dallas colors to an Eagles game, I just wouldn’t wear an Arsenal jersey into a Manchester United pub and expect to live.  The fans are stacked deep looking through the open windows at the match and it looks like a scene from a 1950s movie where the townsfolk are all watching coverage of an alien attack through the window of the television shop.  We slip into Yauatcha, the sleek dim sum house.  To the bar for an expertly crafted cocktail in some ultra mod digs.  Then it’s downstairs to the swank dining room to sample some shui mai, har gau, cheung fun and other beautiful offerings I can’t pronounce.  We walk back by a different route, holding hands, window shopping along the row of fine tailors slipping in and out of the yellow pools of light on this cool London evening.

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