Just The Caffeine Talking

The Trip to Iceland, Day 7

And so we say farewell to scenic Iceland. On our final day we had a big breakfast at our hotel, made a few last-minute purchases, and then packed up the car and left the Hotel Borg. We drove south, back to the Reykjanes peninsula, and spent some of the time before our flight doing some sightseeing in the otherworldly landscape.

The most interesting stop was at the "Bridge Between Continents," which spans a chasm which is part of the Mid-Atlantic Rift system. One side is attached to the North American plate, the other side is attached to the European plate. Presumably the bridge itself has some expansion joints to allow for the constant widening of the rift.

As seasoned international travelers, we allowed plenty of time at the airport — half an hour to drop off the car, half an hour to check in, half an hour to pass through security, etc. And, as happens so often, each of those things took about ten minutes, leaving us with an hour to kill in Keflavik International Airport.

Fortunately, it's not a bad airport to hang around in. We blew all our Icelandic currency at the duty-free shop on a bottle of Brinnevin and a box of Hraun. Lunch was one of the best airport meals I've ever eaten: a big Danish-style open-faced sandwich of smoked salmon, with boiled egg and salad greens.

The flight boarded on time and the trip back to Logan felt much quicker than the outward journey, even though I think it actually took a few minutes longer.

We both enjoyed Iceland enormously, and agreed that it would be worth a stopover next time we're flying to Europe.

Sir William Jackson Hooker's departure from Iceland was a little more worrisome than ours, as the crew of the ship which brought him there had more or less accidentally overthrown the government in the course of a dispute with the Danish governor, so when a British warship arrived to straighten things out Sir William had to cut short his lichen-gathering.

". . . and I here learned that the vessel, which we had observed the evening before entering the Bay, was the Talbot sloop of war, commanded by the Honorable Alexander Jones. . . . (T)he captain had proceeded without loss of time to Reikevig harbor, that he might have an opportunity of ascertaining more correctly the facts connected with a revolution in the government, of which he had heard at the former place, but had received only a short and unsatisfactory account. The consequence of these enquiries was his issuing orders, that the persons, principally concerned in bringing about this change of affairs, should with all possible expedition proceed to England, where a full account of all the transactions was to be laid before the British government. From this time, therefore, my researches to Iceland may be regarded as nearly at an end; and, though various circumstances prevented the sailing of our vessel until the twenty-fifth of August, yet the daily, and sometimes hourly, expectation of being called on board, prevented my making any excursion to a distance from Reikevig. (. . . ) My memory no farther enables me to continue my journal in any thing like a regular manner, but, even had this been the case, yet still such would be found the uninteresting nature of the events that happened, except, indeed, those political ones that are more fully detailed in the Appendix A, that they could afford but little amusement."

And on that note, our expedition comes to an end.

The Trip to Iceland, Day 6

My experience of travel to various places has taught me that one should always include a "slack day" in one's travel plans. There are a number of good reasons for having a day with few or no activities planned: you can re-visit someplace you really enjoyed, you can switch around if something is closed or too crowded, you have a cushion in case someone doesn't feel good or is simply too tired, and you've got a day to just hang out in another country. Sometimes that's the most enjoyable part of a trip.

Friday was our slack day. We got swabs stuck up our noses to make sure we'd be allowed to fly home, then got lunch at a conveyor-belt sushi restaurant on the waterfront. It was pretty good — in the same league as sush in Seattle, which was better than any I've had on the East Coast but not as good as in Japan. Evidently nose-swabbing gave us an appetite because we put away a lot of sushi, mostly salmon and tuna.

One aspect of "globalization" which has been consistently disappointing to me is the remarkable lack of culinary crossovers. Iceland is a country where people eat a lot of fish, sushi is a Japanese method of preparing fish, so why didn't I see any codfish sushi? Why don't the taco trucks in Philadelphia have cheesesteak tacos? Why don't po-boy places in New Orleans serve banh mi sandwiches?

I appreciate authenticity — but I'm also aware that most authentic cuisines are a mass of borrowing and hybridization. In this era of creeping global monoculture, it's odd that food lags behind. I think we're missing some potentially good dishes.

Anyway, the sushi was good. After lunch we got our swimsuits and drove down to the Nautholsvik Geothermal Beach, which is a public park at the south end of Reykjavik, just past the municipal airport and Reykjavik University (not to be confused with the University of Iceland, which is on the other side of the airport).

Like the much bigger, much fancier, and much more famous Blue Lagoon spa, Nautholsvik is not a natural geothermal spring. It's the hot water outflow from a geothermal heating system — which means the water temperature can be monitored and controlled to avoid boiling the patrons. Natural springs don't have thermostats.

Sir William Jackson Hooker described the "boiling springs" of Iceland in his day: "I rode, however, one morning, to the hot spring, where I found a tent pitched, and as many Icelandic women and girls as it could possibly hold, sheltering themselves in it from the weather. They had come with their linen, which was brought on horses from the town, to the hot spring, where all the clothes of the people, for many miles round, are washed. Some of them had a few little miserable potatoes, not so large as a full-sized walnut, which they were cooking in the spring for their dinner, and which they offered me. I had carried with me some eider-ducks' eggs, for the purpose of trying how long it would take to boil them hard, and I found they required ten minutes, whilst lying in a part of the water where the thermometer rose to 200°."

You get a sense of what a high-trust society Iceland has in places like the Nautholsvik locker room. There are no lockers, and certainly no locks. Just plastic baskets to stash your clothes — and keys, and wallet, and phone — in while you soak in the hot pool.

The water's about 100 degrees Fahrenheit, very pleasant on a day when the air temperature didn't get above 50. There is a sheltered cove with a sandy beach where crazy people like my science advisor can go and dip themselves in life-threatening cold seawater before retreating up the slope to the hot water of the pool. I didn't indulge in any such foolishness.

Perhaps it was an artifact of the time of day, mid-afternoon, but we were definitely in the "prime demographic" for the Nautholsvik geothermal pool — middle-aged and older adults. After we'd been there about an hour some teenagers arrived, but they were still in the minority when we left. Maybe teens don't feel as much of a need to soak their joints in hot water.

Relaxed almost to a comatose state, we showered off and then had dinner at what may be my favorite restaurant in Iceland: Islenski Barinn. It has local food like fish pie (more like a cross between shepherd's pie and chowder), dung-smoked salmon on brown bread, excellent crepes, and local beer. The decor looks unchanged since Iceland's independence, and it is considerably less expensive than Dill.

After some more strolling about, we finished up our last full day in Reykjavik with a glass of wine at one of the downtown hotels, and then to bed.

The Trip to Iceland, Day 5

We rose fairly early and had a substantial breakfast at the Hotel Borg's cafe, then dressed in our warmest clothes and headed down to the waterfront to board one of the Elding whale-watching tour boats for a three-hour cruise. We shared the boat with a tour group from Italy, who were having a swell time.

The weather out in Faxafloi Bay couldn't have been better. Sunny, clear, light breeze. The sea was so calm it looked as if it had been ironed. Birds and whales were out in abundance. We finally saw some puffins, as well as various gulls and gannets.

And then the whales! A Humpback (pretty sure it was just one whale), a group of Minke whales, and other people reported a pilot whale which I didn't see. There aren't any photos because the whales don't stop and pose for the camera. You see a spout, a black back breaking the surface, a tail, and then the whale is gone again, feeding down below.

When we motored back to the dock Diane and I went back to our hotel. Along the way we got to see the exciting finish of a 5-kilometer road race, which was part of the celebrations of the first day of summer in Reykjavik. You may wonder how anyone can call April 21 the first day of summer, especially when it's still dipping below freezing at night. Well, in Iceland they're a bit more relaxed about their definitions of "summer." What they really mean is "not winter" and it's their celebration so I won't quibble.

After a delightful lunch at a sort of Icelandic diner around the corner from our hotel, we went for a walk generally south and west, just to explore that part of the city. We walked through the University campus and past several embassies (including Russia's, which occupied multiple houses, all very secure-looking). It was drizzling through most of our walk, making us glad to have on layers of wool.

I did get a photo of the most dignified-looking cat in Iceland, a fierce old fellow perched majestically on a fence post.

In lieu of dinner we got fancy desserts at the "Apotek" restaurant in the hotel next to ours. Very fancy indeed, and quite good. I chased my dessert with a shot of Brinnevin, the Icelandic distilled spirit. It's sometimes called Akvavit, and sometimes called Schnapps, and to me it tasted like caraway gin, so let's just say it's good. I will admit that it would probably be a lot better to drink with smoked fish rather than ice cream.

And then, tired out from our day, it was off to bed.

Next time: soaking!

The Trip to Iceland, Day 4

After a breakfast in our room (scones and coffeemaker coffee) we crossed Austurvollur Square to the Settlement Museum, a branch of the Reykjavik City Museum. The museum occupies the basement of a building (a hotel, I think) and consists of the in-situ archaeological site of a Viking longhouse from the first settlement of the Reykjavik region.

It's fascinating to see. They can date it pretty precisely by the volcanic ash that settled in the walls as they were being built. In the intervening thousand years the street level has risen about 5 meters — but I was intrigued to see that the house is basically aligned with the modern street above.

The house itself looked almost exactly like the buildings Sir William described in Iceland a millennium later in 1809:

". . . the walls of these are extremely thick, especially at the base, formed of layers of stone and turf, not standing perpendicularly, but leaning a little inwards, and about seven or eight feet high; a sloping roof of turf, laid on birch boughs, makes the whole height of the buildings, which even thus does not reach above twelve or fourteen feet . . . both walls and floors are but seldom boarded: the sides are usually nothing but the black stone and turf, and the bottom only the bare ground. Generally, there are small openings, either in the walls or roof, by way of windows . . . A chimney, or rather an aperture for the emission of the smoke, usually made with a tub, is seen only in the best houses, in others the smoke is left to find its way out at the door, by which, also, the only air that they can possibly receive is admitted."

After that we walked eastward, up hill, to what can only be called the tourist neighborhood: full of souvenir shops, bars, the Punk Museum, and other operations designed to separate foreigners from money. One of them was a great shop selling handmade woollens, where Diane bought a lovely sweater so warm that it is almost impossible to wear indoors.

At the top of the hill is the Hallgrimskirk, the biggest church in Iceland. It's a nifty Gothic-Deco building that looms over the city and has become a national icon. Amusingly, one could fit the entire Cathedral building next door to our hotel, steeple and all, inside the nave of the Hallgrimskirk with plenty of spare room.

The best comparison I can make is to a very different building: Gaudi's Sagrada Familia church in Barcelona. Both are superb modernist churches which still call back to their religious heritage. Sagrada Familia is ornate and highly decorated, drawing on the many Gothic and Baroque churches of Spain. Hallgrimskirk is very plain and severe, from the austere tradition of Lutheran churches in Scandinavia.

And, yes, we visited the Icelandic Phallological Museum. The Penis Museum. Of course we did. What can one say about it? A reasonable collection of anatomical specimens — about what one would expect from a college biology department. A collection of snickering artworks and historical exhibits which I found rather scanty. No Roman penis amulets, no Japanese penis sculptures, no ithyphallic Egyptian statues of Osiris.

I have a strong suspicion that 90 percent of the people who visit the Phallological Museum simply take selfies in front of the entrance and don't bother paying to go in.

My science advisor did have a chat with the manager about some deficiencies in the collection — all their baculae (penis bones) were displayed upside down, with the smooth back end up and the tip with lots of fiddly bits at the bottom. Those fiddly bits are sometimes the only way to distinguish closely-related mammal species, but they look more phallic with the back end up.

We did not have penis-shaped waffles at the snack bar.

With the best of good will toward the people running the Museum, my summation is that unless you want to post some selfies of yourself grinning like a fool in front of a whale penis in a jar, give it a miss.

Then back to our hotel for a quick clean-up, and then off to Dill, Reykjavik's Michelin-starred restaurant featuring foods inspired by traditional Icelandic ingredients.

The thing about super-pricey hoity-toity restaurants like Dill is that . . . they're really good. One can chuckle at the relentless use of the word "sustainable" on the Web site of a joint that charges $150 a seat. One can raise an eyebrow at terms like "codfish foam" on the menu — but when some very talented people devote hours to the project of making a really good meal, that's what you're likely to get.

The menu for the evening was as follows:

First, a series of little amuse-bouches including smoked trout (cooked on a traditional Icelandic sheep-dung fire), a tiny bowl of super-concentrated vegetable broth, little cakes of dried wolffish, and an onion cake dotted with sweet carrot slices. We had champagne with that — from France but with a notable "mineral" flavor suited to Iceland.

Then a vegetable course of greens, fermented cabbage, a barley risotto, salt-baked beets, sol, and mushrooms. What's sol? A kind of seaweed, known as dulse in the British Isles. "In Iceland, also, it is very commonly eaten, but seldom in a fresh state," according to Sir William.

Next came the fish course, of cod foam with lumpfish roe on rye bread; and cod with mushrooms, seaweed, and birch. We were drinking white wine by this point, another French label which I carelessly didn't write down. The pairings were perfect, though.

And then the meat: some braised lamb (cooked for ten hours!) accompanied by a rutabaga puree. Also a slice of grilled lamb loin with black garlic and a dousing of consomme. These were paired with a red wine, and again I'm sorry I didn't note the labels because it was excellent (the restaurant Web site is very secretive about what wines they serve).

We finished that wine with a vegetable course of rutabaga with wasabi, and a kind of potato puree with berries.

Dessert was a roll cake, chocolate with pickled rhubarb, and a lemon thyme vinegar caramel. I had coffee with that course.

How obsessive are the chefs? I asked our waiter at one point: does the chef pick out appropriate dishware for each menu item? Or are the items inspired in part by the dishware? Oh, no. That wouldn't be obsessive enough. The chef works with local potters to create the right serving dishes for each food. That's attention to detail.

We paid up and walked (a bit unsteadily) back to our hotel. After sharing two bottles of wine and some champagne, my science advisor says she doesn't remember anything after leaving the restaurant until waking up the next morning. I can report that she didn't insult anyone along the way.

Next time: whales!

The Trip to Iceland, Day 3

We had another big breakfast and did a little more walking around the island of Heimaey on Tuesday morning, then boarded the noon ferry back to the Icelandic "mainland." Our car was none the worse for having sat in the parking lot for forty-eight hours — except for a light coating of black dust blown by the wind from the nearby black sand beach.

We drove back westward and stopped for lunch in the town of Selfoss — the childhood home of Bjork and the site of Bobby Fischer's grave — and then turned northward along the Olfusa River to Thingvellir National Park. It's a glorious natural location — a wide rift valley with snow-capped mountains looming off to the north, and the waters of Thingvallevatn lake in the center of it all. I'll let Sir William Jackson Hooker describe the lake:

"A brighter atmosphere now permitted us to catch a glimpse of the neighbouring scenery; and the first thing that drew our attention was the immense Lake of Thingevalle just before us, of which we had hitherto seen nothing, except the margin. It is reckoned fifteen miles long, and from five to twelve miles wide. Near the middle are two fine black insulated rocks, of considerable size and height; the largest called Sandey, the smaller one Nesey, upon which, thousands of the black-backed Gulls (Larus marinus L. Svart Bakr Isl.) annually rear their young. North and south of this lake, were some grand rugged mountains, but at a considerable distance from the place in which we were, and mostly covered with snow." 

We parked at the visitor center and walked down to the Thingvellir historic site. This was the old meeting-place of the Althing, Iceland's original parliament, which met there until just a decade or so before Sir William's visit in 1809. There's no longer a town at the site, just a replica of the old church — and a summer cottage for the Prime Minister of Iceland. That's it. One hopes the P.M. remembers to fill the trunk with groceries and beer before going on vacation, because the nearest package store is thirty miles away.

The landscape at Thingvellir is pure Iceland — a marshy braided river flowing into the lake, but also volcanic chasms filled with glacial snowmelt. Sir William noticed them on his visit:

"When we got here, we looked down into an immense plain, which was every where intersected by chasms in the earth as far as the eye could reach, crossing each other in various directions, though most of them were reat (sic) from east to west: three in particular seemed to extend, in uninterrupted lines, the whole width of the plain, and were terminated on one side by the lake Thingevalle."

All in all, an amazing spot.

I wondered why the Althing met in such a remote and hard-to-reach place, but after looking at maps and reading Sir William's account of trying to get around in Iceland before paved roads, I realized that Thingvellir is among the more accessible locations in Iceland. If you're coming from the lowlands to the south, you can just ride right up the rift valley or even take a boat up the river and across the lake. From the west, there's a pass through the mountains to Reykjavik. Travelers from the northwest of Iceland could go by boat to Reykjavik and follow the same route. I don't know how anyone from the east coast got anywhere; I assume they had to brave the seas and then go upriver.

After a couple of hours admiring the beauty of Thingvellir, we got back in our car and drove to Reykjavik. It's not far, really — just 47 kilometers, or about 30 miles, and as I said, there's a pass through the mountains. It is, however, one of the dreariest places I passed through in Iceland. Oh, sure, there's magnificent mountains on either side, but the valley itself is just an endless expanse of grass and rocks.

Sir William didn't think much of it, either:

"From this place, till we got to the banks of the Lake of Thingevalle, nothing interesting occurred. The country, through which we passed, consisted either of a dreary moor, over which large masses of rock were every where scattered, or of a disagreeable morass, into which our horses every now and then sunk up to their bellies."

But after half an hour of driving we crested one last hill and saw the bustling modern city of Reykjavik and its suburbs before us. There's almost no transition between wilderness and city — chiefly because there aren't any farms to speak of.

With the help of our onboard GPS we navigated through Reykjavik to the old city center. And I do mean the center: our hotel was the historic Hotel Borg, on Austurvollur square, next to the cathedral church and the current Althing building. Like most things in Iceland, they are quite modest. The cathedral is a nice little clapboard church, and the Althing looks like a pre-World War I American high school built of lava blocks.

The Borg Hotel itself is very comfortable, with a cool Art Deco aesthetic. I suspect that it went through a period of unfortunate "modernization" in the Sixties and Seventies, and the current owners are restoring the interiors to their original glory. The hotel was founded by Johannes Josefsson, who the hotel Web site describes as a "strong-man and adventurer." He wrestled in the Olympics and toured with the Barnum & Bailey circus, but in 1927 he retired back to Iceland and built the country's swankiest hotel.

We had dinner at a seafood place around the corner, as the Borg's own restaurant was being renovated while we were there (I understand it's due to re-open soon). And with that, it was off to bed.

Next time: Dill!

The Trip to Iceland, Day 2

We slept for about twelve hours on our first night in Iceland, then went downstairs for an excellent buffet breakfast at the hotel restaurant. Lots of different breads, a kind of baked scrambled egg dish, skyr (Icelandic yogurt — you're going to see that a lot), cold cuts, and so forth. And a very exotic Icelandic dish, which Sir William was at pains to describe to his readers:

"However, even this was not all; for a large dish of Waffels, as they are here called, that is to say, a sort of pancake, made of wheat-flour, flat, and roasted in a mould, which forms a number of squares on the top, succeeded the mutton. They were not more than half an inch thick, and about the size of an octavo book."

Well-fortified with breakfast, we put on our stoutest boots and walked a block to the old lava flow from 1973 which buried half the town of Heimaey under ten meters of rock. That lava was heading for the harbor, and would have choked it off and destroyed Heimaey's fishing industry. With no sheltered harbor, the island would be effectively inaccessible. Icelandic emergency crews sprayed cold seawater onto the advancing front of the lava flow to cool it and create a dam to divert the flow away from the harbor. There's even a monument to the heroic diesel pumps which saved the town.

The lava flow also displays the site of the old geothermal heating system, which tapped the heat energy of the cooling rock to heat Heimaey. It ran for 20 years until the dropping lava temperature made it impractical. Still, 20 years of effectively free energy isn't bad, especially for a town which gets all its electricity — and all its fresh water! — from the mainland.

At the southern end of the lava flow we began to climb up the cone of the Eldfell volcano, the source of all that melted rock. Until 1973 Eldfell was a sheep pasture, but in January of that year ash and rock began erupting from the ground. By summer the eruption had created a 200-meter mountain, and added two and a half square kilometers of land to the island.

The mountain is a half-cone. The crater is open on the north side (where the lava came out). This means that when one climbs it, one is climbing along the narrow ridge between the crater and the outer slope of the volcano. Fortunately it's currently inactive, so the bottom of the crater is just a flat expanse of dirt and rocks. But the actual material of the cone isn't solid lava. It's more like gravel. A huge pile of gravel.

So we chugged up the slope, with steep slopes to either side covered with jagged volcanic rocks younger than either of us. Slipping and falling wouldn't be fun. To add to the tension, it's windy on the island of Heimaey, doubly so up on top of an exposed mountain.

We did stop halfway up to take a picture across the channel to the main island of Iceland, with mountains and glaciers looming in the distance. The picture shows one of the other Vestmannaeyr islands, which has no permanent inhabitants but does feature a hunting lodge. Exactly what you're supposed to hunt there isn't clear. Seagulls? Kidnapped sailors?

After laboring up the narrow ridge we made it to the top, and braced ourselves against the aircraft warning light to survey the view. It was amazing. I'm sorry I don't have a picture from up there, but I wasn't about to fish my phone out of my pocket and risk having it blown out of my grip.

We descended, which was physically easier but harder to navigate, and walked back to our hotel through the town, stopping at a supermarket to pick up some well-deserved drinks and a snack. The snack was Hraun, an Icelandic candy bar which has become one of my all-time favorites. It's sort of like a Kit-Kat, only bigger, with a much thicker layer of chocolate over the cookie. The name means lava rock, and it kind of looks like it. Highly recommended.

After a rest we went back over to the western shore of the island, a little farther south than the day before, in hope of puffins. No puffins. Wonderful views of the uninhabited islands offshore, stretching off to the newest part of Iceland, the island of Surtsey, born in 1967.

In late afternoon we went back through the modern town of Heimaey, and got a glimpse of ordinary life in Iceland. Saw a new development of houses going up — each with its own hot tub, because hot water to soak in comes just behind oxygen as a necessity of life in that country. Japan, another volcanic island, also has its hot spring baths. Curiously, Italy — which has plenty of hot springs and practically invented baths — seems to have lost that tradition. Maybe the Mediterranean climate makes staying cool more important to Italians.

We stopped for "kebabs" in town, as most of the restaurants were still closed for the Easter holiday. Kebabs in Europe are what Americans call Gyros. I think that's because America got Greek immigrants who started restaurants, while in Europe the food was introduced by Turkish guest workers.

Though tired, we resisted the urge to go to bed early because it was predicted to be a clear night and we wanted the chance to see the Northern Lights. So we stayed up until twilight ended (it only got full dark at 10:30 p.m.), and hunted around Heimaey for a spot that didn't feature high-intensity street lighting. Eventually we found a little park, and stood around looking at the sky for about an hour. Alas, the weather on the Sun was too good, because there wasn't any activity to see. So at last to bed.

One final observation on Heimaey: for an island that's two miles wide by three miles long, there are a heck of a lot of cars there. Two reasons I can think of. First, there's a lot of steep slopes on that island. Walking around takes effort, and if one had to carry anything it would get very tiresome very fast. The second reason is that you can take your car on the ferry to the "mainland" and drive to Reykjavik or wherever. I was amused to see that Icelanders don't take off the snow tires until April's over.

There's even kind of a car culture. We saw a couple of dudes driving their boss vintage street rods around Heimaey, and at least once at night I heard what sounded very much like an impromptu drag race.

Next time: The Thing!