| Submitted by: Ben , United Kingdom |
| Submission Date: 20 June 2008 |
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Iceland – April ‘08
Iceland had always fascinated me – it has geology, snow and Vikings – what more could anyone want? It’s also a little bit off the beaten track and rather expensive, but as it remained one the last areas of Europe I had yet to explore it was about time to get over there and see what’s what. With a population of only 300,000 and an area a little larger than Hungary Iceland is the least densely populated country in Europe. It boasts of fire and ice, in the shape of volcanoes and glaciers. I go in search of both.
My main companion this time is Lisa. A mass spectostrophist when she doesn’t want to talk to someone; a healer of child cancer when she does – Lisa is soon to be Dr Lisa upon completing her PhD. She and I have been friends for about 10 years, but this is to be the first time we travel together.
Preparations were minimal despite several afternoons devising strategies. Brief plans involved Reykjavik, a car, a drive around the island and sea-monsters. The Rough Guide served as our constant companion throughout the two-week expedition, providing phone numbers for hostels and useful tips on what to do.
Friday 11th April
Mostly London
It began early. Once again I sat in departures in Guernsey airport cursing my decision to book a seat on the BE900 at 7am. Bourne partly out of a desire to depress costs but mostly out of fear of fog, not only did it mean an early morning; it also gave me some 11 hours to kill between landing in Gatwick and departing from Heathrow. This was indeed a tough challenge to stave off boredom; I rose to it mostly by way of newspapers. Around lunch time I cracked and ate at Burger King. I wish I could say I had a reason. I wish I could say that everywhere else was closed. But it gets worse – as I ate my bacon double grease burger I found someone’s abandoned edition of The Sun. Chavtabulous.
I was already tired before I left. Late the night before it occurred to me that if we were to drive around Iceland then having satellite navigation might be a good idea. A little internet abuse initially seemed to yield my prize – electronic maps of Scandinavia. Unfortunately it took over 4 hours to download. Yet more unfortunately it turned out the next day that according to my sat nav Iceland is not actually part of Scandinavia. Blunder.
After a few hours in Gatwick I made the trip over to Heathrow. Quicker by coach, but cheaper by train. I grabbed a few minutes sleep on the tube – something I can’t normally manage. Eventually time passed and I met Lisa in Heathrow.
Once through to departures we had dinner to use up English currency. I struggled with my pizza – the spatula-thing that was provided was a poor excuse for a knife and just not up to the task of cutting up ham. I bought travel insurance over the internet – a process made mildly stressful by the slow speed of the computer. I had just 10 minutes to fix my insurance online and it just didn’t want to know.
Lisa and I agreed a compass would be a useful thing to have, so we went looking. No luck. In one shop the nice lady thought we might want to have a pair of compasses for drawing circles… I managed to bite my tongue and saved the scathing wisecracks until we were around the corner and out of earshot. We bought a bottle of Vodka, scared by horror stories of the cost of a drink in Iceland. I briefly mused on the possibility of attaching a keg of Guinness to my rucksack above or below my sleeping bag.
We boarded. The film Juno was played on the monitors. It wasn’t too bad, as I remember; but then I don’t feel well qualified to judge on account of falling asleep sometime before the end. 3 hours or so later and we’re in Iceland. First step was to grab some cash for the bus transfer – I reckoned on the nearby ATM rather than a smash and grab, despite the trickiness involved in currency conversion.
Iceland uses the Icelandic Króna. Thanks to a fortunate (from my perspective at least!) drop in Iceland’s credit rating the pound stood at roughly 150Kr. Expensive – particularly if you’re a drinker - but it could’ve been a lot worse… A pint (sorry, half a litre) of beer costs in the region of 7-800Kr, if you can afford two pints then you can afford to stay a night in most hostels or eat in a cheaper bistro.
The bus ride to the hostel was longer than I had expected. For some reason I had it in my head that we were flying into Reykjavik itself. My head was wrong. Keflavik International airport lies about an hour south west of Reykjavik – that would be an hour if you take a car or alight at the first stop of the bus. Our stop, the Reykjavik City Hostel, was the last, although we had no idea of this. Like any self respecting 11 year old I gleefully led us to the back seat of the bus, and then slowly but surely everyone else got off. Did this bus really go to the hostel? Apparently yes it did, but not before we asked the driver if we were really on the right bus. He laughed at us.
Check in, locate room, sleep – we arrived around 1am. It’s a good enough hostel. 6 beds in the dorm, 2 Germans, us, and a little while later 2 drunk Spaniards. One of them fell out of their bed later on - I checked for long enough to see that it wasn’t Lisa and went back to sleep.
Saturday 12 April
Reykjavik
We had a relative lie in after yesterday’s journey. When the shower became free I oh so gracefully climbed down from my top bunk and slid into the bathroom. As I stood under the water my first thought was “Eyyy, I’m showing in eggs!”. It was nasally obvious that the water in Reykjavik has a high sulphur content. Reykjavik itself translates as “Smokey Bay”, and is so named after the columns of steam that rise throughout the city. These columns are caused by the same geothermal activity that powers the city. Clever indeed, but the shower water stinks.
Before leaving I made contact via the Lonely Planet website with Karo the Austrian. She had similar plans – rent a car and explore Iceland. We met her whilst we stole breakfast in the morning. I say ‘stole’, perhaps misappropriated would be more suitable – we thought breakfast was included, in the end it turns out it was not. We got away with it, while we met Karo briefly before she left on her way. Her parting words of advice included watching out for sullen Icelanders. It was a shame our similar plans were just slightly out of sync, although she did have some crazy ideas about sleeping in the car.
The hostel came well equipped with a guitar and with a Herculean effort I managed to get it in tune (missing machineheads and epic stiffness). Buoyed by my success we went for a walk into town. 130,000 people live in Reykjavik, but the city centre is very small, easily explored within a few hours.
First we walked from the hostel along the coast into the centre, passing the Sun Voyager – a metallic sculpture representing the Viking longboats used by settlers. It turns out that Iceland is full of strange sculptures. Some I like, others make me wonder if the local primary school outreach program had gotten involved.
A large church perches on top of a hill, a landmark visible from most of Reykjavik. As the city goes it is up there with the most impressive buildings. It houses an impressive organ and a collection of Iceland art. We weren’t there long, it was coming up to lunch time. As we walked back down through the main shopping streets we passed a few restaurants – the first one I looked in offered dishes at upwards of 5000Kr (£33). We didn’t go there.
We went to the supermarket. Lunch consisted of the all too familiar cheese and salami sandwiches, except that Lisa was a vegetarian and had to pass on the pig. This was going to get pretty dull pretty quickly! We ate in front of a lake, ducks joined in, and it was cold. A mention must go here to the uberducks – those duck-shaped beasts that roam the water… I can only imagine there was once a species of duck living near Chernobyl, and then they came to Iceland. Or else they are direct descendents of dinosaurs. Big ones. Big ducks.
Coldness as much as interest drew us to the National Gallery. I couldn’t honestly say it lives up to it’s name but it was warm alright. At the time of writing it houses just two exhibitions – both of which appeared to be predominantly targeted outside of my artistic comprehension. If phallic fabric sack monsters or blobs on the corner of canvas are your thing I imagine this is excellent. Otherwise, go there on a cold Reykjavik afternoon for a warm coffee break.
After scouting out suitable dinner venues we headed back to the hostel for a few hours before hunger took hold. Rather classily, modest amounts of vodka and coke were consumed from out of an orange juice bottle. Vodka is still nasty, whatever you drink it with or from. I’m going to lay off that for a while.
Presently Lisa and I returned to the Red Chilli in central Reykjavik. It was maybe 8pm and the place was…. Deserted. Actually no one there whatsoever. We took this as a sign of local people voting with their feet and began the for another, livelier restaurant. Our search took us along the main street. Seeing as Lisa is a vegetarian attention was paid to veggie restaurants – she had heard some horror stories about food in Iceland only ever consisting of meat and fish. Lies. The only vegetarian place we passed had no menu on the outside and ergo expensive! Although we very nearly gave up in frustration of only one waitress, the bistro we ended up in was nice. A very strange music selection though…
Back in the hostel we were serenaded by the most persistently bad guitarist I’ve heard since I was in school. If he’d stumbled through the first two bars of Stairway to Heaven just once more I fully expect the guitar would have grown arms, dropped a string and garrotted him there and then. A little harsh, but music shop staff all over the world would have cheered. Bedtime.
Sunday 13 April
Reykjavik
We slept in too late to have breakfast – probably for the best, really, since we didn’t pay for it… But didn’t it all kick off while I was in the shower! At some point a Spanish girl’s olive oil went missing. Yes, olive oil. Disaster! So she all but shook and newly arrived Australian awake to accuse him of steeling it. There were demands to open his bags and everything! Shocking stuff…
I blagged some milk to have with cereal bought from the supermarket yesterday. It was UHT and therefore just wrong. We spent the next hour sorting out car hire. On the internet we found slightly cheaper deals, but in the end we elected to avoid hassle and accept the rates the hostel offered with their affiliated company. The car would be ours from tomorrow.
Today, however, we were booked on the “Golden Circle” tour. The area to the east of Reykjavik contains several of Iceland’s interesting sites, to be visited in a kind of circle, hence the name. The “Golden” bit is clearly the product of advertising… The previous night it snowed, and it continued to do so today. A lot. If I got a bit excited I might even call it a blizzard. We drove to Pingvellir national park behind a snowplough.
This feels like a good time to bring up the alphabet. While the Icelandic character set is predominantly Latin a few runic symbols remain. The P in Pingvellir serves as an easy way to differentiate Iceland newbies from those who have been around a little while. It is actually a Þ character – looks like a ‘P’, sounds like a ‘Th’ as in Thor.
Pingvellir national park contains the site where the Eurasian and American continental plates are slowly pulling apart. At a speed of 2 cm a year the effect of this is lost among erosion, but it is interesting to note that Iceland grows at roughly the same rate as my fingernails. The rift valley is something different – as though the rock has been somehow cleft apart; if Moses had been leading the Hebrews though tricky lava fields, I imagine we’d have something similar.
The bus stopped and we trekked through the rift valley before meeting up with it again the other side. |
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