Do it for the likes!

09052019

Day 2

My mother had booked us a day in the Blue Lagoon, but neglected to go with the package travel because it was so pricey. So yesterday Laura and I looked at alternate options, everything we were looking at was around $180 for the 4 of us, and there weren't any cheaper options, but you can get next day rental cars in Reykjavik for €63. So we rented a car.

We got up a lil early to run to grab the car. This is one if the first times Laura an I have rented a car, and the first time we had done it in a foreign country. When we showed up the attendant had upgraded us to a nicer compact car than what we ordered. It was a pretty normal experience, the attendant was very clear the car wasn't prestine, and we should only note extreme damage.

The car was far from prestine, at some point it had eaten gravel or maybe experience an Icelandic dust/Ash storm, damaging the hood paint, which was now rusted and chipping the windshield in a few places.

The attendant was rather non-chalant about the whole thing and let us take the car. We grabbed some yogurt from a quick-mart type place (1-11 or some other odd hour named store), and pastry from a local bakery.

Vegan blueberry roll, vegan cinnamon roll and a raspberry scone, all were great.

Lighting isnt great, but I'm not a food blogger so deal with it.

We hopped back in the car to drive the 45 minutes to the Blue Lagoon.

He roads are great and pretty well signed. It's also rather easy to find because it's part of a large geothermal power plant so there are huge columns of steam rolling into the sky. And given that there are no trees in Iceland, you really just have to look up.

We roll up to the place, and here is a Hybrid H-RV in the parking lot, which is basically my new favorite car (unnecessary information, but HR-Vs have had good reviews and a hybrid just makes you *feel* better about it).

You approach the facility through a small canyon of rocks.

And you get in and they have everything set up, they give you a towel, that you will inevitably lose, but it's ok cause you just take someone else's (kinda like the army, there are no thieves in the army, everyone is just trying to steal their shit back). And a wrist band that is hooked up to your account. You use the wristband to pay for drinks and snacks and at the end swipe your card to pay.

You go into the locker room and there are clear instructions in various languages, you take a shower (without the swimsuit, very clear instructions on that) put a bunch of leave in conditioner in your hair (put the swimsuit back on) and head out.

It's probably cold out, cause it's Iceland, and your wet. So you have your towel up and scurry into the water.

It is splendid they say it runs about 100°F, and has a milky color from all the silica in the water. You feel extra boyant, you feel it abrading all the dead skin off your body, and you see all the people takes pics for the 'gram.

It was a wonderful hodgepodge of older slightly out of shape Scandanavians and hot young people thinking they are influencers.

We bobbed around the water, eventually got a white silica face mask. My mom went to get a fancy in water massage that I still don't fully understand, and after our requisite 10 of the mask drying Laura and I went under a 104°F waterfall and got beat up by the hot water/cleaned our face.

We also sat in a sauna and baked, putting a little water on the rocks to make sure we developed a good crust. After we were sufficiently heat-stupified we went back to the lagoon to meet with my mom and head home.

Ultimately it was a fantastic experience, and I would recommend everyone do it. We didn't bring our camera in there because it's really something you need to experience for your self. Here is a pic of one of the pools outside the swimming portion (that would definitely kill you if you went in).

For a lil more info on it

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Lagoon_(geothermal_spa)

Because we had the car, we decided to hit an area of Reykjavik that was a little far to walk. And with the previous nights success at a foodhall we went to the Hlemmurmatholl.

We again got a spectrum of food.

I ordered a lamb burger which was delicious. Most lamb burger are hunks of ground lamb, too greasy to eat properly, and sometimes the gamey-ness of the lamb overpowers all the other flavor. But that was done very well, it helped to there was lamb bacon on it as well. The lil potatoes it came with were also fantastic they must have been pre-boiled because they were perfectly cooked after the roasting process.

Laura got the traditional Icelandic lamb soup. My parents got a seafood platter and a salmon ceviche.

This foodhall was in an old fish-saltery, so it was in an maritime industrial area, reminded me very min of fisherman's terminal in Seattle.

There were several other restaurants in the area, including an ice cream shop, and a cake shop, both of which we patronized. Salted caramel is a big thing here, which is great because it's my favorite sweet flavor nowadays. I got straight we all got salted caramel, my mom got black licorice in addition and Laura got vanilla. The good happy cows they got here to produce good ice cream. It prolly comes out of the udder as already ice cream given the ambient temperature around here.

After sauntering around the pier finishing our ice cream we dropped the car off, and the same attendant was just as nonchelant about checking us back in. Laura even asked if she was gonna inspect the car and the attendant said "nah, I trust you".

So far we've only been charged the €63.

We walked home, and napped, researching what to do for dinner.

Ultimately we settled on a quick close bite,

https://www.google.com/search?q=101+reykjavik+street+food&oq=101&aqs=chrome.0.69i59j69i57j0l2.1892j0j4&client=ms-android-verizon&sourceid=chrome-mobile&ie=UTF-8#istate=lrl:iv&lkt=LocalPoiReviews&rlimm=7939043340378079618

Their soups were solid, but go there for the fish and chips. It has no right to be so good. The batter is a lil spicy, and it clings to the fish well, but it's not too heavy. The fish (cod) itself is super soft and moist and has picked up the spice flavor somehow. It carries almost no fishy taste. We were debating stopping there again later in the trip.

And that wrapped up the day, we ate the cupcakes we brought home from the cake shop (caramel with salted caramel frosting and chocolate with salted caramel frosting, like I said salted caramel is all the rage - still not as good as Molly moons in Seattle...).

Went to sleep shortly thereafter.

Bloodfeuds, Big Churches and Brennvín

08052019

Day 1

Day 0 and day 1 kinda blend together, at this point I don't entirely remember what I said we did on Day 0 beyond fly.

Anyways, this was the actual day in Iceland. We landed very early, my parents flew in less than an hour after us, and had already arranged transport from the airport to the place we are staying. I don't think I've ever come out of customs/baggage claim to someone holding a sign with my name on it.

Despite the fact that there *was* a driver waiting for us, I completely missed it, because it's never happened before. Laura inevitably needed a coffee, so we stopped at the final little quickstop in the airport before you get to the parking lot, to grab coffee and some skyr. I had read about this prior to travelling here, and vaguely recalled having some last time I was here (hell I may have written about it). It was excellent.

It's kinda like Greek yogurt, in that it is thicker than more traditional yogurts, but not as inconsistent as curd cheese. I have gotten behind kefir and yogurt, so it's no surprise I like this so much. I lool forward to the hipster foodies to hop on the bandwagon so this stuff gets world wide attention. The market had matured locally enough that the major manufacturers make it with flavors. On this particular occasion we had blueberry, but they have all kinds of fruit and coffee, and chocolate, and creme brulee and probably anything else you could want. As far as flavor, it obvious tastes like whatever flavor you buy, but it's kinda like a gamey-er yogurt. Like if yogurt was made with goat/sheepsmilk.

Anyways we finished that just as my parents were coming through customs and they spotted us the same time they spotted the driver. We hugged and such and hopped in the van to get taken nearby our home for the week. My mother set the drop off location to the bus station described by the AirBnB hosts.

Realising it was like 0800 the place would certainly not be ready, and the previous guests were probably still sleeping we went to a local cafe to get out of the cold, and get into the range of some wifi.

After some time, and some pastries (I got a ham and cheese pocket, Laura got a spinach and feta thing, and my parents got smoked salmon sandwiches, everything was adequate, if I wasn't keeping a blog about what I ate/drank it would be nothing to write home about.

It still isnt late enough for us to reasonably get into the place so we went to find a bar in the immediate neighborhood. We ordered some fries (it's a thing here, fries covered in all kinds of stuff) and wait 15 min to order a beer cause they don't serve before 1100.

After another round of beers, it's well after 11 and we should be able to get into the Airbnb. No-go, key not in key box, place still a mess peeking in the window. It's cold, we have all our shit, we decide to go back to the bar and try to get wifi to call/email.

Fortunately, the barstaff clearly deal with tourists all the time, and provided a cellphone upon request to help us out.

Ultimately the host comes to help us get in and get the cleaning cats over to unfuck the mess precvious guests left.

Not at all a reflection of the host, but the place was pretty dirty, trash left places, half smoked (but clearly stubbed out) cigarette on the kitchen table. I get that Airbnb is super corporate now, but don't be an ass and leave huge messes, thats not cool.

we get in and dump our stuff, and head out to check out the Reykjavik Settlement Museum. This museum exists because back around 2000 someone was going to build a hotel on the spot, and while digging the foundation they found some relica of a bygone age. More investigation ultimately revealed the remains of a longhouse that had been inhabited back at the turn of the *last* millennium. It was around this ancient foundation that the rest of the exhibit was built.



That's a terrible picture and I'm sorry, I don't have a computer so I don't have a fair way to get pictures from my camera to the internet, sometimes Laura's camera will do some work and I'll get those here. But in that picture is the remnants of that longhouse. You can certainly clearly see the outline of the structure and see some of the interior walls. With prompting from all the multimedia displays within the rest of the exhibit you can make out the other parts of the house, the entryway, the stables (people kept some of their livestock in the house, for safety and warmth, and I bet convenience of fresh milk/eggs).

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Settlement_Exhibition

So besides this house being old, it's important because it corroborates the story in The Book of Settling and the Book of Icelanders. Which are appropriate titles for works which describe how Iceland was settled in the first place. Story goes:
Ingolfór Arnarson left the Norselands because he had some long standing beef with someone, he headed into the mid atlantic to an island that he heard a friend of a friend mention once, and when he finally found land he "threw his high seat pillars into the sea, determined to settle where they were found ashore". After admittedly not very much research I dunno what "high seat pillars" are, but they just be important, because ingolfór sent slaved out for three years to go find them. And where they were found he settled, and now stands Reykjavik. The rest of the story is crazy, involving siblings and murder and slaves, and Celts. I don't have the patience to write this all out on my phone, I swore last time I Resurrected this big I was gonna get a tablet cause this is terrible...I digress go read the wiki.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingólfr_Arnarson

After the museum, we walked around the area and checked out the Halgrímskirka, the big church you see in all the pictures of Iceland. Unfortunately the you're elevators were born all we could not get up top but we could walk around inside. It's an Icelandic Lutheran Church, which means it was pretty Spartan, and I think the maintenance meant just about everything was cleared away so it was kinda boring in there. Had a huge beautiful organ though.

I didn't learn much in the church, so here is the wiki.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallgrímskirkja

we came back to the now clean Airbnb and took a nap.

After finally rousing Laura, we decided to check out one of the food halls around here. Its a growing trend here, and elsewhere I spose we ate at a few of these types of places in Puerto Rico (oops never blogged about that trip). It's a congregation of smaller restaurants, very much like the food stalls in Singapore. In this case it was about a half dozen different restaurants all doing their own thing sharing space. We went to the Hlemmer food hall (which was actually across the street from the hostel we stayed at the last time we were in Iceland).

From one place we got lil Arancinis and tenderloin skewers, both were excellent. After that I got a Pair Smorrabrød (which is swedish, so I'll compare when I get there). This was really interesting, a thick slab of liver Patrick (the loaf-y kind not the spread-y kind), candied red cabbage, pickles, and bacon. I paired this with an akvavit spritz (akvavit, ginger liquer, lemon juice, Cardamom Bitters, club Soda).

Beyond that we got a grilled mushroom burger and coconut-carrot soup. Everything we ordered was great, the Smorrabrød would have been a little better with a bigger slice of bread as it was a lil dry.

We toddled home and promptly fell asleep.

Didn't see Santa....

Ok, let's see if I remember how to do this.

08052019

Day 0

Easy flight out of Seattle. We never had a night time. With flying out at 1550 local to Seattle, and arriving at 0600 local to Reykjavik, and traveling around the North Pole we never saw the sin actually set.

We were sitting on the wrong side of the plane, so we didn't get any pictures, but it was pretty neat.

While it seems like we should be travelling East to get to Iceland, we just kind of continuously flew North.

I'll post later today when we complete the day with what we did.