{"id":67,"date":"2017-09-11T22:49:32","date_gmt":"2017-09-11T22:49:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/apresmidi.net\/eee2017\/log\/?p=67"},"modified":"2017-09-11T22:49:32","modified_gmt":"2017-09-11T22:49:32","slug":"land-of-ice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/apresmidi.net\/eee2017\/log\/2017\/09\/11\/land-of-ice\/","title":{"rendered":"Land of Ice"},"content":{"rendered":"

We had a few stupid travel days. \u00a0On Monday, we flew from Eugene to Seattle, waited there a few hours, flew overnight to Reykjavik (seven hours in the air, seven more hours of time change). \u00a0On Tuesday, we drove around but were jet lagged, and had to take a short nap at one point. \u00a0Wednesday was a nice travel day, driving around. \u00a0And Thursday is another stupid travel day, getting up at 5am to fly to Copenhagen and then on to Venice, hopefully arriving at our hotel before dark.<\/span>

<\/span><\/span>Monday<\/b>, August 28,<\/span>\u00a0<\/b>we arrived at the tiny Eugene airport to no lines at all. \u00a0The Delta agent did a bunch of typing and determined that yes, she could check our bag all the way to Reykjavik, even though it was on a different airline and a different itinerary. \u00a0So nice not to have to stand in another baggage check line in Seattle. \u00a0<\/span>

<\/span><\/span>A sign on the outside of the Icelandair plane by the boarding door identified the plane as \u201cGrabrok\u201d, a \u201cfriendly volcano\u201d that kids climb up. \u00a0Icelandair still seems like a good airline except that now they charge for food. \u00a0We managed to get a few hours of sleep on the flight. \u00a0By then it was\u00a0<\/span>Tuesday. \u00a0<\/b>The tiny rental car place upgraded our \u201ccompact\u201d to a \u201cstation wagon\u201d that was really a \u201chatchback\u201d. \u00a0Perhaps if we\u2019d taken their offer for a \u201cjeep\u201d it would have been an \u201cSUV\u201d. \u00a0We went to a generic chain bakery in Keflavik and paid $14 for someone to press the Latte button and the Hot Chocolate button, and serve a couple pastries. \u00a0Premium Mediocre. \u00a0Then we drove into Reykjavik (about 45 minutes), got some tips from Tourist Information, including a better coffee place, where we paid $14 for some light-roast yuppie coffee, some yunnan tea, and a nice bagel with salmon and cream cheese. \u00a0That was more like it.<\/span>

<\/span><\/span>The weather in Iceland was fine: \u00a0it seldom rained, but was unfortunately too cloudy to see the Northern Lights. \u00a0We drove up the coast. \u00a0At one point we found ourselves entering a tunnel that was six km long under a fjord. \u00a0The first four kms were a moderate downhill, and the last two were a steeper uphill, with a climbing lane; the shape of the fjord bed must be like that. \u00a0When we got out they asked us for 1000 ISK ($10), not that much more than the Bay Bridge. \u00a0We reached the central western peninsula, and stopped for some more precise tourist information and had a nap. \u00a0That information led us to a very nice place on the coast to watch harbor seals and gray seals, a large colony of ducks, and a few other seabirds. \u00a0Further along we found a tiny canyon to hike into, walking between the walls on the rocks in the creek. \u00a0Several lethargic gulls were sitting on the ground. \u00a0Maybe they were sick or injured. \u00a0We continued driving through the national park by the volcano, and stopped at a lava field coated with lichen, with a large patch of wild blueberries. \u00a0Finally, we found our Welcome Apartments in Olafsvik, and ate at one of the two restaurants in town. \u00a0We had a serviceable apple chicken salad, and \u201cfish of the day\u201d, fried cod with vegetables. \u00a0Only $50 or so, still a bit premium mediocre. \u00a0The fish in Iceland is considerably cheaper than the vegetables.<\/span>

<\/span><\/span>Wednesday\u00a0<\/b>we headed east, stopping to see a waterfall and a lava field. \u00a0The first waterfall was next to a mountain whose perfect shape the locals were very proud of. \u00a0The river had a curse on it that there would never be any fish in that river and nobody could ever swim because somebody in the mythic past had drowned there while fishing. \u00a0Fair enough. \u00a0Then we went to see the Hraunfossar, a most interesting formation where snowmelt flows underneath a gravelly lava field (\u201cHraun\u201d), and leaks out into a river in a row of springs over the length of a thousand meters or so. \u00a0At the upper end of this is a torrential cut through a narrow twisted canyon. \u00a0It shares one property with Victoria Falls \u2014 no good vantage for a photograph. \u00a0There are some drone movies showing a traversal of the length. \u00a0I suppose somebody must have posted drone videos along the Zambezi as well. \u00a0We then visited Grabrok, our plane\u2019s namesake volcano, which indeed was friendly: \u00a0stairs made for a very easy climb into its crater, from whose edge one also could peek into the crater of the adjacent volcano. \u00a0The Garmin said that the walk up the volcano, around the rim, and back to the parking lot, was only about 1300 meters.<\/span>

<\/span><\/span>It was starting to get late, and we headed back toward Reykjavik. \u00a0We stopped at Costco for gas, where they honored my US membership (though someone came out and helped with scanning the barcode), and checked out prices in the warehouse, which were obscenely high, though probably still a bargain for Iceland. \u00a0Apparently 1 out of 4 Icelandic adults are Costco members, and it only opened in May of this year. \u00a0Then we went to Matur og Drykkur (\u201cfood and drink\u201d) , a delightful little restaurant. \u00a0The combination of the two tasting menus started with five plates involving chips: \u00a0a chip made out of dried fish, one made out of lamb, one made out of lamb testicles, one holding very-smoked trout (smoked in sheep dung among other things), and seaweed chips served with roe. \u00a0The main courses included a nice piece of lamb, and an enormous flambeed cod head, not much smaller than our own. \u00a0We got to our airbnb near the airport pretty late but the guy didn\u2019t mind; he was just on his way to pick up one of his other customers from his arriving flight.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We had a few stupid travel days. \u00a0On Monday, we flew from Eugene to Seattle, waited there a few hours, flew overnight to Reykjavik (seven hours in the air, seven more hours of time change). \u00a0On Tuesday, we drove around but were jet lagged, and had to take a short nap at one point. \u00a0Wednesday … Continue reading Land of Ice<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/apresmidi.net\/eee2017\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/apresmidi.net\/eee2017\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/apresmidi.net\/eee2017\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apresmidi.net\/eee2017\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apresmidi.net\/eee2017\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/apresmidi.net\/eee2017\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":68,"href":"https:\/\/apresmidi.net\/eee2017\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67\/revisions\/68"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/apresmidi.net\/eee2017\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apresmidi.net\/eee2017\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apresmidi.net\/eee2017\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}