Month: July 2016

On this trip we are going to Scotland, Iceland and London.  None of them are particularly noted for their cuisine, and Scotland and Iceland in particular are known for some fairly unappetising foods.  Haggis in Scotland and various fermented (read “putrefied”) fish products in Iceland are examples of what people did with food to survive times when it was scarce.  I’m not a massive believer that their transition to iconic dishes is always deserved, nor that they should be regarded as modern delicacies.  I am always reminded of Espen’s recipe for the Norwegian version (Lutefisk), which involves soaking it in toilet duck at the bottom of a hole for 6 months.  If he thinks that, I feel I am allowed to as well.

I’ve therefore been very pleasantly surprised in Iceland that the food has been consistently and universally fantastic.  Even in hotels that are literally in the middle of nowhere and quite basic in their facilities, the service and the food has been great.  The tomato based spicy fish soup for lunch yesterday was amazing, but I’ve not had a single lunch or dinner that wasn’t great.

I’ve also tried where possible to try the local foods that we wouldn’t normally have.  Not the really weird ones, but the ones that seem like serious menu choices.  To that end, I’ve had reindeer tartar, smoked wild goose, and horse.  They have all been well prepared, beautifully presented and really tasty.

At the restaurant we went to tonight they had Mike Whale steaks on the menu.  Espen also had not tried whale, and the waiter described a dish much like peppered steak, cooked rare and well-matched to a red wine.  He was right on every count, and it was one of my favourite culinary experiences on the trip.

Tomorrow we go to a place that includes on the menu an “Icelandic Tasting Plate”, which features amongst other things the infamous fermented shark.  I’m not sure I am so keen to try that – but I am almost certain to get that tasting plate, and once I have it there is no way I won’t be trying it, so I guess we will see what I have to say here this time tomorrow!

One of the big things to see in Reykjavik is the Hallgrímskirkja church. Located at the top of a hill at the end of one of the main streets, it would be pretty hard not to see it even if you tried to avoid it. 

I have to admit that over a number of visits to Europe I’ve become a bit blasé about the imposing and impossibly impressive buildings. The first one I saw left me quite spellbound, with the soaring arches and roofs, the sheer weight of stone balanced hundreds of feet up in the air for centuries. It’s not entirely possible to believe really – but after a few of them, you become a little immune to the magic. 

Hallgrímskirkja, unlike most of the cathedrals I have visited, was built in the late 20th century, finished and consecrated in 1986.  The outside facade is, presumably, designed to convey a motif of the hexagonal basalt columns that are dotted throught the country, but to be honest it’s a little, shall we say, “austere”.  I didn’t have high hopes when we walked in – but I was wrong. 

It’s a modern take on an ancient design, and it was fascinating to see how that looked. The colours and materials are much the same, but to see how it looked in this form is like listening to a modern rock band play well known classical music – it’s not better or worse, it’s just a different expression of the same thing. It was really interesting.

Then the kids got to play on the statues outside, which they seemed to enjoy and wasn’t discouraged. 

Since then, after our tough day so far, we have all gone back to the apartment for a snooze. 😄

In a while I’m sure we will stir, seeking out food and drink to sustain us into the night. We have a show to see at the Concert Hall this evening, and then I am writing a review of the West Coast – Carlton game for The Footy Almanac.  I should be close to the furthest person on the plant from where the game is being played in Melbourne, and we should be able to stream it at the convenient time of 3.10am tomorrow morning. At least it won’t be dark by then!

Today we drove what is probably the most boring 300km on Iceland, down a long braid valley to Reykjavik. And it was still awesome and beautiful. 

We got in at almost exactly 3pm and met Espen, Ragnhild and Marie at the house, which turns out to be very well located a block back from the main street. It’s a great tradition to meet them on our semi-regular European sojourns, and long may that tradition last!

First impressions of the capital are interesting. It’s a blend of modern and old, well kept and dilapidated. It oddly reminds me of what I think North Korea might be like – more buildings than the people seem to need, sparkles of big new things in amongst fairly basic and poorly maintained buildings, timber scaffolding and people whose fashion (even to my rather off-target eye) looks a fraction off-target and out of date. I’ll be fascinated to see more over the next couple of days – but the setting is undeniably impressive. 

And seeing as how we have finished the loop, here is a brief summary:

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So Hötel Varmahlíd, or “flamingo” as we have dubbed it for pronounceability reasons, turns out to be at a T-junction on Route 1 and some other road.  When there is a break in the traffic the sound  drops back to a flat, deep background acoustic that speaks of large distances between things that make much noise. You often forget how powerful quiet is when you don’t fully experience it.

Our hotel sits just above the junction looking out across kilometres of dead flat plains to a line of curiously flat topped mountains. We’ve noticed this in a few places – it looks like someone has taken hedge trimmers to the mountains, or that the wind blows the top off them if they stick up too high. Anyway, the view from the ‘beer garden’ (carpark) is pretty impressive!

And it only gets more impressive as the sun slowly sets.

Dinner tonight was a buffet at the hotel showcasing local produce. Our quick inspection suggested that it also showcased almost no things the kids would like – so we took them to the truck stop next door and they were thrilled.  Aidan celebrated with a quick set on the hill back up to the Hotel to work off the worst of the evil.

The buffet was excellent, though Justine drew the line at trying the horse tartar. I’d never tried horse before, but it was surprisingly delicate and tasty, served with a berry jam, flax seeds and feta. Add that to the reindeer tartar and smoked wild goose on the trip so far as new taste experiences.

We are left now with just a run to Reykjavik tomorrow to finish our all-too-swift circumnavigation of Ísland. It’s been visually spectacular, and I don’t think it’s over yet. The 300km or so we have to go cut from about 11 o’clock where we are now straight down to 8 o’clock where the capital lies. However, once we meet Espen, Ragnhild and Marie when they fly in from Öslo tomorrow afternoon, we still have three nights and two days to explore the main parts of the place – the city and the Golden Triangle. We need to finish this bingo game with flair. The Geysir awaits.

Late yesterday afternoon we noticed a rather disturbing bubble on the sidewall of the right front tyre. 

First stop this morning was therefore the tyre joint in Husavík, where they confirmed our thought that this wasn’t a good discovery. However, they also couldn’t fix it until tomorrow – so they advised to drive slowly to Akureyri, Iceland’s second city and by far the largest outside of the capital. On arrival, the tyre was able to be replaced in a matter of minutes, and our quest for Iceland Bingo could continue. 

Akureyri looked nice enough, and we had another tasty lunch at a quaint cafe. Lauren was keen for another swim, so we left Granny to have a coffee in the Main Street and we headed to the pool for an hour or so. 

Our map helpfully identified a place about 15km out of town that was marked as ‘home made ice cream’, and the kids were outvoted to go there instead of the soft serve place they could see. 

Aside from Lauren falling off the see-saw that all went pretty well – and at least she had her ice cream in a cup, so we could even use it to ice her hip, which was convenient. 

From there it was a picturesque hour or so to a little town called Varmahlíd for our last night on the road. 

That town is just coming into view, and I think we will be kicking the footy very soon!

The last few days have been exhausting.  Great, but exhausting.  We’ve covered a lot of kilometres and seen a lot of breathtaking things, but we’ve been on the go physically and mentally the whole time.  Today was the opportunity in our Iceland itinerary to have a slow day.  

We only needed to move 40km or so around the peninsula to Husavík, a little fishing village of a few thousand people.  In terms of population size, compared to where we stayed last night, whatever the population of Husavík is – that is the difference.  We started by heading to the nearby Ásbyrgi Canyon for what proved to be such a small hike that Justine refused to get in the car at the end and instead headed off down the road to stretch her legs and we picked her up a K or two down the way.  

We then recrossed one of the many one-lane suspension bridges that we have made a habit of crossing and recrossing on this loop and headed back down the gravel road to Dettifoss – the most powerful waterfall in all of Europe.  On the way we came across some wild horses on the road.  I’m not really a horse person, but they are impressive animals, and these ones with their shaggy manes and attitude galloped along with us for a few hundred metres, which even I will concede was pretty cool.

Dettifoss itself is an impressive waterfall, no doubt about it.  It’s on the edge of the lunar, dead landscape we drove through yesterday, and it is a stark and beautiful place.  The waterfall itself is eye catching.

However, it’s the canyon below it that I found myself drawn to.  It’s figuratively out of this world – so much so that it has been used as an alien landscape in movies, and in the 1960s NASA even did acclimatisation training for their moon landing astronauts in the region.  I think it might be my new favourite place in the world.

From there, aside from a brief stop to fly the drone to get some aerial shots of the landscape and road, we pushed through to Husavík by 3pm, topping out at 66.20 degrees north as we came over the top of the peninsula.  

Husavík is a picturesque village, and we found great food at a cafe in town – so good we are off back there for dinner in a few minutes.  We then took it easy.  Justine and mum wandered around looking for shops (none apparently), while the kids and I went 5 mins back up the road to a beach Lauren liked the look of, and we made dams and piles of stones.  😄

Geology works pretty much the same way everywhere!

  
Cairngorm Plateau (Scotland)
  
Mountain pass (East Iceland)

I’m sitting here at just above 66 degrees north, and just about 50km from the Arctic Circle, a line on a map which is much more exotic than tropic.  To put it into Southern Hemisphere perspective, if you head south from Australia, at 66 degrees south you have made landfall in Antarctica.  This is the furthest north I’ve ever been, and barring a few minutes tomorrow while we drive from here across the top of the peninsula, the furthest North we will touch this trip.  I’ve been looking forward to this point on our itinerary ever since we planned the trip.

Some days it’s easy to forget that geology underlies our world, and that this is not it’s end state, but just one point on a very, very long timeline.  Today wasn’t one of those days.  The landscape today was scarified fjords, volcanic plains and geothermal vents.  It was geology laid bare, and our place walking it’s surface shown to be tenuous at best.  You can’t help but think when you look across places like this.

We saw lush, habitable lands.

And within a few kilometres we saw lifeless, lunar landscapes where there was arid death in every direction – with patches of snow picked out on the black, volcanic mountains just to emphasise the point.

In few places can the thin ribbon of road stretching across the landscape have seemed so friendly as it did here.  And, then, at the end of it, we reached an area where the Earth’s very core touches the surface, venting sulphide gases and steam from the ground, the literal image of hell as depicted visually and linguistic for the Millenia during which that term has had currency, but I would guess for much longer in the vernacular.  

Luckily for us, we had tickets for the baths, and so it all worked out pretty well.  

Sitting here now, gazing off to the north in light drizzle and about 4 degrees and reading about snow home in Canberra, it’s easy to forget that this is summer here.  I’ve become aware on this trip that summer in these places is not about heat, as it is in Australia, but rather about light.  It’s so easy to slip into imagining that our own narrow snippets of the world are what is normal, and it is the constant joy and satisfaction of travel to remember that it’s not.

It’s quite isolated here. Except for the tour buses. 

Aidan Bruce, 2016.