Sheep Intermission

Sorry, I actually have another roll and a half of Iceland left, but I just need to stop looking at Iceland pictures for a while.  Any way, here's a picture of a sheep I took at the zoo over the weekend.

Iceland Part 4 - Miscellany

You can get get an eyeful of nature just driving along the Ring Road, but there are destinations.  You should really visit Jokulsarlon, the glacier lagoon.  What isn't apparent from pictures is the sounds of the lagoon.  There's a bit of a breeze rippling the water, but aside from that, the only sound is the sound of the icebergs bumping gently into each other, and then the occasional splash of a large chunk breaking off.  The area is peaceful, but it's alive with slow, subtle movement.

There's also the Golden Circle, not to be confused with the Ring Road.  It's a circuit that starts by Reykjavik and visits a bunch of interesting sites.  Our first stop was at Geysir and Strokkur.  Geysir is the original spouting spring that gave geysers their name.  However, it was rendered inactive in the early 1900s because people kept throwing rocks into it to get it to erupt.  Luckily its neighbor, Strokkur, still diligently erupts every 5 to 10 minutes.

I had my red filter on because I thought I had loaded my black and white film, but it turned out to be Ektar.  Some of them survived conversion to B&W, but for the most part it wasn't very pretty.

Also on the Golden Circle tour were Gullfoss, which was depicted in the previous post, and Thingvellir park, which we had to skip because we ran out of sunlight.

For lack of a decent segue, here are some more rocks that I forgot to post from the previous post:

Iceland Part 3 - Waterfalls

Seriously.  There are waterfalls everywhere in Iceland.  You can't get away from them.  There are houses with waterfalls in their backyards like they were garden sheds.

Gullfoss - On the Golden Circle

For the ones that have names, keep an eye out for road signs with the word, foss.  A lot of them are easily accessible, just off the side of the road.  Just be careful on those F roads, and make sure your car is ready for them!

Skogafoss - Just off the Ring Road

Sometimes there are two waterfalls at the same time.

Name Unknown

Name Unknown

Sometimes there are little waterfalls.  Watch your step!

Name Unknown

A lot of them, you can just walk right up to.  We never tried to get underneath one, though.  Not sure if that would have been okay to do, anyway.

Name Unknown - Somewhere along the Golden Circle

But after a while, you get a little waterfall-jaded and start being content with just admiring them from a distance as you continue on your way down the Ring Road.

Name Unknown - Just off the Ring Road

On my first pass through the pictures, I was a bit disheartened, because every picture just looked the same until I remembered how many different waterfalls I had photographed.  I kind of expected more (though... in what way I have no idea), but I guess I can call myself satisfied with the results of my first time doing landscape photography.

Name Unknown - Just off the Ring Road

Iceland Part 2 - On the Road

There is one main highway that circles the island, Route 1, or "Ring Road".  If you do anything at all in Iceland, you should do this.  Normally people do the whole circuit, starting and ending in Reykjavik, but supposedly in the winter it gets kind of rough up north, so we figured we'd just see the southern half and take our time doing it.  We stayed two nights in Reykjavik, and then set out along the southern coast, going counter-clockwise along the Ring Road towards Hofn, a little harbor town towards the southeast of the island, which is about 300 miles away, a 6 hour drive, stopping for the night in towns here and there.

Not that the drive feels particularly long.  There is plenty to see, and you'll never get bored of it.

There are farms all along the road, and you'll see sheep and horses and cows all over, watching you as you drive past.  I find farm animals endlessly interesting, but that might just be my city side showing.  Anyway, with all these sheep, there is a lot of Icelandic wool scarves and hats and sweaters all over the place, but I found it kind of scratchy, and didn't get any of it.  You could probably scour pots with it.

The green farms give way to miles of desolate rubble.  If there's anything I took lots of photos of in Iceland, it was probably rocks.  A lot of the Ring Road is flanked by black gravel and boulders.  It actually reminded me a lot of what we saw in Hawaii -- a reminder that we were on islands born from still-active volcanoes.  

There are occasional heavy bulldozers on the sides of the road, organizing the rocks by the road.  I wonder what that job must be like.

Some of the bigger boulders jut out kind of awkwardly; evidence of having been flung from a volcano into their final resting spots, rather than eroded or broken off from larger formations like we're used to seeing.

Our first stop would be in Vik, a small spot with a population of 291, where we stayed the night at Hotel Katla.  They have a nice outdoor hot tub that we spent a bunch of time floating around in, staring at the sky looking for Northern Lights.  We never got to see them, though.

However, what we did see was Reynisfjara.

It's a black sand beach to the south of Vik with a bunch of gnarly rock formations.  Legend has it, the spires in the water are trolls that got caught in the morning sun and turned to stone.  Be careful here.  The wind and surf are downright violent.  This is where my camera got blown lens-first into the sand.

By the way, the little red blip that shows up in occasional pictures is Sharon.  Because we had these places pretty much to ourselves, we split off from each other.  Sharon would scout around ahead, and I would slow down to take pictures.  Our orange and red coats were garishly easy to spot against the backdrops that Iceland had to offer, so we were never worried about losing each other, which was good, because there was so much to photograph, and I was kind of worried about Sharon having to wait around for me and getting bored.

Next up, waterfalls!

Iceland Part 1 - Reykjavik

So, I'm back from Iceland and all the photos are processed.  

People usually associate Iceland with stunning landscapes and stuff, but I'll get to those in a bit.  Our trip started in Reykjavik, the capital.  There are two main cities in Iceland, the other being Akureyri, which we didn't get to visit on this trip.  All of the little towns that exist outside the capital are really tiny, usually consisting of a few blocks of houses, a gas station, and a hotel or two.

Our flight got in at 6 in the morning with 4 hours to sunrise, so we took a nap in the rental car while we waited for a cafe to open up so we could get some coffee.  Cafes are probably our most visited places when we travel anywhere in the world.  We always try to stop in to grab the free wifi and get our bearings.  Not to mention, the caffeine helps shake off the jet lag, which got particularly wonky on this trip for some reason.

The weather wasn't so bad.  It was in the mid 40s the whole time we were there.  Until we got there I had been having panic attacks about being whited-out along the Ring Road, but it was extremely mild and at times I skipped my insulation layer.  It gets pretty windy and rainy, but a proper shell (Gore Tex or any of its clones) will make them a non-issue.  However, the weather gets extremely random and can go from a peekaboo of sunlight to a violent downpour and back in ten minutes.  In return, you get a lot of rainbows.  Rainbows everywhere.

Our accommodations in Reykjavik were pretty nice rental apartments.  They ran us about $120 a night during our off-season trip.  For some reason, we did not see a single queen or king sized bed our entire time in Iceland.  They were all twin beds, either on opposite sides of the room, or separate beds bound together with a large sheet.  

The apartments were furnished with lively interior design.  So were most other places in Iceland, actually.  It kind of reminded me of what I saw in Amsterdam and Stockholm.

Reykjavik is a pretty small city.  Its main metropolitan area is about a mile square, and comfortably walkable in a weekend.  Parking is pretty easy to find, and pretty easy to pay for if you have a car you want to just leave around for a while -- you can pay an entire day in advance.  It didn't work out to very much.

If you want some decent views of the city, you can go to Hallgrimskirkja, a church situated pretty close to the middle of the city proper.  It's also the tallest building in Reykjavik, so you can take the elevator up to the clock tower (for a fee) and have an unobstructed view all the way to the Snaefellsness peninsula.

So, what's the vibe in Reykjavik?  During the day, it's pretty quiet.  It's far from empty, though.  There are plenty of tourists and plenty of business catering to tourists.  There are lots of gift shops selling roughly the same Icelandic memorabilia -- stuffed puffins, things with vikings on them, things made of Icelandic wool, etc.  That's not to say shopping is a drag in Iceland.  I've always found the Northern Europeans to have pretty nice taste.  There are some decent shops mixed in with the souvenir shops that will carry some interesting designer clothing and housewares.

For the most part, the locals seem pretty carefree and not in any particular rush.  In Reykjavik, you're rarely ever from where you probably need to be, and it'll probably wait for you to get there, anyway.  I guess the only thing that could ever be an issue is making use of sunlight -- in November, the sun rises at 10am and starts setting around 4pm.  The only problem that really caused was with photography, but whatever.  If it's too dark to take photos, it just means I'm off the clock.  

Oh, speaking of good taste, keep an eye out for Icelandic lobster soup, or humarsupa.  I must have had a gallon of the stuff while I was in Iceland.  Make sure to order it every single time you encounter it.  It will always be good.

If you're looking for a nice dinner, check out Grillmarkadurinn (Grill Market).  They have a nice tasting menu.  Warning, it includes whale.  It was minke whale, which I made sure to look up and was kind of relieved to see that it was listed under "least concern" by the IUCN.  Still, I didn't think it was particularly exciting -- think of beef that tastes kind of like tuna.

The rest of the meal was pretty solid, though.  The dessert stole the show.  I wish I remembered more of it, but they were particularly generous with the wine pairing, which paired pretty well with the jet lag.

Anyway, as I already said, Reykjavik is a pretty small town, so you shouldn't have to worry about missing out on too much.  We actually took the time in Reykjavik to relax.  We had a lot of travelling ahead of us.