Akureyri and Mytvatn!

Yesterday was my last day of class, yahoo! Last Sunday I flew to Akureyri, which is the second-biggest city in Iceland and is at the southern part of a fjord in the north.


This is Helgi the Lean: the first permanent inhabitant of Eyjafjordur, the fjord on which Akureyri sits.

This is looking out through the fjord to the ocean.

Some interesting buildings:

After two days in Akureyri, I too the bus 99km to the east to a village called Reykjalid which is on the Lake Myvatn. Myvatn means "midge" - the tiny bugs that invade the lake and village all summer. I stayed here:

I was the only guest! The owner checked me in and then set me up with a huge carafe of coffee and told me he and his wife would be back in the morning to make breakfast for me! I had the whole place to myself! He gave me a corner room on the second floor with views of the lake. This is the on the first day:

And the next day after it snowed all night:


The first day I hiked across a lava field:

And then took this road...

to what I thought were the Myvatn Nature Baths....

...but turned out to be a factory. So I walked back to the hotel, had another cup of coffee and settled in for the night at about 4pm. It was pretty dark, and in a village of 210 people in the low-season of tourism, not a single restaurant or business was open! The next day, I had a beautiful breakfast, all laid out just for me. The hotel owner told me Max, the Estonian maintenance man would drive me to the Myvatn Nature Baths anytime, and so that's how I spent my second day in Reykjalid.

It was so luxurious! I had the whole complex to myself; again no tourists at this time of year and the locals don't hit the baths until after work. These baths were really different than the Blue Lagoon near Reykjavik. The waters in Myvatn are full of sulfur and not silica. So while the scent takes a little getting used to, my hair wasn't ruined by silica for the next week. At Myvatn, I enjoyed the mountain views, the falling snow and a better sense of actually being outside in the middle of nowhere. The Blue Lagoon is fantastic, but much more commercial and there aren't any views of mountains or landscape.

Here are some photos from a long, gray walk I took last weekend:

First, some kitty footprints I always walk by on my way to the ocean.

Here is the coastal path I walked along. It was a pretty wet day!

The biggest cormorant ever! Just kidding, it's a sculpture.

I ended up coming upon a beach that closed for the winter in mid-September.

So I relaxed on the big lawn chairs.

I got to a kind of forest and found this little guy. Rabbits aren't native to Iceland and this one was probably a pet someone let loose. He let me get pretty close.

Some WW2 bunkers, apparently.

A cat on top of a theatre.

The sun eventually came out.

Icelandic Parliament:

A church next to the Parliament.

Cafe Paris (with the black awning) where I had a coffee. One of my favourite places to read a book for a couple of hours.

The view from Cafe Paris; a busy little intersection. The red building is a big post office.


Oh! And fyi, tomorrow the sun will rise at 10:11 AM and set at 4:14 PM. Yowzers! If you're dying to further develop your SAD symptoms, come visit me! I'm only here for 4 more weeks!

Last weekend I walked to Selfjarnarnes which is a kind of suburb of Reykjavik:

It has an offshore island accessible only at low-tide which is where the light house is.

A modern turf-roofed house.

I was really looking for Rauða Ljónið (Red Lion) which is supposed to be the largest pub in the world, but I couldn't find it!

This and that

I haven't much to report lately. I've been doing a lot of school work and even started studying for my exams! I've never started this far in advance, but I'm getting a little anxious. I'm also planning a quick trip to a northern city called Akureyri, so stayed tuned.

I've been reading a couple of blog written by Icelanders. Icecook is about Icelandic recipes and food culture, and The Iceland Weather Report is about Icelandic popular culture and where I usually find out about current events in Iceland, considering I can't (or don't even try really) read the local newspapers. One recent entry in the Weather Report is about how a group of Hell's Angels tried to unsuccessfully get past immigration, not for the first time, at Keflavik airport. Apparently there is already an established motorcycle gang here (with their headquarters behind an unnamed university residence) who is not part of the Hells Angels, but are desperately trying. So far Icelandic police have kept the Hell's Angels from even getting into Iceland, which keeps the local gang from officially joining their club.

On a totally un-Iceland-related note, I found a great recipe website called SOS Cuisine. Once you've registered and chosen your province, it will give you tons of information and recipes about and using fruit and vegetables in season in your area. If you shop at the main grocery chains, you can also use this site to see the prices of these seasonal fruits and vegetables.

Anywhoo, here's a little trick, courtesy of my friend Sean, I'm including just because I've got nothing else to report.

The rules:

1. Open your library (iTunes, Winamp, Media Player, iPod, etc)
2. Put it on shuffle
3. Press play
4. For every question, type the song that's playing
5. When you go to a new question, press the next button
6. Don't lie and try to pretend you’re cool

Opening Credits: "'Popplagið" - Sigur Rós
First Day At School: "Get To The Table On Time" - M. Ward
Falling In Love: "Dans les Rues de Paris" - Powersolo
Fight Song: "Baby Cool" - Oliver North Boy Choir
Prom: "Wishbone" - Architecture in Helsinki
Life's OK: "Mad World" - Gary Jules - what the?!
Mental Breakdown: "Only Love Can Break Your Heart" - Neil Young
Driving: "The Gulag Orkestar" - Beirut
Flashback: "On Our Way" - Yo La Tengo
Getting Back Together: "If It Smashes Down" - My Morning Jacket
Wedding: "Riddle of the Chamberlain" - Helium - this is AWFUL! I don't even know where this song came from!?
Birth of Child: "I Believe in You" - Neil Young
Final Battle: "Ikke Rigtig I Mit Hoved" - The Sterling - blech, this if off an Airwaves cd, gotta get rid of that stuff
Death Scene: "Happiness Writes White" - Harvey Danger
Funeral Song: "They Were Kings" - Going Out With The Heavy Trash
End Credits: "Samskeyti" - Sigur Rós

Neato! I started and ended with a Sigur Rós song.
Popplagið means pop song, and Samskeyti means seam or joint.

And without further ado...
Sigur Rós's Samskeyti

I walked along the waterfront today to find Jon Gunnar Arnason's The Sun Voyager. And here it is:




iPod what?!

The first snow!

This is the view from my room window:

And the front of the building which looks out onto Tjornin and the city.

It's snowing great big flakes of fluffy snow right now! It feels like Christmas!

Perland revisisted

Yesterday I took a walk to Perlan, my second visit. You may recall my first somewhat disappointing visit. I decided I need to have a coffee with a nice view. Before:

And after:
That little glass cup of pink sweetness was strawberry mouse. Many cafes have them in a variety of flavours, including chocolate and pistachio. Here are a couple of views from the observation deck at Perlan:


Last night also marked the occasion of our first "Second-floor-get-together" in the "common room". The "common room" is a big room where the hotel guests (this residence operates as a hotel during the summer) have their free breakfast. This is Theo and Camilla deep in conversation:

And here are Lucas and Todd:

That oval dish with the white things on top was made by our only Italian exchange student, Claudia. It was delicious. Those are eggs on top. It's Sardinian and called pane frattau. It's made with a crispy bread called carasau. The bread is dipped in steaming water, laid on the platter than covered in tomato sauce and parmesan for about 6 layers, then the eggs are placed on top. Claudia went back to Sardinia during the school break and smuggled back the bread, cheese and some delicious Sardinian sausage. Yum!!

I forgot to talk about something Mark and I did while he was here: our swim in the Blue Lagoon. From Wikipedia:

"The warm waters are rich in minerals like silica and sulfur and bathing in the Blue Lagoon is reputed to help many people suffering from skin diseases such as psoriasis. The water temperature in the bathing and swimming area of the lagoon averages 40 °C (104 °F).The lagoon is fed by the water output of a nearby geothermal power plant. Superheated water is vented from the ground near a lava flow and used to run turbines that generate electricity. After going through the turbines, the steam and hot water passes through a heat exchanger to provide heat for a municipal hot water heating system. Then the water is fed into the lagoon for recreational and medicinal users to bathe in."

It's really a huge hot bath. There are little stations where you can scoop out handfuls of silica mud and rub it all over your face and body and then just keep floating around and rinse it off whenever you want. We stayed until closing; the air temperature was 0 degrees and we couldn't see 5 feet in front of us because of all the steam. Those little islands with the grey boxes on top are where the hot water is pumped from, so the closer you get to them, the hotter the water is; so hot I couldn't float within a foot of them for very long.

And finally, here is a video for Hello Seahorse's song I Won't Say Anything - it's really catchy and the whole album was mixed* by Mark!



*what is mixing? mixing is when the volumes of different instruments, voices and other sounds in a recording are balanced to sound good (good could mean anything to any different person though). after something is recorded, it doesn't necessarily sound very good, the instruments' volumes are all out of balance. the singer might feel her voice is too quiet for example and so the mixer must adjust it.

Photos and videos

I fixed the link that leads to ALL the pictures taken during my road trip. Here it is again. There are some videos too! Or you can watch them below. I admit to feeling apprehensive about showing them; you can hear my voice and Mark cussing! I know, I'm a prude.



ICELAND

1. The highway out of Reykjavik. It's four lanes, but that's only in and around the city. It changes to two lanes later. You can see steam coming from bore holes. The further east we went, the less steam we saw coming from the ground.

2. Mark praising the European grocery store and me dissing him.

3. Sideways Selfoss.

4. Sellfoss (waterfall) off of the highway which you can walk behind. I'm obviously impressed in the video!

5. Jökulsárlon, the iceberg glacier. It was FREEZING and WINDY!!

6. Sheep walking on the "highway" - imagine if that happened on the 401? And horses and farms and mountains.

7. In Skaftafell National Park - Europe's biggest national park!

8. Mark's arty video.

9. At the top of the mountain next to Skogarfoss and me talking about that guy August who lived in Akureyri.

10. Gullfoss; notice how icy the part where the tourists, including us, are standing. I doubt tourists would be allowed anywhere near something that dangerous in Canada!

11. Sideways Geysir.

12. The shore near my house.

Finally some pictures!

Here are some of the highlights of my week off with Mark. If you want to see ALL the photos, click here.

Skogarfoss is one of the waterfalls we stopped to admire. This is the map of the entire village of Skogar, about 4 streets.

Here is Mark in front of the waterfall:

This is the path up the mountain along the side:

Here is the view from the top of the path. This is the kind of thing we constantly saw from the road. Farmhouses nestled at the foot of these mountains.

And me leaping!

We also visited Jökulsárlón, which is a kind of iceberg lagoon. Pieces of the glacier calve away and float out to sea.

Me freezing cold! I wanted to enjoy it so much, but it was incredibly windy and chilly!

When we drove up to the first hostel we stayed at, there were two sheep sitting on the front porch. It was surreal. I wasn't sure if they were real or not.

On our way home, we stopped to see Gullfoss and Geysir, both of which I've visited before, but this time it wasn't raining.

Me waiting for Geysir to erupt!


We stopped to relax at this empty beach:
There's our little Chevrolet Matiz in the distance!


Another lovely waterfall and me on the path to see it.


A couple of hot dogs:

And Plants and Animals at 12 Tonar in Reykjavik.