Tag: Reykjavik

Seven Final Thoughts on Iceland

  1. It is expensive! Remember it is expensive. As a young hostel guest I heard say, “Is nothing in this county cheap?” The answer of course is no. Not sure but by vote of every one in my hostel, Reykjavik seemed the most expensive city in Europe to them. More than Stockholm or London or Oslo. Buyer beware because you are going to spend some dough. Icelandic Kroner is about 106 to a US Dollar. So if you divide everything by 100 you will get a pretty accurate price.

Example – 1500 ISK for a beer (very usual) is in reality to a US citizen – 15 US Dollars almost. That is an expensive beer.

It is cheap to get to Iceland because the government heavily subsidizes the airlines to Reykjavik, but once they have you – look out. They are after the tourist dollar to correct the horrible financial crash that they went through in 2008 and 09 and are still feeling. So there are no deals in Reykjavik.

  1. It is wet! Bring rain gear, and I mean rain slickers, rain pants, boots. You will not need it all the time, but there are days and places that you are going to need it big time and you will not know when. Also all the weather clothes in Reykjavik for this type of weather – (lets say it together) are EXPENSIVE!

On the day that I went to Black Sand Beach outside of Vik, and the waterfall that you can walk behind – I was drenched to the bone. I had a rain poncho but with the strong wind that day, it made no difference. I wanted a rain suit or at least water proof pants.

3. It is beautiful. Amazingly so. A new vista, a new waterfall, a new cove, a new glacier, and new volcano just around every corner. Get out of Reykjavik. By car, by bus or tour bus, by boat, just get out and see this amazing place.

4. Rent a car if you can. The tour buses are great tours make no mistake – but they are on a time table. Slow down and enjoy this beautiful island. The Golden Circle tour is 8 hours and 69 dollars and while the day was great, most of it was on the bus. The Southern Coast tour was wet, wild and fun, but we were gone of 11 hours and most was riding from point A to point B. The cost for both trips was 170 US over two days and 17 hours of riding and getting out and running around because we usually had about 45 minutes to see everything. The day I rented a car with Canadian lawyer, Andrew Guerra the car cost us about 140 US with gas and we saw a lot of things that were not on a tour, but also things that were. Cost wise, it is better to share with someone if you can. Even a stranger that you meet at your hotel or hostel. Everyone wants to see the same things, and this way is cheaper and you move at your own pace.

5. No need to do the Blue Lagoon. It is a thermal with blue water for about 120 US. Pretty and it has a bar! A 30 minute bus ride out of town.

For a 20 minute walk through lovely Reykjavik and 1200 Kroner (12 dollars US), I had a great afternoon at one of the two local bathing houses/thermal pools in Reykjavik itself. Cheaper, not touristy, locals all around and you can meet some very interesting people.

Word to the wise, Reykjaviks are not hung up by nudity. Not in public so much, but in the locker rooms. In the pool areas, everyone has proper bathing suits on, but in the locker room flesh everywhere. Only speaking for the male side here, but young boys, old men, all colors, every male I saw walking around in the locker not covering with a towel at all. For people from some cultures, it can be a little shocking at first. But since they already have what you have and have seen their own, they do not care about yours. So relax and enjoy yourself. The heated water by volcano is wonderful.

6. If you came to Reykjavik to party and drink. Please be responsible. But save some money and get a local app called “Appyhour”. It is an app that you can load on your phone that tells you when every happy hour in every bar in Reykjavik is. Since they all have different or rolling happy hours, some starting as early as 2 PM, you and your friends can move from bar to bar and save money. Sometimes a lot. Remember a beer at regular price is 12 to 15 dollars, this app will let you drink for about 7 to 8 dollars per beer. Depending on your intake that could be a lot of money.

It is very easy to get around in the party area of Reykjavik. You walk everywhere. Cabs are EXPENSIVE. They are not many police, but the bouncers at these bars do not take any crap. They are nice and professional, the ones I saw and talked too. But if you bring trouble, you are gone and in a not so gentle hurry. So behave!

  1. Please do not throw your trash around. Seriously. Every Icelander I spoke with told me how upset at how their country is filling up with trash at all the natural sites. They take amazing pride in the country and treat it as a sacred place. Tourists do not. Especially the Americans and Chinese seem to be the worst to them. So pick up after yourself, throw your stuff away – plenty of garbage cans everywhere and do not treat Iceland like your trash can please.

Enjoy!

Last Day in Iceland

On my last full day in Reykjavik, I rented a car with my new Canadian friend, Andrew. He had not been to Thingvillier National Park yet, and I felt like I had not had enough time when I went there on the first bus tour that I took so that is where we headed first.

Photo Credit Andrew Guerra

Located about forty kilometers from Reykjavik, Thingvillier holds a very special place in Icelandic history. It is where they established the parliament or the Althing when the Vikings first arrived in the mid-900’s. They came to Iceland to escape a Norwegian chieftain who was uniting all the different factions in a bid to be the first king of Norway. It would work, he became Harald Fairhair. Plus they wanted more farmland they felt that Norway was overcrowded in 940 AD.

Interesting fact is that while Iceland (known as Islandia) had been known for hundreds of years. A Greek scholar referred to it in 4 BC, it was totally uninhabited when the Vikings arrived. They brought cows, sheep, horses, seeds, wives and slaves. The slaves were mostly from Ireland which the Vikings had been raiding for some time by the mid-900’s. As a matter of fact, the city of Dublin was first a Viking outpost. Rumors about that time has that the original city wall around Dublin built by the Vikings (called the Pale) was built not to keep Irish hordes out, but to keep Viking men inside because they desired Irish women so much. This is also rumored to be where the term “beyond the Pale” comes from. When the men left and did not come back, they had gone “beyond the Pale”. I do no have factual back up for this theory as it is just an age old rumor in Dublin, but current DNA studies done by the Icelandic government have proved while 80% of the original men that came to the island were Viking and 20% were Irish (most likely slaves), the original women who came were 60% Irish and 40% Viking. Most of those women were wives and not slaves. Thus the island while claiming to be Viking the actual original population was 60% Viking and 40% Irish.

Iceland was the only part of Europe that was not directly ruled by a King so a ruling council was set up that met once a year at Thingvillier for two weeks or more that made laws and rulings on how the land would be ruled. The council was only run by the ruling chieftains, but in it way it was the first democracy in Europe since Athens in Greece in 500 BC.

Chieftains decided on a “law giver” or a judge whose word was final. The Law Giver had to learn by heart all the rules and laws of the new land in order to offer fair judgement. So for the first three days of each Althing every year, the Law Giver would recite in public all the laws. It could take him up to three days to do this, and after this the trials and meetings of the council would begin.

Thingvillier was where this took place, but it was also a social and economic gathering as well. Merchants, traders, and slavers would all bring their offerings to buy and trade. In some cases, people would travel for up to two weeks in order to attend this gathering.

Executions and judgements were also handed down and performed at this annual meeting of the island’s people. The executions could be anything from hanging from the rocks, or drowning in one of the ice-cold lakes, or beheading. All in public view, so people saw the laws and punishment carried out.  And the gathering or Althing would go meeting for several hundred years in one form or another.

The current Thingvillier is a park where people come from all over the world to see another very important gathering that takes place every day. This is the only place above ground where the North American and European tectonic plates can be seen. The plates are currently moving away from each other at a rate of 4 meters a year making Thingvillier an ever-changing place of incredible rock formations and water falls and lakes and streams. The water is crystal clear here as it runs off the nearby glacier Langjokull and you can go diving (only in a wet suit because the water is so cold) and actually go inside the rift between the plates.

Andrew Guerra leaving 1st Icelandic Church

Thingvillier is also where it was decided by the Law Giver to move from Paganism to Christianity. This was done in 1000 AD at the Althing. Both sides presented their cases to why one religion should lead to the Law Giver, and he decided which one would be the official choice of the people. Christianity won, but the decision was very wise. You would be Christian in public and by law, but if you wished to continue to be Pagan and worship the Norse Gods of Odin and Thor and Loki in private that was totally accepted. This way Iceland avoided the bloodshed that most of Europe was swept up in during this long epic transition.

Prime Minister Summer Residence

For that reason, the first church built in Iceland was constructed here in 1000 AD, and the church is still standing. It has been rebuilt and moved around the park because of the tectonic plate shifts, but the symbol is very strong. And the history and place of Thingvillier in the minds of Icelanders is so strong that the ceremonial summer home of the Prime Minister is also located here. IT is only used for official occasions and ceremonies, but this place seems to be the symbolic center of the country.

Kerio Volcanic Crater

After an hour, we went to see a nearby volcanic crater, Kerio which was created about 6500 years ago, but now looks like a giant swimming pool (but really, really deep one).

James Carey at Kerio

Then we had a very expensive lunch (no surprise) of lamb soup and pizza (surprisingly excellent) at a small hotel restaurant outside of Silfoss . Then we drove along the southern coast back toward Reykjavik through an ancient lava debris field that looked like you on some other world. Movies like Ridley Scott’s movie, Prometheus, and Thor, Dark World and Game of Thrones have used the strange magical environment of Iceland to create their other worlds. It was a very pleasant last day in Iceland and we had beautiful sunshine until the drive back when rain and dark clouds made the lava field even more ghostly.

Note is you are renting a car here in Iceland like everything else here it is expensive, but there are plenty of firms to choose from. Gas or petrol at the moment costs almost 7 dollars US a gallon. However, here they use liters and not gallons.

Enjoy Iceland if you get a chance.

 

 

Tiny Horses and an Icelandic Penis Museum

This is an odd combination with no apparent connection except one definitely needs the other, and both are simply just Icelandic.

Tiny Horses

The Icelandic horse is a very rare breed found no where else on the Earth. They are not native to Iceland. They are very small, most the size of a pony in other breeds. They were brought with the first Norse settlers between the 9th and 10th century, and have blood lines that are traced by DNA all the way back to Mongolian horses. The Mongolian bloodline can be traced to Swedish traders who brought that horse back to Scandinavia in earlier centuries. The imported Mongol horse  bloodlines have contributed to the Fjord, Shetland and Connemara breeds, all of which have been found to be genetically linked to the Icelandic horse.

The bloodlines in Iceland have been kept pure for over 1000 years.  Natural selection possibly played a major role in the development of the breed, as large numbers of other imported breeds through the centuries died from lack of food and exposure to the harsh Icelandic elements.

As a result of their isolation from other horses, disease in the breed within Iceland is mostly unknown.  The low prevalence of disease in Iceland is maintained by laws preventing horses exported from the country being returned, and by requiring that all equine equipment taken into the country be either new and unused or fully disinfected. Plus no other horse breeds can be imported into Iceland thus keeping the Icelandic breed free of outside diseases that they have no immunity too.

The Icelandic Penis Museum

Located right in the heart of Reykjavik, is the only known museum of its kind in the world. And to use a catch phrase of the museum’s marketing department “Seeing is believing”.

The Icelandic Phallological Museum possesses a unique collection of penis samples from every type of mammal found in the country. The collection contains more than 200 penises belonging to all the land and sea mammals that can be found in and around Iceland including over 60 specimens belonging to 17 different types of whales. There are penises from a polar bear, seals, walrus and the most interesting ones belonging to 3 Homo Sapiens.

Penis salt and pepper shakers

The museum proudly displays these three legally-certified gifts from humans to the museum including one that was named by its former owner as “Elmo”.

In addition to the biological elements, the museum also has a collection of over 300 artistic oddities and other practical utensils related to the chosen theme of the museum.

The museum is very popular for the very reason that you are reading this – it is odd and unusual. While the main thrust (pardon the pun) is a real scientific one, the museum certainly plays to the public perception of a building full of human penises and the images that brings to mind. It is fun, odd. weird, and certainly worth about an hour of your time because you will never see anything like it anywhere else. The museum is open every day of the week. The address is:

The Icelandic Phallological Museum, Laugavegi 116, 105 Reykjavik.

Phone number: +354-561-6663

Web address: phallus@phallus.is, www.phallus.is.

Entry fee is 1500 ISK which breaks down to about 15 US dollars. Children under 13 are free, and 13 to 18 are half price.

Enjoy!

 

Walks, Statues, and a Wonderful Restaurant – Reykjavik

My second day in Reykjavik, I woke up and had breakfast in the tiny but well equipped kitchen at 101 Hostel, and set out for the day.

First, I bought a bus tour for the Golden Circle tour which is a series of stops just outside of Reykjavik featuring geysers, waterfalls, the Hellisheidavirkjun turbine and generator and Thingvellir National Park rift valley. The tour lasts for about 6 hours. That was for Day 3.

Than I wandered down to the Old Harbor for some amazing scenic views of Reykjavik and the surrounding area. The day was overcast in the city area, but just across the bay the sunlight played off the far hills and bluffs. The truly clear Icelandic air made everything vivid and pop.

Than a long walk through the city to the National Museum of Iceland where I got to experience how this beautiful city is laid out and filled with parks. Also some really interesting architecture is featured throughout the city, and very interesting use of space like the parking lot that is under Lake Tjornin that Reykjavik City Hall sits on. Plus there is lots of public art in the parks and other open spaces.

The National Museum is small but has a permanent exhibition on the settling of Iceland featuring the early settlers, their written history, how Christianity became the accepted religion, the plight of being ruled by first by Norway and than Denmark, and how their sense of national identity evolved. There is a large section on the influence of the church first Catholic, and than a rather harsh forced conversion to Lutheran teachings. There is also a section where anyone, but especially children can actually touch and even put on a chain-mail suit of armor, hold a real size battle shield, and put on a real Viking battle helmet.

On the lower floor was a wonderful photo exhibit by an Icelandic amateur photographer Bjorn Bjornsson, who documented wildlife, people, and vistas while living in a wild part of Iceland that could only be reached by boat until the 1980’s. Really powerful and interesting images.

Back to the hostel for dinner, then back out to find the much discussed Reykjavik night life of bands, non-stop dancing and parties. I am afraid that it is not all that. I may have missed the real hot spots, but Dublin’s Temple Bar is pretty much the same atmosphere. While Reykjavik does go late on the weekends – some places stay open till 5 AM – but not any real wonderful bands or DJ or night spots did I see or experience. Just a lot of tourists drinking expensive beers and going to the same 50 places up and down Laugavegur Street and the side streets.

 

I did find a really interesting restaurant on Laugavegur that is just opening and serves great food and drinks plus has amazing service. Sumac has already gotten really excellent reviews on Tripadvisor.com, and is still in the tryout phase. Owner/chef Prainn Freyr Vigfusson has created a really great eatery with excellent personal service and attention to detail and quality. He showed me around the restaurant, and told me his plans for his private dinner room and future expansion. Sumac is located in the ION City Hotel which is part of a small chain in Iceland known as Ion Adventure Hotels. This is a real gem and I wish him a lot of success.

Also met his lovely girlfriend, Katrin Sif Einadsdottir who was helping out as hostess. Katrin is Icelandic but with South American heritage. She also lived in Canada and got a Masters at Berkeley in the USA. She returned to Iceland to complete a second Master in Icelandic History, and continue her first love which is giving private horse-riding tours to small groups in the back country of Iceland that can last up to 6 to 10 days. For more information on what sounds like an amazing adventure contact her through www.ishestar.is.

After a really nice time at Sumac with Katrin and Prainn, I returned to the hostel to get ready for touring the countryside of Iceland.

 

Iceland – Day 1 – Reykjavik

So I left LA at 9:50 PM on WOW Airlines, and the reason that they are WOW is that they charge for everything. Leg room, carry-on luggage, every bag that you put in the hold, and ALL food items. You get nothing for free. WOW. The fare was cheap, but by the time you add seat selection, plus checking a bag that was 23K (the industry standard), but for WOW their limit is 20K, the total cost increased by 147 dollars. The bag alone was 135 dollars that includes 75 dollars to check and an extra 60 dollars for the 3 kilos over.

Other than that cost, the flight was very smooth to Reykjavik. Nine hours non-stop. I arrived at 1:35 PM and breezed through customs. You have to take either a taxi or buses into town because the national airport is about 27 kilometers from the city. There are no trains. I used Gray Lines for about 25 dollars, but there are a couple other bus lines that I also noticed.

Hallgrímskirkja church

I was staying at 101 Hostel, really nice family hostel run by Svava and her daughter Sara right in the middle of Reykjavik’s city centre. Perfect for shopping, walking around the city, dining and the famous Reykjavik night life.

Reykjavik at 11 PM

Food in Reykjavik is very expensive as is everything else as well. So I am buying food at a chain store known as Bonus, and cooking at the hostel. An example of the eating out expense is a beer is about 12 dollars, a simple hamburger could be 17 or more dollars, and a steak could be as much as or more than 50 dollars (in not an expensive place). The money here known as the Icelandic Kroner (ISK) and is about 100 ISK to one US Dollar. So all the prices are like 5000.00 ISK or 2250.00 ISK, and those break down to about 50 US and 22.50 US. Not exactly but close enough if you always divide by 100.

By this time it was about 4 PM and I was exhausted. I crashed for a bit and took a nap. I woke up around 9 PM to full sunshine outside and went walking around the city centre to get a feel for the place. You can tell the Icelanders very quickly. They are walking around in shirt sleeves or light jackets (it is their summer), the tourists are in coats with hats and scarves. The projected temp for the time I am in Iceland is 57 degrees F daytime and 45 degrees F at night. Summer indeed.

Hallgrímskirkja church

Did some sightseeing. The image above is the famous Hallgrímskirkja Church, the unofficial image of Reykjavik. In front of it is the statue of Leif Eriksson, son of Iceland and the man who discovered North America for the Europeans. He called it Vinland and landed there about 400 years before Columbus. The statue is a gift from the United States to Iceland.

Lief Eriksson
From the USA to Iceland.

I sampled some of the local beer in two places – first the American Bar, which I can vouch that there was not one American in the place, but a whole bunch of hard drinking Icelanders. A really great band playing American rock songs in perfect English but talking to the audience in Icelandic was fun to hear. While thumbing through my phone looking at the photos I had taken so far, I realized there was an older man standing right in front of me just staring at me. I asked him if I could help him, and he repeated back to me “Can I help you?” Being somewhat confused now by him, he began telling me that he disliked Americans and Trump. I told him I was Canadian to avoid any problems, and he hugged me than walked away.

The next place was a cute Irish bar called the Drunken Rabbit. Fun place where I met a couple from Boston who had driven the Ring Road (the road all the way around Iceland). They were amazed at the beauty of Iceland and all the different types of terrain. The only drawback was the car rental for a week that was 1000 dollars. Everything is expensive in Iceland.

I wandered home about 1:30 AM and it was still light comparable too early twilight. Great first day in Iceland.

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