Iceland: The Food And The Water

I happened to mention pizza and hot dogs in yesterday's post about Iceland -- and that's all anyone latched onto.  :(
Look, folks, I've traveled to 25 different countries, 25 different states in the US, and two territories (one US, one UK).  I can assure you that not every place has haute cuisine or even a decent greasy spoon.  Before I went to China, for example, I always told people that I really liked Chinese food.  Well, after three and a half weeks in China, I was ready to say that what I actually liked was Chinese American food.  In fact, I'd never been so happy to eat at a McDonald's in my life as I was the time they dropped us off at one three weeks into the tour.  Sure, I liked lotus root and the Asian pears in China. And I'm not a picky eater, but after having to eat cubed, cold goose fat; hot camel hoof soup; stewed duck tongue; fried duck tongue; and various meats I couldn't identify, I was gravitating (when I was given a choice) toward noodles and whatever mystery veggies I could find.
English food is pretty grim as well: seriously overcooked vegetables, salads that were more mayo than lettuce, bland meat.  And the Scots?  Well, as much as I love that country, the only native foods I actually liked were haggis, neeps, tatties, and IRN-BRU.  Sometime I'll post on some of the weird things I found there.
In contrast, Germany, Austria, and Italy have great food.  And Spain's not bad either.  Hungary was a tasty place, and Finland was pretty good.
France -- ugh!  I have no idea why people talk about French food like it's good.  Every single thing I every ate there on two different trips was mediocre at best.  I remember one "salad" with dandelion greens, chunks of "bacon" which still had skin and bristles on it, and a poached egg on top.

All that being said, let me sum up Iceland this way: Go for the scenery, not the culinary experience.

Lonely Planet raved about the lamb soup at the hot pots.  Sival, our guide raved about the lamb soup at the hot pots.  I tried it; it was mediocre at best.  (I did find a deli sandwich of lamb, mayo, and cooked peas which was quite tasty, however.)
Sival also raved about Icelandic tomatoes, which are grown in hot houses from supposedly virgin soil (never used for plants before, so therefore theoretically packed with minerals).  Every tomato I had in Iceland was mealy. I was unimpressed.
So, what was good to eat in Iceland?
Well, Lonely Planet recommended this hot dog shop in the city center of Reykjavik.

Lonely Planet was right: these hot dogs were awesome!
At the recommendation of LP, I ordered what appeared to be the house specialty dog.  I forget what it was called, but it was huge, sausage-like dog, grilled and served with bacon, wilted red cabbage, fried onion, and mayo on a pannini-type "roll."  It was absolutely delicious!
It was also about $10.00.  But then everything is over-priced in Iceland.
Another food item on which LP was spot-on was Skyr.

Skyr is an Icelandic yogurt so thick that it makes Greek yogurt seem soft and runny in comparison.  It comes in flavors appealing to Americans: strawberry, banana, vanilla.  (Not like yogurt in the UK which comes in flavors like gooseberry.)  The sample in this photo was "banana split," which was a banana/chocolate/vanilla combo.
Skyr is wonderful stuff.  I hope some ambitious American company will start importing it soon.

So, lamb, the hot dogs, and Skyr.  That was about it for tasty stuff in Iceland.  The rest of it ranged from mediocre to ... well, mediocre.

And then there was the water.

I don't think anyone in Iceland has a hot water heater.
The cold water tastes very good; the hot water smells like the hot pots.  And it comes out SCALDING!  You have to be super-careful.  It's also so soft that it's impossible to tell if you've washed all the soap off or not.
I didn't mind the water situation, but it certainly was different.

Iceland: The Golden Circle Tour

On my last day in Iceland, I did the popular Golden Circle Tour.  I was fortunate to have Sival as a guide, as he was well-educated and knew a great deal about geology, energy, and history.

Let me share with you a few photos of some of the stunning things I saw.  Remember to click on the pics to enlarge them.

One of the first things we did was to tour a geothermal power plant.  Did you know that Iceland runs its electricity, gets its heat, melts snow off the roads, and gets all its hot water from drilling down into the ground near earthquake fault lines?  I only knew about the heating system before my visit there.  I was also stunned to learn that Utah could do the same thing.  However, since it would be good for the environment and not require a whole lot of people to run the system once it was in place, it's unlikely that the Utah legislature would even consider such a thing.  After all, Utah's government officials passed laws to force teachers to teach the importance of coal mining because they (the legislators) believed we were teaching kids too much about alternative energy forms which were better for the environment.

We then got to see this waterfall nicknamed Faxi.  We also learned about salmon fishing in Iceland.  (See the salmon ladder on the left of the falls?)

It was then on to Kerid, a volcanic crater used in Goldfinger.

This is Gullfoss, a powerful, two-tiered waterfall that the British were going to dam for hydro-electric power.  Fortunately, they were interrupted by WWII, and then they lost their rights to the land.  It's hard to imagine what the world would have lost had they succeeded.  (Notice the people on the path and ledge and you'll get a feel for the size of this thing.)

Eventually, we made it to the Geyser Hot Springs area, which is sort of a mini-Yellowstone.

Hot pots and wildflowers.

This is Geysir, "The Gusher," which is the original geyser that gave us the word.  However, it's no longer a geyser, but just a hot pot now.

This geyser is Strokker, the churn.  It goes off about every five minutes, usually in two blasts.  It's only about 50 feet away from Geysir.

Our last stop was Thingvellir National Park.  This is where the North American and Eurasian plates are moving apart at the rate of an inch per year.  The fault lines are pretty obvious here.  Also, the water here, both in the streams and in the lake, is so pure and clear that you can see everything in it.  The lake is very popular for scuba diving.
This park is also where the ancient vikings held parliament, as there is a rock formation here which makes a perfect podium on a ledge.  (I wanted to hike up to it, but my back was giving me too much trouble.)  It was at one of these parliament meetings in about the year 1000 that they voted to switch from paganism to Christianity.  The Thingvellir Church is a reminder of that event (although the church isn't all that old).

After a long day of touring, I was dropped back at my hotel.  Unfortunately, as this was a weekend, all the local (and by "local," I mean about 3/4 a mile away) cafes were shut up but one (as they catered to employees in the area, not to tourists).  This Icelandic pizza was my best option for dinner.

It was a soggy crust with chicken, mushrooms, sun-dried tomatoes, and peanuts.  The school lunch pizzas are more appetizing than this.  Ugh.
(The best meal I had in Iceland was at the hot dog shop in the town square on my first full day there.)

Iceland: The South Shore

Iceland is a country with desolate lava deserts and incredible, glacier-fed waterfalls.  I took a bus tour along the south shore of the country on my second day there.  Here are a few of the highlights.
(Click on the photos to enlarge them.)

This is the majestic Skogafoss, some 200 feet high and producing a enough spray to make visitors need rain gear.
I found this awesome, in the original sense of the word.

The rock formations look like those along the Oregon Coast, but this is the black sand beach of Vik i Myrdal, with tremendous gusts of wind and dangerous waves.  Backing the beach are basalt columned cliffs and small caves.  It's no place to put down your beach towel and go for a dip, but it is very dramatic.

This is a corrugated metal bridge over what amounts to a huge arroyo from glaciers and lava.  At this point in the tour, I had been handed off to a 20-year-old employee of the tiny Hofn airport, as the tour company had made a mistake and had not put me on the correct tour.  The upside of this was that the girl let me stop wherever and take photos; the downside was that she had no college education and really didn't know much about a lot of things, including place names (even in Icelandic).  Therefore, I haven't yet been able to figure out exactly which glacier that is which we're approaching in this photo.

Here's a closer view of the glacier.  We drove right up to the base, but it didn't look as dramatic up close as it did from a distance.

Here's another waterfall by the side of the road.  I don't think this is a famous one, so I'm not sure if I'll ever learn if it even has a name.
But don't worry; I plan another post with photos of more really spiffy waterfalls from my tour into Iceland's version of Yellowstone.

Iceland: Reykjavik Harbor

On my first full day in Iceland, the weather cleared up to be gorgeous in the afternoon.  I took a boat tour of the harbor.
Here are a couple of the best photos for you.  (Remember to click on them to enlarge them.)

Here's the harbor itself.  It's not very big, but then, Iceland doesn't even have half a million inhabitants in the entire country.  That dark building in the back is an arts/concert center designed with faceted glass blocks that resemble the basalt pillars so common on the island (also in Northern Ireland and the Hebrides of Scotland, such as on Staffa).  It's a very pretty building.

The Icelandic flag is in the foreground, and Reykjavik (as viewed from the back of a boat) is visible behind.

Iceland: Jökulsárlón, the Glacier Lagoon

At the end of June, I went to Iceland.  I'd never been, and it had been in my mind ever since I'd had two Icelandic kitchenmates when I lived in Scotland.  In fact, I even had a trip all planned before the volcano blew in 2010.

At any rate, I finally made it.  And, in spite of my back's acting up and causing me lots and lots of scary pain, I did manage to see quite a lot.  

I took 1057 photos, which is hardly what Max would have taken, but I do think it's a bit much for a single blog post. :)  So I thought I'd just do a post on my very favorite thing that I saw there: Jökulsárlón, or the Glacier Lagoon.

I'd seen glaciers before in Canada and Switzerland -- and I saw more in Norway later on this same trip. But I'd never seen an iceberg before this.

The  Breiðamerkurjökull glacier (no, I can't pronounce that either) melts into a lake, which, in turn, flows out to the sea from a very short (like, 2 blocks long) river.  The lake, the river, and the black lava sand beach are filled with small icebergs.  Some of the icebergs have a layer of ash from the 2010 volcano.  Arctic terns, which look like mini seagulls, are everywhere.  It's desolate but totally beautiful. It's one of the most amazing things I've ever seen.

Here are a few photos so you can glimpse what I saw.  (Remember to click on the pics to enlarge them.)

This is the lagoon with the glacier in the background.  You can see a man and a small boat on the shore for size reference.

Notice the volcanic ash on some of the icebergs.  And isn't that blue just such an attractive color?

Again, people on the shore give you a size reference.  These are not icebergs like the one that sank the Titanic; they're tiny by iceberg standards.  But they are lovely.

Here are the small remains of icebergs on the black lava sand and gravel beach.

Naturally, I plan to post more Iceland stuff later.  Stay tuned. :)