recap central: england, day one. newcastle / newton aycliffe.

i’m sitting outside the porch of our apartment, and it’s hot as heck. i’m like, sweating. anyway. it’s kind of hard to see computer screens in the sun. i’m kind of at a standstill for working, so why don’t i do the next best thing?recap on the numerous trips i went on and never wrote about! supposed to go to turkey on wednesday, but we’re not sure if it’s going to happen right now, because we have to transfer a flight at heathrow in london, and well, heathrow just canceled all their flights for monday yesterday. we’re at the complete mercy of the great icelandic volcano. which is great, actually. i mean, it’s inconvenient, but by god! the developed world doesn’t really feel the power of nature all that often, know what i mean? earthquakes are always conveniently in the poor countries. (it’s a conspiracy!)

saturday, february 27th, 2010.
I was leaving Iceland really ass early in the morning, and completely didn’t plan for the fact that the bus system there is suited for their small number of people — meaning, when I needed to go to the airport at 4:00am or whatever — there were no busses running from City Hostel to the airport! Shit! So, I had to call a last-minute cab, and luckily, the night-shift guy totally knew me after we had harassed him a bunch of time at weird hours. So he called a cab for me and I got to the airport in time. I must say… I had to take a bus to the airport, and the bus system was the only place I saw a homeless person in all of Iceland. That’s the place to find ‘em kids! The bus station! It’s true world-round!

I got into Manchester at like six? in the morning. It was funny, because the flight I was on had a connection that went on to Edinburgh, but I had a bus I needed to catch, and I didn’t want to be late. So when they asked people who were not connecting to Edinburgh to stay put and wait, I just went ahead. I was the first — and only — person in the security line entering England. I got asked a shit ton of questions, yes, but I got through in a jiffy and headed to the subway to Victoria Station (in Manchester, not in London). It required two train transfers, actually, and thank god I asked someone because the guy who sold me the ticket actually didn’t tell me anything. After I got off, I had to walk to the bus terminal, and there I found out!!!! The Megabus tickets to Newcastle were sold out! The tickets were 8 pounds and I was going to buy them the previous morning, but the website was down when I tried. Now, they were sold out. Freaked out a little bit and called Andrew [W] to tell him, and told him I’d call him back when I figured out what was what. (By the way, I got about 0 opportunity to check out Manchester, but I was there long enough to make a couple observations. 1) People in Manchester talk reallllllllly funny. I kind of like it, though; 2) Some parts of Manchester are reminiscent of the Meatpacking District in New York City. AKA really “nice” old brick buildings and lot of stuff to photograph that’s right up my alley. Meep! *Poops pants. I needa go back sometime.)

Well, the bus ticket seller directed me to this other bus station where National Express was leaving from, and he told me to take a bus to Leeds and then transfer to Newcastle. When I got to the bus station, though, I learned that there was a direct bus to Newcastle. Only it cost 23.50 pounds, so I definitely lost a money. I made it there, though, an hour later than I was slated to, but Andrew and Stuart met me at the train station and we were off! We went to Revolution’s, this weird bar place, and Stuart was buying drinks, and ended up buying me a cappuccino and getting the weirdest fucking look when he ordered it. We decided that the lady had no idea how to make a cappuccino because it really looked like she had no idea. It took her just about forever, and it was really messy, but the cappuccino actually turned out to be really good. They actually had a vodka cappuccino there. Not sure how that would taste. Sounds disgusting, though……….

We sat down at a table and just hung out for a while. Newcastle is a funny place, but more on that later. There were all these tables reserved for other people, and one of the tables we had passed on the way in was reserved for STEVE GIBSON! When he finally showed up, we wondered who he was out of the group and why he was there.

So, when we first sat down, the waitress lady told us we only had an hour and a half or something like that. We sat down, and a while afterwards, she came by to put down a piece of paper on it that said the table was “Reserved For Laura Wear.” (I totally remember that name off the top of my head just because I can still hear Stu saying it… oh, sophisticated British accents!)

Anyway. We had a fucking hey day drawing on the piece of paper, that’s for sure. Read below.

GLORIOUS! It was really fun, and we had a good number of laughs.

Andrew and I.

Soon, we discovered that the old ladies next to us were drawing on the piece of paper, too. Stu hypothesized that they were copying us. I’m not sure. One of the ladies was like, 40 or something, and she wanted Andrew’s bones. There were three of them, and they were going to Amsterdam. One of them — the one who wanted Andrew — started talking about drugs and how doing drugs was fun, pretty much, and one of her friends got quite peeved about it and walked away from the table, even. But the other one just kept talking to Andrew… and when we were leaving, I guess she or someone asked him to give her a kiss. Ha.

The one on the right would be Andrew’s crush.

We replaced the reservation with “slight” variations on our names. Unfortunately, the waitress saw our antics, I think. I doubt Laura Wear had the opportunity to read our signs. :[

Also, while we were leaving, we’d concocted some really elaborate plan because we wanted to find out who exactly in the table Steve Gibson was. The plan would be that Andrew would tie his shoe near the table, and then he would call to Stu and say, “Steve! Wait up!” and SURELY, SURELY! Steve Gibson would turn around, right? He didn’t! NO one turned around! The plan was a miserable failure.

Soon we left to go to this giant shopping plaza thing, and Andrew was asking random Newcastle folk for directions to try and get me a “good” example of a Newcastle accent, because they have the stereotypical ghetto Englander accent. He did ask a buncha people, but none of them were Newcastlelians, unfortuntely. Then we weren’t 100% sure where the shopping plaza was, so Stu bet Andrew some pounds to ask a random person where “The Bridge” — I think it’s called — was, while pointing at The Bridge. Andrew chose to ask an older lady, and pointed at the sign for The Bridge while asking, indeed. She was slightly confused for a moment, and then pointed at the building and said it was right there, and Andrew said thanks. And it was pretty funny.

By the way, as we were walking there, some bald-headed fat man, who is a stereotypical Newcastle dude, said something to me that I could not understand AT ALL. Stu translated and said it basically meant, “How are you doing, love?” but it was some weird lingo in some weird accent and was completely unintelligable. Kinda funny.

So, inside of this weird shopping plaza, there were a shit ton of girls dressed up in costumes. It was seriously bizarre. Andrew and Stu claimed that that’s just what they do on the weekends in Newcastle — and they said this many, many times — but I’m still not 100% convinced. In either case, it was fucking weird, and everyone was dressed up like club rats x 10,000. It was pretty damn disgusting, I must say.

We settled on eating Indian food, because I kind of had a mission while in the UK to eat as much Indian food as possible, because surely, surely it was bound to be good! Unfortunately, I didn’t get to eat all that much, but at least this was one of the three times.

We had to take the train back from Newcastle to Darlington, and Stu’s lady-friend picked us up from the Darlington train station and drove us to Newton Aycliffe. BUUUUUUUUUUUT. That part doesn’t matter, really. The part that matters was the fucking train ride from Newcastle to Darlington! It was a positive ZOO. Lots of Newcastle people, and lots of DRUNK people. I’ve never head so much shouting on a public ride. It was crazy! Stu was talking about how he didn’t want one of the drunk Newcastle people to sit next to him, so I changed positions from sitting next to Andrew and sat next to Stu. Some pretty normal guy sat by Andrew, and there was some cracking of jokes about murdering and stalking, and somehow it all worked out OK because the guy was of the same mindset. I forget what the jokes were about exactly, but it’s always good when you can joke with a complete stranger about stalking and murdering, right? Go Andrew!

We got back to Andrew’s place, immediately had some tea (that’s what these British fucks do!), and just hung out for a bit. It was pretty chill. I stayed the night in the guest bedroom, and man, it was nice to sleep in a nice bed!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

iceland, day eight.

friday, february 26th, 2010.
Blue Lagoon day. We were going to head over to the Worldwide Friends’ house to sleepover, but it was rather a bit of a hassle because we needed to catch the bus and all this junk. So we just stayed another night at the Reykjavik City Hostel, but we had to switch rooms. It was fine, though. We just had to store our luggage til we came back because the room wasn’t ready just yet. We also had to call Reykjavik Excursions again to get them to pick us up at the City Hostel instead of our old hostel. Blah, blah, blah!

Anyway, took a nap and arrived at the Blue Lagoon. The weather had been shit, but it turned blue and nice when we got there. Mostly. Actually, the weather was perfect. What was not perfect was the price of the shit. That shit is a fucking rip, dude. Such a bourgeuous rip off. UGHHHH! Spent like $80 USD each!!!!!!! At least! 4 EURO for a fucking towel! 4 EURO for a fucking bathrobe! What the fuck!

For me, though, it cost even more than that! I put my SD770 into a plastic bag so that it couldn’t get wet while I strolled around Blue Lagoon taking photos. It was a fucking genius idea. For the most part. But then I miscalculated…

But before that, some other stuff. You have to shower naked before you get into the Blue Lagoon. Apparently, English people are really embarrassed about being naked. It’s an interesting thought considering the English people I actually know, but it seems to be a common conception. Hahah. Maybe it’s the older English people, then? I’m not really sure. The hypothesis someone gave (who gave it?) was that English people have a reputation to live up to of being really proper and such, so they never get real naked and stuff.

Anyway. Here are some of the photos that came about. On a cold day, the blue lagoon looks great. The steam rising off the water……. man, it’s fantastic.

So, minerals crystallize on some of the rocks. It looks pretty cool. It is wayyyyyy smooth, too, despite not looking like it.

So, the ground is full of clay that the use to make makeup, shampoo, lotion, and all sorts of crap with. It’s funny, thoguh, because we were scooping up scoops and they would have hair in them…………………… hahahaha. Disgusting… they should make people shave their whole bodies before they can get in or something.

I decided to put some of the clay on my face!

I’m drowning!

Scooping up clay in a particularly clay-y area of the Blue Lagoon, with my feet! I’m dancin’ like a monkey!

In the crazy shadowy, smoky Blue Lagoon on a cold day, it’s hard to see and gauge distance. Well, the place is actually pretty fucking huge, but not as huge as it seemed with all the steam. It seemed like it literally went on forever. Check out the distance between the people in this photo…

This texture grossed — and grosses — me out big time. I’ve realized people can’t really understand my textural disgust, but omg, textures like this — like brains and body parts — really… really… fucking make my skin crawl. I couldn’t tell you why…

It started snowing. Lucky us!

They had a section with face masks for people to wear. Guess I shouldn’t have put on the nasty hair-filled clay (also full of rocks) from the ground. Guess I should’ve just waited for the nice, smooth mask. Oh well. I would grow to hate this mask. Read on!

He looks like a Native or something.

We decided to mold Lenny’s hair because the Blue Lagoon dries everything, especially your hair, out BIG TIME!

Well. Here’s where the bummer comes in, though. Lenny decided to put on more face mask. I followed him, and set the camera down on this wooden table thing that the mask was near. It wasn’t windy…… the camera wasn’t right on the edge or anything but I guess it was close enough to fall in were there wind. Well, I guess there was wind, even though I didn’t feel it… because as Lenny and I were slathering shitloads of mud mask onto our faces, I heard a plop. And it was my camera. I fished it out with my feet, and that was that. It was over! Poor camera. Poor, poor camera. I’m sorry. I’ll miss you. And you’re so brand new…….. sign. Losing and breaking these Canon SD cameras left and right… I wonder if I should stop buying them.

In any case — was it worth it for these Blue Lagoon photos?

I haven’t decided yet. My videos are pretty fucking sweet, though. And I do know that even though the Blue Lagoon is kiiiiinda cool… I don’t want to pay to go back again. They’re fucking Nazis! They charge a shit ton of money because they canm, and they kicked us out of their main cafeteria area because we’d bought our own food. They kicked out another party of Japanese people, too. It’s just ridiculous because there were: a) not really any people; b) no other places for people to go if they want to eat. Ridiculous.

We decided to catch the bus back home early, and then went back out on the town to explore Reykjavik some more. Made some phone calls before leaving to try and eat at _[crazy japanese restaurant]__ for dinner, but it was all booked up because it was part of the Food And Fun Festival, too. We settled on eatnig some sort of crazy Icelandic buffet thing. But first, we took the bus to this Havari store I read about and wanted to go to. It was a record shop and zine shop… turned out to be really really cool. Got a contact there to speak to the guy who runs one of the local record labels… again, for the Icelandic music article.

We wandered for a bit afterwards because it was still early, and we ended up going to eat a fish buffet at some random ass hotel. It was an interesting concept. It was shitloads of cooked fish, mostly, set out on platters (cold) with different sauces. There were also some fruits and weird things like fish pastas and stuff. Not sure how I felt about it overall, but it was interesting.

After that, we stopped by the Worldwide Friends’ house just to say goodbye to our newfound friends. It was nice and relaxing and when we got there, Matt was totally sleeping hardcore! We took some group photos and had some awkward goodbyes and that was that. Off to find a show. To no real avail. The show I had wanted to go to — or thought I had wanted to go to — turned out to be a total dad band jam band type thing, and it was like a $10 cover or something ridiculous. We were supposed to meet up with this guy, Matt, outside of the place. I knew him from a CouchSurfing contact who suggested I talk to Matt about the local music scene. Well, found Matt and neither of us wanted to pay, so we headed to this other bar which didn’t really have music going on, but we just chatted for an hour and a half or something and hung out. It was nice and casual!

And that there was my last night in Iceland. I had to leave at like 5:00am or something ridiculous the following morning to get to England, but Lenny had a bit more time the next day to hang and explore. I left him a backpack of stuff and then headed off. Thought I could catch a bus in the morning (I could not) so I had to take a taxi!

iceland, day seven.

thursday, february 25th, 2010.
Today was tour day! It was also Shittiest-Day-So-Far-In-Iceland-Day! We were totally blessed by great weather the whole time… except for this particular day, where we were supposed to go to Geysir, Gulfoss, and Thingvellir. We had to call the booking agency (Reykjavik Excursions) early in the morning to tell them to pick us up at a different place, since we stayed at a different hostel than we were originally slated to stay at. The confirmation system was weird, though; no one ever contacted us to re-confirm anything. Kinda silly. It was also snowing like mad this particular day, so although the tour is usually operated in a bus, they ended up driving this enormous beast of a tank-like thing (see later pictures). When we first got picked up, it was just Lenny and I and this other guy from England, and we were wondering if we were the only ones on the tour. For a long time we were, but we later rendezvouzed at a different point with the rest of the group. On this particular tour, there were a SHIT TON of Seattlites, which was funny. They had pretty much all purchased tickets to Iceland based on a sale… but their tickets were still like two hundred or something more bucks than ours! Newbs!

First stop, Thingvellir National Park. Thingvellir (and sometimes Thinglevir) is a word Lenny repeated a million times throughout the entire trip, cuz it was his favorite word! It is a good word, for sure. Buuuuuuuut. The actual act of going to the park was OKAY. The weather was way shit, as I’ve mentioned, but it’s probably a little hard to understand… but here’s how it was like:

It was a bit shit since I was wearing my Vans canvas shoes. Needless to say, my feet were frozen A LOT throughout the course of this trip to Iceland. It was a bit worrying at times, but what could I do? Had I just been going to Iceland, I’da bought my crazy snow boots, but because of England afterwards, I was a little hesitant on that shite.
** CANON — WALKING **

Next stop was visiting a waterfall called Gullfoss. It’s funny — most of our tour group got off the bus and automatically went into the shop and restaurant and never went outside to see the actual waterfalls. There were a lot of older people, and I can see why they would not be super excited about freezing cold winds and snow and such, but it’s too bad. To be honest, even though I took the walk to see the waterfalls, I didn’t really see it, because the way the winds were blowing and the snow was flying, it was very difficult to walk down there because we were walking in the direction the snow was coming from. It was a mixture of eye-closing and backwards-walking that finally brought us near the waterfall, but I personally couldn’t look at the waterfall because it was at the perfect angle for eye blindness penetration. But this sign kind of shows how windy it was:

Like I said, the waterfall itself wasn’t much to see. What was awesome was the snow and the wind’s effect on this particular flat spot of land. Took about a million photos of the snow flying across the top of the ground like sand…

It’s a little hard to gauge just how awesome the snow flying off the surface of the ground is. But let me tell you… it is fucking awesome.

Anyway, after eating some food (I had Aspagarus Cream Soup — Lenny had this “famous” Icelandic lamb and meatball or something soup), we went to Geysir, a… geyser. Supposedly the oldest in the world (?).

But strangely, it’s not actually Geysir you go to Geysir to see. Geysir isn’t a super active geyser despite having the name and such. You actually go see another one, called Strokkur. It blew once pretty biug and once mediocrely, but after seeing Old Faithful in Yellowstone, the shit is just like… whatever.

Cool sand patterns. Iceland is the amazing land of awesome textural terrain.

After looking at the geysers for… not all that long, everyone was once again in the gift shop. I’ll tell ya, man, we as a group definitely spent as much time in the gift shop as we spent outdoors… it not more! But here’s some of the ridiculous awesomeness from the gift shops… but first, our bus:

Now, the ridiculousness:

This was a cool idea. But it was felted from sheep wool… and it smelled like sheep. Shit you not.

Note the price. 1,100 Kr = $11 USD!

Next, we went to a church in [some-muthafuckin'-town]. It was totally underwhelming and super whatevers. Why were we even there? WHO KNOWS! BUT! MY BUDDY AND ME!

Then we drove to the power plant and got a tour of it. That was pretty cool, I must say. Despite these strange people in the entrance area… they were totally made of felt!

It was quite educational, and we saw yet another super well-crafted video made by Icelanders. This one described the process of geothermal energy, and also said that anyone who lives on the place where two tectonic plates meet can harness the power of geothermal energy. Seattle, and the whole west coast down through California, applies to such a description. Why we haven’t been trying to harness this energy I don’t know, then. In either case, the energy in Iceland. Amazing! Lenny and I had suspected that there was something warming up the sidewalks in the Reykjavik City Center because the sidewalks were frequently un-icy and un-snowy despite the roads being full of snow. Turns out they actually pump heat through the city sidewalks to melt the snow that falls on them. Awesome?!

Dinner consisted of Danish Open-Face Sandwiches at the Scandinavian! I was quite excited, actually, because Lenny picked the restaurant and I had really been wanting to eat Danish open-faced sanddwiches. Twas a great coincidence. Very exciting! Here’s my asparagus, smoked salmon, shrimp, fried fish open-faced sandwich with a honey mustard-type sauce. Open-faced sandwiches are called that because there’s sadnwich bread on the bottom. Get it? They’re open sandwiches. It’s fantastic. I wanted to go there a million times and try everything…

Lenny had a really amazing fried trout. It was so delicious!!!!

Afterwarsd, we……………………….???????????? [[DID SOME SHIT! I'M TOO LAZY TO FILL THIS IN NOW THAT I'M POSTING IT A MONTH LATER!]]

Oh wait, we met up with the kids from Worldwide Friends, who we’d met the days before. Went to a club. Danced. Hate dancing. Was awkward. The music could’ve been worse, though, but girls are always throwing themselves at me trying to get me to freak dance them. No thanks. Missed awesome-sounding rock show next door. Which was a bummer. WHUTEVA!!!!

iceland, day six.

wednesday, february 24th, 2010.
Day six was the slated “Explore Reykjavik Day”. Whatever shall we do? Well, Reykjavik is a pretty small place… there’s not a WHOLE lot to do, but we managed to find some cool stuff. We left our keys at the front office so the car rental guys could come pick it up…………… more on that later.

First stop: A meal at a restaurant right across the street from our hostel. It was an interesting little cafeteria-type place with a really strange ground that looked like a bunch of gravel put together. We were wondering how they don’t get shit tons of food stuck all up in it.

Lenny got some beef thing with a sunny-side up egg on top of it (the egg looked amazing!) and I just drank some ChocoMilk.

Then we went to the zoo. But first… the botanical garden. Wchih is really, really hilarious in the winter……………… at least there was this cool pond with shit tons of birds…

But this is how dead the botanical gardens were… they were all brown. Hahahahhaa.
** CANON PIC — BOTANICAL GARDENS **

Anyway, across the street, off to the zoo. The zoo was like three bucks or five bucks or something, and immediately, when we came upon all the empty cages, we were like WTF! Money back, please!! But it ended up being really fun, due only in small part to the actual zoo itself…

But first, these awesome ass tufts of grass. They’re so cuteeeeeeeee!

After failing to really find many animals other than Icelandic horses, which we already had seen a lot of (and see better ones; the ones in the zoo did not seem particularly thrilled to be alive. Who can blame them when their brethren are roaming the countrysides of Iceland, almost completely free?)

Lenny called this horse (and this other black one) “emo horse.” It’s not un-true. But that’s why these horsies are soooo cute.
** CANON — EMO HORSE **

Attached to the zoo, though, was this crazy amusement park with some really, really awesome things. First off, Lenny in a viking boat! And Lenny swinging off a dock of some sort!

Dun dun dun dun! Barn cat!

After our escapades in the amusement park section, we came upon this weird ass barn area… so weird, man. The Reykjavik zoo didn’t really have any animals other than barn animals and a few birds. Which makes sense, I guess, since they don’t really have any native animal species (the Arctic Fox is the only one). This is the first of the zoo rooms. And coming upon it was, I must say, a pretty big WTF!

There was also this super weird funhouse-type place. It was simultaneously also an aquarium. Don’t ask questions.

This peephole which featured two mirrors that faced each other and went on into infinity. Oldest trick in the book!

There were some pretty awesome sea creatures. This might’ve been my favorite one of all…

I tried to take this self-portrait a million thousand times without using flash or autofocus. It didn’t turn out perfect, but I gave up. Good enough.

There was also a room with rodents and amazing birds. (Sherry’s biggest nightmare.)

Regal ass pigeons. So amazing. I’m in love with these fucking pigeons.

Cutest little thumper ass biatch!

Weirdo turkey thing. Lenny says white turkeys are commonplace, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a white one.

Flurry of feathers that reminds me of some album cover I’ve seen. What album cover slips my mind…

Outside, there were seals! One of the only real animals in the zoo!

Oh, while I was on the way to the bathroom I came upon the scariest fucking display case ever. There was a chopped off cow udder and cow face. I don’t have a picture at the moment…

After that, we went briefly to the Icelandic National Museum by taking the bus. A really fucking amazing museum with really nice interactive displays and a good amount of stuff, for sure. The bummer portion is that we didn’t have a huge amount of time to hang there, but we got the idea. I think Lenny went back because he had an extra half day than I did.

There was a figure of Thor that was used on the flyer that advertises the museum. It had a pretty interesting placard, that says as follows: “The human figure made of bronze has been dated, on the grounds of style, to around 1000 AD. It is believed to depict Thor, one of the major Norse gods, but it could also represent Christ enthroned in glory. The figure grasps an object thought to be Thor’s hammer, but also similar in shape to the Christian cross. The figure was unearthed in 1815 or 1816 in Eyjafjordur in North Iceland. It was sent to Copenhagen in 1817, but was returned in 1930 with other objecfts from the Danish National Museum. During the period of 800-1000 AD, the prevelant religion was the pagan worship of the Norse gods, but from the beginning there were also Christians in Iceland, apparently in peaceful coexistence with the pagans.”

We tried to go eat dinner at Dill Restaurant, but because it was the Food And Fun Festival, an annual food festival that invites chefs from foreign countries to cook in Iceland using Icelandic ingredients (for the first time), it was fully booked. For the entire week. Bummer. We didn’t end up partaking in any of the Food And Fun Festival restaurants because we didn’t book in advance. Oh well.

So we took the bus to yet another part of town so we could attempt to eat at this lobster soup shop. The bus transfers run out after ONE hour (Reykjavik is pretty small, I guess, but that’s still weird) so we had to pay again. When we got to the chowder place, Lenny wasn’t really feeling it, so we walked up the street looking for food and settled on Icelandic Fish & Chips… but not before passing an amazing street, “Burgerjoint Rd.”

Appropriately, there was a really hopping burger joint on that exact corner. Hehe. Anyway, Icelandic Fish & Chips was in some of the restaurant guides we got. I mean, it was pretty good, but Pike Place Fish Fry is better In any case, though, it was a fun experience and it’s a partly serve yourself restaurant, so you help yourself to a lot of stuff, like drinks, silverware, etc.

There was also a funny conversation, where the waitress was at the table where her husband and kid were eating food. An American (?) couple came in and were commenting on how cute the kid was because the kid is the kind of kid who loves strangers and automatically went into their arms. And the male was like, “We should have one!” or something, as a joke, and the female was immediately like, “Just waiting on you!” and the waitress was like, “Ha, that nice comment turned awkward really fast,” or something. It was funny.

Anyway, we got Haddock (standard in those there parts) and Wolf Fish. Both are white fish. Wolf Fish is fucking disgusting. Spongey, water-logged tasting, etc. Not a fun fish. Not fun at all. We also got the dipping sauce platter and tried to figure out what was what. There was a coriander lime sauce (one of the green ones) which was particularly disgusting. I liked the red pepper chili the best, predictably. Tartar was okay. Basil was okay. Mango was really not good! But coriander lime was the pits! There’s a pic somewhere! But I didn’t upload it yet! So fuck it!

The best part of the meal, though, was not the fish or the dipping sauces. It was the freaking lobster bisque! With hummus! MMMMMMM hummus!

We totally choked down the wolf fish as fast as possible. Twas not good. No good. But choking it down didn’t really help the situation that much…

Lenny was totally into this crazy salt crystal action. It is pretty crazy; the salt wasn’t broken up at all.

Afterwards, we just went home and hung out status! Tours the next day!

iceland, day five.

tuesday, february 23rd, 2010.
Woke up in the morning-time, ate some breakfast (included) at the hotel, and rolled out of our country bumpkin homes! Initially, the plan was to head towards the coast, but the sky in that direction looked fucking horrendous! Instead, we turned around and went inland, and there was a lot of aimless driving, but it turned out to be for the best, I think. Our impromptu, on-the-fly planning yielded some pretty good results, actually. Here are some photos from the drive:

Well, driving, driving, driving. We decided to head towards Reykholt, which was supposed to be a geothermal town. Came upon this _________ geyser? hot spring? on the way there. They have a power plant built upon this here hot spring, and that’s what we visited, kinda. So it was all fenced off, but still cool nonetheless (and there was also a loosely fenced part you could walk into… so really, it wasn’t that fenced).

Lenny in a haze of smoke.

So, because the water is hot (obviously), it mixes with the snow and ice to make really weird patterns, because it’s not burning hot or anything; it’s lukewarm and melts the snow and ice, but not to the point where there is no snow and ice. The resulting patterns, which freeze and re-freeze, vary a great amount, but here are some of the examples just from this particular area:

My favorite mountain in Iceland. Lenny says this is volcano-related as well.

On a whim, we decided to go to a set of waterfalls, and it was actually probably the only place we saw other people. I can only imagine that in the summertime that place must be pretty busy, if it was busy in the Icelandic-Winter-Of-No-Other-People. The colors of the water were amazing. The awaesomeness is not fully captured in the photograph, but yeah. This waterfall is Hraunfossar.

This particular waterfall (below) is called Barnafoss. Here’s the write-up about it on one of the signs: “The following story accounts for the name of Barnafoss (Children’s waterfall) and for the disappearance of a stone arch that used to bridge the river. One Christmas day the household at Hraunsas went to attend mass, with the exception of two children who were to stay at home. When the people returned, the children had vanished but their tracks led to the river. The children had fallen off the stone arch and drowned. The mother then had the arch destroyed to prevent the recurrence of such a tragedy.”

Ice, ice, and more ice!

And still more ice… ice takes on some beautiful coloration.

There was this one section which was really weird. All of the bodies of water, including the waterfalls, were pretty much completely frozen… except for this one pool sandwiched between everything. It was way weird, and I don’t know why it was barely frozen at all. it was hardly moving.

Leftover greenhouse. Left to rot.

We decided to take a roundabout route back to Reykjavik because the town we had gone to, Reykholt, had no hotels or hostels we could see. Lonely Planet (our 2007 guide, ha!) suggested a guest house, but it didn’t seem like anyone was there, and hell, it didn’t seem like a guest house. So back to Reykjavik it was. Here were some of the sights along the way, mostly from this huge bay that we drove through.

And then we crashed at Hostelling International’s Reykjavik City Hostle (Hostel, even). There wasn’t really anyone around other than a group of school kids. Really nice, and we had a room to ourselves! HOLLA!

iceland, day four.

monday, february 22nd, 2010.
So, day four was a loooooooooooooooong day. Lenny and I drove back via the major Ring Road (highway 1). Random excursions ensued on the way! But first! Here’s our hostel! This is the Hostelling International outlet in Vik. Photos courtesy of Lenny, because he actually takes practical pics like this and I never do. I take stupid pics like textures on walls and shit.

Oh yeah, and a box of cereal bars that we bought a box of and ate

We decided to go back to the Vik black sand beaches via the ______ route which we originally took when we were heading to Vik. Lenny took these photos.

We passed by some really cool houses-in-the-rock, but we decided to actually turn around and stop at these horses to take photos of them. Good thing we did, because while we stopped at another set of horses later on, these horses were set against the most idyllic backdrop of them all. Awesome!

Initially, when we came up upon them, they were all hanging out and staring at us. Unfortunately, my camera settings kept me from being able to take a photograph of them right away.

Sleeping. Haha. Or osmething.

Loving their hair. Icelandic horses. Yes, they do eat them. Although I don’t think it’s super common.

Lenny looks like he’s about to start dancing or something.

So we found this random cave by the side of the road. It went in a little ways and had a car parking spot in front of it. There was also a fire pit inside it. Guess one can hang out there……. and camp? Sekret summar camping sp0tz!?

Surmjolk! A walnut yogurt drink. It was pretty delicious, actually, but yogurt drink in this kind of packaging gets really quite messy. Description: “Cultured milk with nut and caramel flavor. Ingredients: Whole millk, sugar, skimmed milk powder, nut and caramel flavor, active culture.” Not all nuts are the same, Icelandians!

Along the way, we passed the infamous Hella town. Actually, I believe we saw TWO in Iceland. Obligatory corny photos ensued.

We stopped by supermarkets galore, of course, because that’s what we do. Here’s something they have that we don’t… along with a whole slew of other sprouts, really…

Actually, you hear stories about Iceland’s produce being horrible and stuff, but it’s actually not that true. A lot of it is not that expensive, either. I mean, it depends what you get, obviously, but I think the Icelandic say that they are self-sufficient in tomatoes, potatoes, carrots, and bananas (or some combination of mostly those things) so a lot of staple vegetables are pretty cheap. And good quality, too.

I found the visual of this extremely appealing. It’s a good contrast. Snow melting on dry, orange grass. It seems strange that it would be so orange, you know? It’s also a little bit like cheez.

You can always see the moon in Iceland… think I’ve mentioned this before.

Lenny said he read about these little cloud domes that go over some volcanoes. I don’t know much about this phenomenon, but it certainly looks interesting.

There’s a really fine moss that grows on some huge portions of rock. Like this!

Just some scenic drive-by pics of Iceland. I mean, seriously, this place is beautiful everywhere. We were blessed by really amazing weather with perfect visibility, as well. Might I also add that all of these pics are taken in half of a day of continuous driving. This is how varied the landscape is, and frankly, we only went to what? A small portion of the country?

When we finally got back to Reykjavik, we went on this huge quest to find a camera store so we could get a battery charger for Lenny’s Nikon camera. We finally found one after foreeeeveeeer of searching and going to a shit ton of stores. The camera store was _______. There was also a store — and it mighta been helpful if we had known this — that sells stuff like electrical plugs and such. That store was called _______. They are all in a plaza near ____________ that has megastores that are similar to Wal-Mart and such. It’s really quite nutty…

Anywasy, Reykjavik has a hydrogen fueling station…

Anyway, we drove from the South Coast of Iceland (Vik, to be exact) to West Iceland in one day. It was a bit rushed, but we’d already been on that road, so it was fine. We stopped by this Nature Preserve. There was no one else. There was no wildlife. There was fresh snowfall and it seemed like barely anyone had walked on it within recent times… etc., etc. BUT… we hadn’t stopped anywhere asides from going to get food in a long, long time, so we stopped here. It seemed like the only particularly interesting section in this long stretch, because Iceland in winter = no tourists, and no tourists = not that much to do and a bit of unsureness about where you’re going to stay for the evening. It sounds nuts, really, but it’s very true.

This is the church that greeted us upon our arrival to the Nature Preserve. It also had a cemetary in its backyard — or should I say side yard — as many of them seem to.

So the landscape that greeted us was a mixture of volcanic rock, moss, grass, and now, snow. We went on a brief, very cold hike, and it wasn’t super diverse or anything. If it weren’t so godamn cold, I probably would have enjoyed it more. Some shots:

Lenny taking photos. He was dressed much warmer than I was for this entire trip, so I was always the one pussing out early. But I mean. Shit. It was cold. I tried not to complain too much, but when you’re wearing like three pairs of socks and all your extremities feel like they’re freezing off, sometimes it’s a little hard not to complain. The feeling of your toes constantly going numb is, well, interesting.

We were at the Nature Preserve during sunset. It made for a nice magic hour.

From there, we drove around and tried to find a hotel or hostel to stay in for the night. Like I said, we were in the middle of nowhere — _____, to be exact, so we drove to the next major town, or so we thought, and asked around. They had a hotel according to Lonely Planet, but when we got there, it was closed. A gas station attendant directed us to two towns down, where she said there was a hotel open. And so there was! Hotel ________. I will say I was a little BLAHH about the prospect initially because the hotel was 12,300 Icelandic Kroner, or about USD $123. I mean. That’s a lot of money for me, so that was a bit of a shocker. But we decided to go for it, and it was kinda nice to have a hotel and a proper shower to stay in for a night. Can’t complain, really.

We went downstairs and Lenny was hungee, so he ordered a lamb course and ate it up. I guess it was really quite good, and they were certainly about “doing it right”. We were like the only customers in the hotel (someone came later), and I wasn’t even eating. Nonetheless, they sat us down at a seat near the window and then lighted up every candle on every table while we ate… just for atmosphere’s sake. It’s not like there was anyone to impress, really, because there were no other customers, and even if there were, they don’t need every candle lit. But they did it anyway, and it was really quite nice of them…

iceland, day two.

this shit is so out of order. whatever, beeyotch.

saturday, february 20th, 2010.
So, day two in Reykjavik, I had to do some work for the Shrimp Less campaign before heading out, so Lenny and I went to a nearby coffee shop to do some work. We were going to go to the shop we went to the previous night, “mmmmmm and take away” — but at 10:00am, it was closed. We found a coffee shop down the street from our hostel and chowed down. Lenny on ___?? and myself on Skyr and an Americano. I don’t usually order americanos back in the states, although after drinking them for like the second time, I’m not sure why I don’t! They’re delicious! And cheap! Less mochas, more americanos when I go back. And it’s patriotic, anyway.

Anyway, after that, we headed out in our rental car! Drove and drove and drove and I think the first town we tried to stop at was Selfoss to see the greenhouses, but we couldn’t find how to get to them after driving around aimlessly in the residential area for a while, so we just gave up and moved on. Probably wouldn’t have been that exciting anyway, provided we could even go into them to begin with…

We were also on the mad quest to find air for our tires because they were rather flat. Didn’t find one fot eh longest time! But when we did, it was freeee! Freeeeeeeeee! No 75 cents bullshit like in the states

The good part about traveling by yourself and driving by youself is because you can stop whenever you want. It took us a while before we got comfortable with stopping — because you drive past stuff and hesitate to stop and then just keep driving, mostly — but this is one of the stops we took.

Me being disgusting:

Wouldn’t this be nice to off-road on or what? Probably not, but one can dream.

We were driving and driving and driving, marveling at sights here and there, but no real stops until Lenny noticed some cars driving on this road. We decided to follow them, and we we rounded the corner of the mountain, we saw this:

Closer pic. You’ll notice Mr. Moon is there. In fact, I think you can always see the moon in Iceland, even when the sun is up full speed (are suns up “full speed”? Whatever, you catch my drift). It’s rather remarkable.

Half thawed, half snowy. In fact, we wouldn’t see that much snow — not as much as you would think because it was a relatively dry winter season by Icelandic standards, but here’s just one of the varying stays of snow decay. One light snow lasts a really long time because even though it doesn’t really snow more, it’s really cold and below freezing everyday, so…

I tried to capture this on video and photo but is a little lost in translation. Nonetheless, it was really awesome. This is a small river / big stream of some sort, and the edges of it were icey and kind of jutting out over the bank while the rest was water. The water would slosh under the ice — as evidenced by the drippings under the ice, you can see — and man, it sounded awesome and looked really cool, too. The ice would turn from clear to opaque to clear to opque as the water rushed in and out under it and touched it. If that makes any sense. [Actually: Realization: I dunno where the pic is. Whatever.]

So nearer to the waterfall, Lenny found these fucking amazing ice formations. They were created from a combination of freezing temperatures, wind, and the waterfall being in the shadow of the mountain. They were extremely slippery, large icey discs — like scales, almost — each one about fist-sized and stacked upon the other ones in rows and columns.

Lenny in the spray of the falls!

There was a staired area that led up to a viewing platform. Not the most spectacular view or anything, but everyone went up there anyway because it seems natural human instinct to always want to get up as high as possible. Not sure why… anyway, we had to tread these amazingly slippery stairs to get up.

Icicles hanging down from the stair banisters.

Yeah, see that crazy iced up banister there? Yeah.

Random stop-off. This shit became whatevers after a while, if you can believe that. That’s basically Iceland right there. All that.

The second falls we went to, which could be seen clearly from the freeway. It was on my “planned list” of things to do, as it was suggested by Lonely Planet. This waterfall was Skogafoss.

Cool rainbow

Lenny striking ze pose.

So who are these strangers blocking my pic? Our soon-to-be friends. Actually, we’d met them at the previous waterfall and said hello, and they had been huddled around — a group of 20? of them — and they were eating. One of the guys, Fernando (????), told us we can join them if we wanted, and we ended up just leaving. But then they showed up at this waterfall. And did the same mini-hike we did. So it became kinda like, “Weeeeeeeeeeelllllllllllll, guess we’ll stayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy…”

View from above the mountain.

Awesome ass ice pattern, omgggggggggggg!

What’s this?! Crazy dirty snow?!

So, we decided to follow that group, as I’ve mentioned, and this is a fucking glacier we went to next. It was also on my list of things to do. Name of the glacier = Mýrdalsjökull.

We were definitely introducyed to the one American guy, Matt, who is totally an Andy Crossett — in terms of looks, and a little bit in demeanor. Maybe not so much in demeanor, but he’s an Andy Crossett anyway. He became our buddy-buddy for the rest of the time. He was from Mississippi. And as ignorant as this may sound, I think he may be the first person I’ve ever met from Mississippi! Anyway, he got along with Lenny real swell.

Luckily for us, it had recently snowed, so we were acftually able to walk on the glacier. When there’s no snow, since it’s ice (duh), that’s an impossibility. Even with the snow, it became difficult in points where the snow was a bit worn down.

Lenny in glacier hole.

<3

Beautiful.

Group photo Lenny took for the clowns.

One of the girls, this mega-weird French girl (totally weird in a good way, but seriously, weird as hell) decided it would be a good idea to ass-slide down the glacier. Here is a glacier ass-slide train.

Glacier reflecting off the sun. Make no mistake! This glacier is getting smaller every year!

The crew heading down the mountain…

Next stop was the black sand beaches of Vik, ____________ at sunset. Freezing as hell. Windy as shit. Silhouettes are neat.

The waves crashing really, really violently against the rocks.

The moon, the moon, up so high in the sky.

After this freezing, brief excursion, we headed over to this hostel. It was fully booked up by our newfound friends, but they managed to get a couple to sleep together so that we could share a bed together. Lucky ofr us, honestly, because Vik was kind of where we were considering spending the night — although it was for the next night because I’d budgeted time wrong and we did two day worth of stuff (according to my agenda) in one day. Anyway we were lucky we met our newfound friends because otherwise we probably wouldn’t have had a place to stay; as two surfers who were at the hostel, Dan and Ross, would later tell us, all of the other hostels and hotels in town were closed. There was no other option!!! It was also a really nice Hostelling International hostel, and the owner of it lived just across the street, which is really quite adorable. It is a house hostel, essentially. I dug it.

Later that night, we went out because the owner had called the only bar in town, which isn’t usually open on Saturday nights, and told them to open it for the large party that was in town. Of course, we went, and a bunch of locals showed up as well. I’m sure they were really excited since it is a very small town (500 people? I believe one of the guys, Olof, said?) and there isn’t much to do, surely, so a bar being open, with strangers to meet, must’ve been an exciting thing.

Anyway, there was a lot of drunkenness, a lot of weird drinking games, and a lot of Koreans chanting, “ONE SHOT! ONE SHOT!” to tell people to finish their drink in one, well, shot. One go. Of course, it wasn’t just chanting… it was also singing and drumming beforehand, screaming, “Ba-da-ba-da-bum! Ba-da-ba-da-bum! ONE SHOT!” Yeahhhhhhhhhh. See video to come for details.

Lenny and I shared the room with a bunch of the Japaneses, but particularly the ones who didn’t really speak English. Actually, only one of them, Akino, spoke really good English. It was weird. No accent or anything.

[Side note: I'm in the Edinburgh bus terminal, and there's a pigeon in here!]

iceland, day one.

thursday, february 18th, 2010.
left seattle. beat as hell from not really sleeping the whole previous week, so i knew i was in for a shitload of sleep on the plane. and shitload of sleep i WAS in for! that is, after watching (again) “(500) days of summer” with lenny. ahhhh yes. i luv me some joseph gordon-levitt, i do, i do. then i passed out until 30 minutes before we landed in reykjavik. awesome!

friday, february 19th, 2010.
got into reykjavik airport. took our sweet ass time brushing our teeth and getting changed so that we could get ready for the outdoor elements. took our sweet as time a little too sweetly, really, cause by the time we got outside and exchanged our currency, we realized we’d missed our 8:00am bus. totally my bad. i’d booked the bus so far in advance that i’d totally forgotten there was a specific time period we’d booked it for. oops. the next one wasn’t until noon! fuck! that meant four hours of sitting around in the airport doing nothing! so got some chocolate milk and a tuna sandwich and chowed down. i looked for vegetarian sandwich options — alas, there were none.

anyway, so lenny decided to call the car rental company (carrentalss!!). horrible name, sure, but they came recommended by someone (?) on couchsurfing, too, cause they were totally worth it! lenny called the guy because we were supposed to pick up the car the next day. the guy mentioned he was heading to reykjavik as they spoke and that we could get the car a day early for no extra charge. fucking score. so lenny said we were waiting for the bus. soon, some guy comes into the terminal and looks at the ticket vending machine and leaves. that registers as a little strange because no flights were coming in and why would a guy from outside come inside to look at the bus schedule anyway? a few minutes later, he came back in and asked us if we’d called for carrentalss, and we said yes, and he said that he was the guy from the company, and said he was giving to reykjavik and would give us a ride there if necessary. fucking sweet, we said, and then got into this giant red suv thingy and didn’t think twice. looking back, i figured some people’d definitely be majorly sketched out by that car rental company, but whatever! we were just glad we didn’t have to wait another two hours at the teeny tiny airport, and that shit was awesome!

anyway.

got picked up, and they said they had come to the airport just to check bus schedules and then figured it was us sitting there… and right they were. so we went off with them, and it was rad cuz it was a straight shot into the city, we did our paperwork while riding in the car, and well. it was easy… it’s a weird car rental company, for sure, but i recommend it, even if their communication is kinda bizarre. so they dropped us off, walked us to our hostel, and then just said uhhhh call us when you want to return the car again. didn’t really give much of a shit. lax as hell. haha.

we checked into our hostel and got put in a room with some scandinavian (were they icelandic? not sure) chicks who were not so nice (ignored us when we said hello) and also really, really smelled. there were two ambiguous looking bunks. one looked open — the other one had stuff on it, so we figured it was taken or something, but it wasn’t, turns out. bleh. while we were checking in, lenny was obsessing over the coke they had in the vending machine. haha… cuz it’s real sugar, not corn syrup! and even the guy at the front desk (icelandic) knew this!

anyway, the rest of the day we just kinda walked around and froze to death. really windy this particular day. freezing!!!! we parked our car on some street where they have those ticket vending things similar to what we have in seattle — only you can prepay and your time rolls over into the next day! it’s fucking awesome! it’s six hours max, but if you pay the 600 kroner for the 6 hours, it can roll over into the next day (wait, i just said that. whatever.).

first stop post car re-parking (it was initially illegally parked): supermarket. of course! we went to bonus, which is the discount supermarket. eggcellent. the groceries (especially the vegetables) weren’t nearly as bad as everyone on the internet made it out to sound, so i was pleasantly surprised by that. didn’t really buy anything. just walked around the main shopping street, laugavegur, which is also the street our hostel, reykjavik backpackers, was on. bought a buncha crap — some candy, a pair of wool socks because my feet kept falling asleep, some postcards for friends, a magnet for my mom, etc. after this particular day, i don’t suppose there will be much shopping at all, but it was all novelty and “necessary”. haha. (especially the candy.)

walked around walked around walked around went to the art museum which was really cool (and free!!!!) and featured art by icelandic artists. there was some really stunning stuff, which was surprising, to say the least. not that i don’t expect icelandic artists to be good, but i dunno, i was still surprised by the quality of the contemporary works. anyway. the art museum is housed in this weird ass building that looks like partly a prison complex with an open center or something. in fact, i wonder if it was (but i can’t find any info about such a thing online)… either way, it was small, but cool.

then we walked around for a while — we’d walked around on like soo many streets — but we couldn’t find the couple of restaurants lenny was looking to eat at. oh, well. we finally decided to kill some time at this restaurant called “mmmmmm _______ and take away”. catchy little logo and name. sat there and drank some tea and figured out where we wanted to go, and saw that on the map there was an electronics place. i needed a charger for stuff because the UK converter i have (and assumed would work in iceland) didn’t actually, since they’re on a different electricity system. so we went to the shopping area where the electronics and shopping mall was… and found these weird stores, like a store like wal-mart, a huge office superstar, a huge bed bath and beyond-type place, etc. giant megastores for everything you could imagine, near the outskirts of town, basically. we drove away because we kinda gave up, then ended up looping back by accident kinda, and saw that there was a store called BT — with the best buy tag logo. turned out BT was in fact just like best buy, and i deemed BT to mean BEST TRY. YEAH!

anyhoot. got the converter thing and then headed back to the hostel. i saw that my stuff had been moved off my bed and into another bed and someone else’s stuff was now in the place of mine. fucked up, dude. we went to the reception and asked about it, and the guy went upstairs and said that it didn’t seem like 9 people should be in that room but didn’t have any real answers, so he just moved us downstairs a floor where they weren’t trying to have people stay, but whatever. we got a room to ourselves! it ruled! decided to take a nap and then go out later.

because we kept passing this place and because there were ads for it everywhere, went to this place near our hostel called indian mango. the reviews for it were “good” and i fucking love indian food, and it was a buffet, so what could possibly go wrong?? well, the shit was 3,600 kroner if you eat meat (maybe like, $32) and 2,900 kroner if you are vegetarian (maybe like $25?) — totally not worth it. the food was totally mediocre and shit. whatever. UGHHH. oh well.

the dude talked to us a helluva bunch after the dinner and it was amusing.

finish later. people sexing in bathroom next to where i was typing. hahahahhhaha.