Heaven.

Before we came to Iceland, I read that The Blue Lagoon was for tourists, and the locals go to the municipal pool. I planned to go to the city pool, because, well, I didn't come to Iceland for some canned, theme-park type experience. Then I spoke with several other travelers, including that amazing British "grandmum" from our South Coast tour. When she told us the Blue Lagoon was the highlight of her stay, I arranged our visit.

The Blue Lagoon is like no other pool I've ever seen. It's man-made, but on such a large scale that it feels like a lake. I don't think there's any point in it where you can see the whole thing. It's 5000 square meters, and set in the middle of a remote field of black volcanic rocks covered in arctic moss. The water is salty and very warm, with some spots that are downright hot. The bottom is sandy in some spots, muddy in others, and contains so much white silica that the water has an other-worldly milky blue glow. There are some "hot pots" (jacuzzis) , saunas, and steam rooms nearby for those who want even more heat. On one end of the pool, there's a waterfall that beats against your back for the most amazing massage. And on the edges of the water, there are boxes of purified clay and minerals from the water that you can use as a mask. My face is baby-soft from it. It's free to use there, but it's stupid-expensive to buy. A small tube is something like $70.

The Blue Lagoon is, for the moment, my favorite place on Earth besides home.

We're going back to The Blue Lagoon tomorrow. And then, home.

A different kind of south beach.

On Saturday morning, we left to see Iceland's south coast. Rain and wind pounded the van while we crossed the mountains, and the windows were so fogged up that we couldn't see a thing. We knew we were at our first stop, Seljalandsfoss waterfall, by its the sound. Warmer temperatures here have accelerated glacial melt, producing a thundering stream of muddy water the likes of which our guide Andre (the same man who guided Steve and me through the Golden Circle in March) had never seen. You can usually walk behind the Seljalandsfoss fall; if you do a Google search, you can see lots of images of tourists walking behind the tall, gentle fall. On our visit, the volume of water made the back route inaccessible. Caroline stayed by the van with the other members of our group to keep dry. I borrowed a waterproof jacket from Andre to wear over my coat and followed him across the narrow river. Where it was shallow, we jumped from rock to rock. Then we reached a footbridge. Ironically, I stayed dry across the rocks, but the spray from the fall was so intense on the bridge that it soaked through my jeans and my base layer in seconds. I spent the rest of the day in cold, sloshy denim, but it was worth it.




The Golden Circle is the most popular tourist route in Iceland for a reason-- the sites are close to Reykjavik, and the loop is very dense with high-value stops. Every fifteen minutes, you reach something beautiful. The south coast is both more subtle and more extreme. We drove for long, boring stretches between sites, and when we reached them, they were not immediately spectacular.

Reynisfjara Beach is the southernmost point in Iceland, a stark, barren stretch of coastline. At first, the sand is not sand at all-- it's rocks. As you approach the water, the rocks get smaller and smaller, and eventually, you reach a band of fine-grained black sand. I only appreciated the view once I got close to the water, where the violent white waves against the black sand looks like a normal beach in negative exposure. The waves are notoriously unpredictable here, and I've never seen such erratic tides. One moment they'd gently roll to shore far from where we stood; a couple of minutes later, they'd race so much faster and farther in that I grabbed Caroline (who has not yet developed a healthy respect for nature's dangers) and moved to higher ground. We walked along the beach for a while, and then got back in the van to leave for or our wildest destination of the entire trip.

After driving on the highway for half an hour or so, Andre turned on to winding gravel road. The road was bouncy and uneven, and when we eventually reached our destination, the other vehicles there were all 4X4s. We parked in a gravel lot at the edge of a field of black volcanic rocks. They ranged in size from pebbles to boulders, and covered the ground over hills and under streams leading to the snout of the Mýrdalsjökull glacier.

A tangent: Mýrdalsjökull glacier is redundant; in Icelandic, most places are identified with logical toponyms. A -jökull is a glacier, a -fjörður is a fjord, a -foss is a waterfall, a -hraun is a lava field, a -fell is a mountain, a -vatn is a lake, a -vik is an inlet, and so forth. Once I figured this out, it made it a lot easier to decipher place names here.

The hike to the glacier wasn't far, but there was no obvious route. It was like one of those mazes on childrens' paper place mats: we'd set off in one direction, only to reach a stream that was too wide to cross. Andre took off ahead of us, and found a path that put us directly on the glacier's snout. I followed behind one of our tour-mates-- a spry British grand-mum who left her daughter and granddaughter behind because they were too slow. I pulled out my camera on some of the flat stretches, but the sky and glacier are both so white than my pictures all looked washed-out. We lingered at the glacier for a long time, with everyone hiking off in different directions. Andre encouraged us to stand at the edge of the glacier, but not to venture more than a few feet on to the ice. It was obvious from the edge that the ice in front of us was melting, and there was no way to tell where the weak spots might be.

Next we drove to the Skógafoss waterfall, which is usually larger than Seljalandsfoss. You would never know that from our visit! Skógafoss was impressive, but seemed gentle compared to Seljalandsfoss. I'd read that there's almost always a rainbow at Skógafoss, but the sky was a solid sheet of white while we were there.

Our final stop was Skógar, a tiny village just south of the Eyjafjallajökull glacier. If "Eyjafjallajökull" looks strangely familiar, it's because the volcano that erupted last month was under this glacier. We visited Skógasafn, an Icelandic folk museum, and toured their tiny, century-old farmhouse to get a rare glimpse of a truly old Icelandic building.

We got back to Reykjavik at about 6PM, damp and exhausted. We warmed up at Indian Mango-- a highly regarded restaurant downtown where Caroline had her first taste of local lamb and I had the "vegetarian dish". I asked the waitress what was in it, and she just shrugged and said "whatever he feels like putting in it each day, but it's always good". And it was.

Volcano's-a-no-go

We made up for this week's dearth of sleep with twelve uninterrupted hours of shut-eye for me, and thirteen for Caroline. As Caroline got ready for our trip to the volcano, the hotel's concierge gave me the bad news: a storm rolled in overnight, and our guide was forced to cancel our trip. The conditions weren't dangerous, per se, but views of the volcano were completely obstructed by the cloud cover.

We decided to take a walk up to The Pearl, a large dome that sits atop six enormous water towers on a hill high above Reykjavik. It's a ten minute walk from our hotel thanks to a fully paved path, and the fresh air felt great. The path had several small gravel trails leading off through the trees in different directions. It's the sort of place that would be thoroughly creepy in any other city. Not here. Reykjavik, even in its park-like crevices, feels perfectly safe.

We stopped at The Pearl's fourth floor cafeteria for skyr (MUCH better here than the one we tried in Portland!) and coffee, and then went back down to the lobby to visit the Saga Museum. It's a small wax museum, but it's worth a visit. The figures are incredibly realistic, and since this is Iceland, many of them are downright frightening. The audio tour takes about thirty minutes, and guides you through the most important events in Iceland's early history.

From The Pearl, we went downtown to hunt for a pair of "cute" fingerless wool gloves. Caroline saw some in the gift shop at Geysir, but we ran out of time and couldn't buy them there. They cover your wrist and wrap around your thumb only, but they leave your fingers completely exposed. Since fingers and toes get cold so quickly, I asked the shopkeeper, while Caroline tried them on, why someone other than my daughter might want such gloves.

"They're helpful for hunting, fishing, smoking..."

Caroline doesn't hunt, fish, or smoke, but she loves her cute fingerless gloves so much that I had to remind her to take them off at dinner (edit: and again at bedtime).

For dinner, we went back to The Pearl. We had a reservation at Perlan, the rotating restaurant at the top of the dome. Like all such restaurants, the food was secondary to the view. The view was spectacular! You can see the city from the fourth floor cafeteria, but it's not panoramic, and of course, it doesn't rotate. Let me back up. The food was secondary for me. For Caroline, it was more memorable: her crispy duck was served with her very first taste of pan-seared foie gras. She was tentative at first, but then she metered it out and spread a little on each bite of duck. She really amazes me, my daughter. I felt out of sorts if I traveled as far as Staten Island at her age. Caroline is always open to new experiences. No, that's an understatement. She's eager for new experiences.

Tomorrow, black sand beaches and waterfalls along Iceland's south coast.

Icelanders scare their children to sleep

The Hotel Loftleiðir is a strange mix of awful and awesome. At the top of the "awesome" list is a unique concept. At 9PM on Thursday nights, guests are invited to pick up a cup of complimentary hot chocolate on the way into the hotel's small theater, where a professional actor reads a selection of bedtime stories.

The actor warned the children, who were mostly British, that Icelandic bedtime stories are a little different than the ones they read at home. One story was about a giantess and her eight beautiful baby giants who turned to stone in the sun. Then there was the reading from Egil's Saga, in which Egil, age 7, murders someone with an axe.

They wouldn't be Vikings if they raised their kids on Goodnight Moon.

All that glitters.

An hour after we got to bed last night-- and a mere four hours before our wake-up call, I heard Caroline whimper and retch. I don't know how she did it, but with only four hours of sleep in the last forty-eight hours and no ability to keep down a sip of water, she worked up the enthusiasm to get out of bed and see the Golden Circle. It was a gamble, but it paid off. She took things slowly in the beginning, and felt perfectly normal within a couple of hours.

Our Golden Circle experience was quite different than my tour with Steve last month. There's snow on the ground now, and some of the water at Gullfoss, Þingvellir, and Kerið is frozen. The snow in Reykjavik and at Þingvellir is powdery dry and crunchy when you walk across it, and it sparkles in the sunshine. It's lovely. Although it must have been colder for Caroline and me, there was virtually no wind. This time around, we were able to really explore each site. We started our Gullfoss visit way up high by the visitor center this time, walked down to the main viewing area, and then went down as close to the water as we could. At the bottom of the trail, atop a series of volcanic rocks near the edge of a cliff, Caroline learned a fundamental climbing rule the hard way: when you climb up, you need to be able to get down. Fortunately for Caroline, she only weighs seventy pounds and her mom was there to grab her.

Steve and I were hammered by the wind at Geysir so hard that we took a couple of quick (but lucky) pictures and ran back to the bus. Caroline and I were able to linger here long enough to watch Strokkur erupt several times. Strokkur erupts (on average) every four minutes. Some of the eruptions are very small; others are massive. Sometimes there are two or three in quick succession, and other times, it seems quiet for a long time. We stayed in the field for about twenty minutes, and sure enough, we saw Strokkur erupt five times. Here's a small eruption, but the only one I was able to capture from start to finish:



We got back to our hotel at about 5PM, had a quick dinner in the hotel's restaurant, and tried to decide what to do tomorrow. We really wanted to sign up for The Mountaineers of Iceland's 4X4 drive across the "Myrdalsjokull Glacier to the erupting volcano on Fimmvörðuháls which is situated near the Glacier Eyjafjallajökull". We tossed it back and forth, and decided that the 4PM-4AM itinerary was too ambitious, and the $400+ price tag was too expensive.

And then we booked it anyway.

The Northern Lights

We had a perfectly clear sky tonight, and unexpectedly high auroral activity. We took a bus to a remote, dark field near a river-- a river we could hear but could not see. There were glowing fingers across the sky in every direction... but there was no color. None. Well, that's not true. If you closed your eyes for a solid minute, twirled around, and aimed just right, you might catch faint green streaks in your peripheral vision. Head on, the light was fuzzy beige. Our tour guide could spot aurora streams forming long before we could, and she was always right about where they appeared, but her hopes for a vivid show died shortly after midnight when the fuzzy beige lights shut down almost completely.

The forecast is similar for tomorrow night, so we'll probably skip the icy cold field in favor of a soothing geothermal pool.

I actually know my way around Reykjavik.

Two weeks ago, I visited Iceland as a tourist. Now I'm back as a guide. It sounds crazy, and I don't pretend to know a fraction of what there is to know about this place, but I know enough to walk my daughter to every tourist site in old downtown Reykjavik with minimal assistance from a map. I still can't find my way around Southeast Portland without GPS, so I'm pretty pleased with myself.

Our plane took off on time, and there were no volcanic eruptions to waylay us. We checked into our hotel, raided the breakfast buffet for hard boiled eggs, skyr, and fresh quince, and then set out on foot to see the city. That's exactly what Steve and I did two weeks ago, only our hotel was downtown, right on the water. Caroline and I are staying at a slightly nicer hotel, but it's far from the action. After some of the wild weather Steve and I encountered, I was nervous when I saw snow on the ground. It may indeed be colder, but it was so sunny and wind-free that our three mile loop felt perfectly refreshing after all those hours in the car, at the airport, and on the plane. We visited Hallsgrimska, the Sun Voyager, and Laugavegur, Reykjavik's main shopping street. We popped into Isey, where I had the unique opportunity to report back to the shopkeeper about all the compliments I've received back home on one of her designs.

To my complete delight, Caroline was more focused on the little things than the landmarks--
the crazy drivers, the nerve-wracking sound that alerts pedestrians that their time in the crosswalk is running out, the streets named for historical figures from the Sagas, and the oddities on grocery store shelves. We agreed that hardfiskur is not an appealing snack food, but that Muu is a fabulous name for milk.

After lunch, we returned to the hotel for a much-needed nap. Now we're waiting with bated breath and crossed fingers to find out if the clouds and ions will cooperate long enough for us to get a glimpse of the Northern Lights.

Iceland II

In nine hours, my baby girl will get her very first passport stamp. To prepare for our trip, she's studied Icelandic culture, literature, tourist attractions, and a little bit about volcanoes.

She learned about patronyms and matronyms, and rechristened our puppy as Jasper Carolinesdoggie.

She read 700 pages of The Sagas of the Icelanders, and declared that it takes effort to follow at times "because everyone's name starts with Thor and they all want to kill each other".

She hopes Katla doesn't blow up while we're there.

Location:SeaTac Airport, United States

Visuals

Amazing day

This is far too short a trip for self-indulgent jetlag woes, so we requested a 7AM wake-up call and scheduled an all-day tour of Iceland's famous Golden Circle.

We hate tours. We hate tour buses, tourists, and smarmy tour guides. We prefer to do our own research and explore on our own. With only three days in Iceland however, we compromised: we signed up with a smallish tour group for the eight hour trek through some of Iceland's most dramatic natural wonders. Andre from Iceland Horizons proved to be an excellent tour guide-- genuinely enthusiastic, and with extensive knowledge of history, geology, mythology, and comparative languages. There were only nine other people in our group, and they were very good company.

We left Reykjavik at 9 AM on a rain-free but very windy morning, and our first stop was the Nwsjavellir power plant. Icelanders get their power and hot water from super-hot volcanic steam under the Earth's crust. The plant is located in the middle of a thousand year old lava field, and except for a sparse carpet of arctic moss, it looks like Mars - utterly inhospitable and decidedly un-Earthly.

From there we drove into a peaceful agricultural valley lined with greenhouses and field after field of wind-blown Icelandic horses. These stocky little creatures were developed as a distinct breed and are protected by law in Iceland - no other horses are allowed on the island. In their heavy winter coats and long manes, they're a picturesque feature on the landscape.

Our next major stop was Kerið, a beautiful volcanic crater lake. It looks like an ampitheater-- so much so that a few musicians, including Björk, have played concerts on the lake.

One of the highlights of our trip was a stop at Geysir, the eponymous body that gives all geysers their name. Geysir itself is now extinct, but we followed signs a mere two hundred or so meters up hill to Strokkur, a large, active, and frequent belcher. You could see Strokkur's spray from the road, yet this short walk felt sort of like an ascent of K2. The wind was like a solid wall that made it hard to move forward. It left us gasping for air, but it whipped our faces with such force that it was hard to breathe. It felt like an endless pool or a hamster wheel. Once we made it there, It was literally difficult to stand still for pictures of Strokkur; we had to brace ourselves against the wind with our legs slightly apart to get these shots. We looked absolutely ridiculous, which is why there are no pictures of us in front of Strokkur. It probably sounds miserable, but it wasn't-- it was thrilling! The geyser's spray is less impressive than the flash-boil that precedes it when the gray, spritzy flat surface of the water rises into a breathtakingly vivid blue dome.

Like all the larger sites along the Golden Circle, Geysir has a comfortable, modern cafeteria/gift shop. Our group stayed for lunch to give our extremities a chance to thaw. The bathroom stalls are painted flat white, and visitors are encouraged to leave an autograph. Based on an unscientific sampling around one particular potty, the majority of tourists here are from Norway and Sweden. I may never be in the Olympics, but now at least I can say that I represented my country on a bathroom wall somewhere in Iceland.

After lunch, we got back in the van and left for Gullfoss,a waterfall along the Hvitá river. We thought we'd be jaded after spending a day at Iguazu Falls in '08, but Gullfoss was beautiful. The falls descend in two stages, cutting through the landscape and forming a deep, steep-sided gorge. Gulfoss doesn't approach Iguazu's scale or magnificence, but it's impressive and exciting and not at all the sort of falls you'd see on a hike back home. The wind picked up speed (you can hear it in the video below) but thankfully, it didn't come straight at us as we worked our way to the top of the park high above Gullfoss.

Final stop, Þingvellir national park, which straddles the rift between the Eurasian and North American tectonic plates. You can see right at the surface just how the Earth's pulling apart here. It's scenic in a spooky way, but it's also very beautiful. I've never seen such fundamental geologic processes so plainly displayed - the Þingvellir valley is scored with hundreds of fissures, clear evidence that this is the youngest land on the planet.

We got back to the hotel at about 5:30, wind-whipped, sore, and exhausted. The cumulative effect of several hour-long stops in the freezing breeze was a deep-down core-level chill that permeated our bodies. The perfect antidote: steamy-hot sulfurous water pounding on our muscles. Fortunately, Reykjavik hotels suffer no shortage of hot water.

We had low expectations for Reykjavik's dining scene even after our wonderful Indian meal last night, so we didn't put a whole lot of effort into finding a restaurant for dinner. We walked to Argentína Steikhús, which looked and sounded like an expensive tourist trap, but had the virtue of being half a block from our hotel. Steve ordered the chef's menu; I ordered a plain old steak. Hey, it's a steakhouse. We knew our meals would be slightly out of synch, but I wasn't hungry enough to care.

Within minutes we had a bottle of 2001 Gruaud Larose and an amuse bouche. I wish I'd paid more attention to the waiter's description, because whatever it was, the amuse was delicious. Bresaola, perhaps? Rolled and stuffed with something nutty, bright, herbal, and yummy. Our jaded palates perked up, and for good reason: what followed was an utterly delightful, lovingly prepared, perfectly paced meal.

The four-course special menu started with a ravioli filled with spinach and an egg yolk, drizzled with an oxtail ragout. The waiter brought out two servings: we waved off the second plate, explaining that only Steve had ordered the multi-course meal. The waiter shrugged and offered the extra ravioli to Melissa as an offering on the house. We both agreed the ravioli was delicious: unctuous yolk melding with the sharp spinach and tender pasta, the entire dish punctuated with the deep, earthy richness of the oxtail ragout.

The second course was a small portion of Icelandic salmon, cold-cured in salt and lemon zest. Two small squares of salmon were topped with arctic char roe and a drizzle of creme fraiche. Once again, our waiter brought two plates and offered the second to Melissa, explaining that "it didn't make sense to wait without eating" for the steak she'd ordered. What a gracious way to insure that we both enjoyed a harmonious dining experience. The fish was buttery tender, wonderfully delicate. The roe and sauce added an extra dimension of texture and flavor, but the fish itself was the standout: utterly fresh, faintly briny, just perfect fresh salmon.

And Melissa ate it. Melissa ate fish. As she explained, the presentation made her decision fairly easy: the dish was beautiful, a jewel-like presentation that was as much art as food. In any case, delicious as the food was, the big celebratory moment was when Melissa voluntarily tried it!

Our main courses were a couple of nice steaks accompanied by stir fried veggies. Melissa had a baked potato, Steve was served some complimentary french fries with garlic and rosemary. Probably the most pedestrian part of the meal - a steak is, after all, just a steak.

For dessert, Steve's meal included three mini-servings: a creme brulee, tiramisu, and a lemon sorbet. Melissa ordered a pavlova meringue served with mango and passionfruit reductions.

By the time we finished our desserts, we'd polished off the Bordeaux as well, and things got a little silly. We decided we had to try brennevin, the local Icelandic liqueur: a caraway-flavored brandy that's traditionally used to wash down local delicacies like sour sheep testicles. After we downed our shots of brennevin, our waiter (perhaps sensing an opportunity to laugh at impulsive tourists) suggested we next try "Opal", an herb-infused vodka that ranks among the worst alcoholic concoctions I've ever tried. Melissa claims to enjoy it, and backed up her claim a day later by purchasing a bottle of the stuff at the airport duty-free store.

We rolled out of the Argentina Steikhús several hours after entering - satiated, a little buzzed, and utterly charmed that we'd stumbled into such a pleasant and enjoyable meal in this quirky northern capital. The frigid wind that had howled all day during our tour had finally subsided, and we walked through the chilly night air back to our hotel. A very full, very fun day.

Gullfoss

So windy here at Gulfoss that it's hard to hold on to the cameras. And c-c-cold, but breathtakingly beautiful. We have some good geyser pictures to add from home.

P.U.

Iceland and India make strange bedfellows, but the two nations share a friendly trade relationship and strong diplomatic ties. Our hotel sits across the street from the Indian embassy, which looks more like a strip mall Quizno's than the domestic seat of a foreign government. Two of the ten best restaurants on this tiny Viking island are Indian, and tonight we decided to try one of them. We had good Indian food in Amsterdam and in Buenos Aires, but our dinner tonight at Austur India Fjelagid was... different. Better. It was a well executed synthesis of traditional Indian presentations with local herbs, fish, and wild berries. Good wine list, too.

And speaking of liquid refreshment, Iceland has the best tap water on the planet-- exceptionally cold and pure. Turn the faucet a few degrees to the left however, and you're in for a surprise: just as the cold water is completely unadulterated, so is the hot water. Only the hot water comes from deep geothermally heated sulfurous pools. At its best the hot water smells like a gently poached egg; at its worst it smells like Nair. The smell's growing on us. It's a very cool reminder that Iceland's water heater is the Mid Atlantic Ridge.

Fusion

What's a cantina without grilled whale enchiladas?

Reykjavik

Eyjafjallajokull volcano slept peacefully for 190 years, and woke up, quite inconvenently, while we were four hours into our flight. Somewhere over Hudson Bay, our pilot took a three hour detour to Boston. Nobody knew when it would be safe to reopen Keflavik, so we all waited. And waited. We waited fifteen hours, and learned that Icelanders are a cheerful, patient bunch. They form orderly lines without supervision, they smile a lot, they lovingly scratch each other's scalps, and they're exceptionally enthusiastic to hear that their home is your destination and not your layover. If you have to be stranded at an airport with hundreds of strangers, Icelanders are the lot you want.

Mother Nature and the Fosshotel Baron took pity on us: the former gave us perfect weather, and the latter gave us an upgrade. We got in at 4AM Monday morning, and slept like babies for six hours. We stared out our window at the picture-perfect landscape for a few minutes, and then set out on foot to explore the city. Our first stop was the Sun Voyager-- a modernist steel sculpture in the shape of an ancient Viking ship. From there we explored the length of Laugavegur, Reykjavik's main shopping street, lined with boutiques, quirky restaurants, and galleries. Laugavegur leads toward the historic center of town, where we stopped for croissants and coffee. The old town is composed almost entirely of two story wooden framed buildings, often sheathed in corrugated iron and painted bright primary colors - it's a rustic contrast to the formal architecture of more traditional European capitals and reminds us that although this is culturally part of Europe, it's a very different place indeed. On our way back to the hotel, we took a different route and wandered up a small hill to the site of Hallgrimskirkja, a striking Church with a steeple so tall that we could see it from almost everywhere in the city.

At street level, Reykjavik has generic Scandinavian charm: stark buildings, clean sidewalks, and unprounouncable street names laden with diacritical marks. Look up, and there's nothing generic about Reykjavik. Each of the city's brightly colored roofs forms a pointilist blob on a technicolor skyline framed on all sides by blue water and icy volcanic mountains. Unless you peek through an alley, the low rise buildings on a typical street are high enough to camouflage the fact that this city, so tidy and civilized, is surrounded on all sides by wilderness.

Tomorrow, wilderness.

Seismic Setback

We were 37,000 feet above Northern Canada in a region as white, scarred, and barren as the surface of the moon when our Captain gave us the bad news: a volcano erupted in Iceland. Not that we're eager to fly into a cloud of burning soot or anything, but we were totally bummed to see the animated airplane on our flight map change its course.

Dang.

Noted.

They eat what?

TripAdvisor's top two restaurants in Paris are Guy Savoy and Taillevant. French food. TripAdvisor's top two restaurants in Barcelona are Con Gracia and Montiel. Spanish Food. TripAdvisor's top two restaurants in Vienna are Immervoll and Purstner. Austrian food.

It's an obvious and logical pattern, and it says something fairly profound about Icelandic cuisine that TripAdvisor's top two restaurants in Reykjavík are Indian Mango and Cafe Haiti.

Iceland is famous for the sort of dishes that travelers eat strictly for bragging rights. Hákarl, the fermented, decayed flesh of the otherwise poisonous Greenland shark, smells so strongly of death and windex that Anthony Bourdain called it the most disgusting thing he'd ever eaten. Round the menu out with singed sheep heads, boiled ram testicles, and liver-suet pudding.

Eager to embrace at least one traditional Icelandic edible before our trip, I picked up three little cups of Siggi's Skyr at my local grocery store.



Skyr is made from skim milk, and then strained until it's very thick. We love greek yogurt and routinely strain our own homemade yogurt at home, but skyr is... different. Odd. It's so dense and sticky that it's downright unpleasant. I watched my little son thrust his tongue repeatedly against the roof of his mouth like a dog trying to make sense of peanut butter. He put in a valiant effort, but he only got a couple of ounces down before he declared skyr gross.

"When in Rome" we'll eat as the Romans eat, because the Romans eat Italian food instead of Hákarl. When in Reykjavík, we'll eat wood fired pizza and lamb tikka masala.

Iceland!

A slightly belated anniversary trip... to Iceland, of all places. It's a place Melissa's always wanted to visit, and what better time to visit than in March? Pros: Northern Lights, more hours to enjoy Reykjavik's famous nightlife, fewer tourists (hmmm, why would that be?); Cons: frostbite.

We can't wait!