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.
22 March 2010
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.
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.
20 March 2010
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.
15 February 2010
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.
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.
06 February 2010
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!
We can't wait!
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