Iceland: Maritimes and Meetup

Our second day in Reykjavik, July 2019, would be largely free time for us because our meetup with the rest of our Natural Habitat Adventures group wasn't until late afternoon.

After a restless sleep Joan and I arose at 7:30. The morning began with clouds flowing over the ridges across the bay.

The Icelandair hotel "Reykjavik Marina" is across from a drydock.

Our first destination was the Reykjavik Maritime Museum,

Viewed from our hotel, the Museum entrance is the brown structure.

where we viewed a fascinating exhibit about the wreck of the Dutch merchant ship Melckmeyt, which sank in 1659 while seeking shelter at the Icelandic islet of Flatey. Local divers discovered the wreck in 1992, which was then studied as an archaeological site. At one point in the 17th Century Dutch shipping was half of the European total.

Then it was time for one of the guided tours of the Óðinn, a retired (2006) coast guard ship. It's visible in the above photo; click on the image to enlarge and look for the gray ship one-third of the way in from the right. Joan and I were the only ones signed up for this first tour of the day. The Óðinn saw service during the "cod wars" with Britain, when Iceland was systematically expanding its exclusive fishing area around the island to the now globally-recognized 200 nautical mile economic zone. Our guide gave us a thorough tour, and we saw one of the ingenious net cutters that the Icelandic vessels used to sever the nets of the British fishing trawlers. The Óðinn had at least one bumping match with the frigate HMS Scylla during the fourth cod war.

After the ship tour Joan and I returned to the museum with its exhibits, both static and dynamic, including audio recollections from the old days. Our attention was captured more than we expected!

We left the museum and re-visited the Þufa, an art installation of the structures used for drying, what else, fish. At the base of the hill we met a great-grandfather and his great-grandaughter (can you say "cute?") on an outing.

At left is the Harpa, across the harbor.

A closeup.

A panoramic view of the outer and inner harbors from the mound.

The Queen Mary 2 was far away at the "big ship" docks.

 We explored the path in the other direction, passing various businesses,

and briefly stopped at a shop featuring the clothing and miscellaneous goods of the company "Farmer's Market." Joan and I weren't interested in what they had to offer, commenting that these days we usually only bought stuff that we could eat or that was very small. They recommended a chocolate manufacturer around the corner. It wasn't immediately around the corner, but we found it, Omnom, and had several tastings with Kyle at the factory outlet. We walked away with six bars. Back at the hotel there was a packet from NatHab waiting for us including an Omnom bar (66% cocoa solids from Madagascar). That made seven.

At the group orientation we met our NatHab leader, Katherine, and our Icelandic guide and driver Solveig. Our impression was that it could be a congenial group, a good thing as we would be ten guests and two leaders in the same van!

Before retiring Joan and I repacked for land travel in variable weather (there is no other kind in Iceland).

Iceland: Start at Reykjavik, Of Course

Last July (2019) Joan and I embarked on a small-group tour of Iceland with Natural Habitat Adventures. Our setting off was worrying, with weather warnings and emails from Delta offering to reschedule us. But Joan and I have adopted a philosophy of getting "as far downstream as possible," and it wasn't even raining when we parked our car at the airport. We waited for our first flight as mist and a low ceiling arrived, but we made it to JFK and a loong layover, including a meal at Uptown Brasserie. We indulged in plane watching, and saw an Airbus A380-800 (Emirates) arrive and disgorge passengers for what seemed like an hour. We also spotted liveries that were novel for us, including El Al, Etihad, and Norwegian.

Heavy rain began as we boarded the flight to Reykjavik, and we left the gate accompanied by lightning. The plane taxied, halted, and waited. A flight attendant told us that although the plane had been sold out it was one-third empty, due to cancelled connecting flights. Arriving at JFK with seven hours to spare saved us!

In the end we were only one hour late arriving at Keflavik, the international airport, in the Icelandic morning. Our transport pickup waited a while for two no-shows, almost certainly missing because of the weather we'd seen. After a forty-five minute drive we arrived at the Icelandair Hotel Marina, deposited our luggage, and embarked on a walk.

Joan and I first visited the Saga Museum and the Aurora Reykjavik, both close to the hotel and to each other. They were intriguing, but the Saga Museum was an especially valuable introduction to the Icelandic sagas, employing personal audio devices of the proper language and life-size dioramas of the  main characters and scenes. It prepared us, as it were, for the evening show Icelandic Sagas -- The Greatest Hits at the Harpa, the modern concert hall and performance center in Reykjavik.

Joan and I wandered towards the Harpa. In this photo it sits behind an Icelandic coast guard vessel and a ship belonging to the Icelandic Association for Search and Rescue (Slysavarnarfélagið Landsbjörg).

Hotel and other construction made reaching the Harpa an exercise in route-finding. Fortunately there were signs, and the walk was easy.

Here is the front entrance to the Harpa. More detailed photos of this glass palace, from a brief 2017 stay in Reykjavik, are in this blog entry.

Inside we purchased our tickets for the "Icelandic Sagas in 75 Minutes," as the show is also known, and did some strolling until it was time to meet up with a guide from Reykjavik Food Walk. This was the same company with which we'd taken a food tour in 2017, and it didn't disappoint us or our fellow foodies.

Our guide this time was Agnes.

Most of our stops were the same as in 2017; one was different. All were welcome, interesting, and walking about town was a great way to stay awake and defeat jet lag. One visit was to a meat and cheese shop.

We passed some imaginatively painted houses,

and enjoyed Europe's best hotdogs, which may be in large part lamb.

There's always a line here.

After a brief cleanup and meditation back at the hotel, Joan and I moseyed over to the Harpa for the Icelandic Sagas in 75 Minutes show. We arrived with time to spare and poked around. This was the view of the "back," or harbor-side, of the Harpa.

Towards the bay there was a large field of volcanic stones which were available for those who wished to construct cairns or sculptures.

 

The small white spec in the above panoramic view resolved, with camera zoom, into an adventurous sailboat. Adventurous by my standards, anyway, perhaps not to Icelanders.

Then it was time to go inside for the show.

 

It used only two actors (plenty of costume changes), included audience participation, and was sprinkled with surprises and humor. It was much fun and kept us awake.

Afterwards Joan and I returned to the hotel, and after a sleepless night on the flight over, immediately plunged into bed.

East Greenland: Reykjavik, and Meet Up

We awoke to a second morning in our Reykjavik Marina hotel room, which had a map of the Reykjavik region on the ceiling and several walls.

Joan and I had much of the day to continue exploring the town on foot; the first meeting of our Natural Habitat Adventures group wouldn't be until late afternoon. First, we starting walking towards the far side of the inner harbor,

and quickly gained a clear look back to our hotel. In the photo below, at left, are two drydocks complete with warning signs about drifting paint spray. The hotel building previously housed a paint factory and carpentry shop associated with the shipyard.

Eventually we reached the tip of the harbor and the Þúfa art installation.

Two revolutions on the path winding up the hill took us to the top. This was the view looking back towards the Harpa, which we had visited yesterday.

The art installation centered on cod, a durable feature of Icelandic history. (With the warming of the northern oceans, mackerel and other species are taking a share of Iceland's fish and fish exports, which are neck-and-neck with aluminum and aluminum exports for first place.)

This side of the harbor is a mélange of boats, fishing companies, new restaurants and coffee shops, storage rooms converted to small businesses, museums, everything traditional and new, including electric car charging.

This mural in particular caught my eye.

We walked back into town (click on the map to enlarge),

and spent a few minutes at City Hall, admiring this relief map of Iceland.

By now enough time had passed for us to take a brief stroll to the Settlement Exhibition and sign up for the 11:00 guided tour.

During an excavation in 2001 some of the oldest relics of human habitation in Iceland were found, dating to 871 CE (plus or minus two), and further investigation uncovered the remains of a 10th Century longhouse. This exhibit/museum is built over the site, allowing visitors not only to learn about the settlement of Iceland, but to see the longhouse in situ and investigate its construction and usage through interactive stations. Joan and I recommend the guided tour.

After noshing on a chocolate bar in the courtyard across the street Joan and I decided it was time to climb the hill to the Hallgrímskirkja, the Lutheran church. It's the dominant landmark of the city, constructed in stages between 1945 and 1986.

Just as with the Harpa, the outer forms evoke basaltic columns; the Icelanders are intensely aware of their volcanic island. Above the level of the clock face there are windows, on all sides: for a small fee an elevator will take visitors to the top, the only way to get there. Of course we rose to the occasion.

The views from the tower were long on this sunny day, and demanded to be checked in each direction. Towards the inner harbor and beyond,

towards the in-town airport, used for flights to elsewhere in Iceland, to Greenland, and to the Faroe Islands,

and towards the peninsulas across the bay. 

The Hallgrímskirkja is famous for its 5,275 pipe organ, completed in 1992. Joan and I had the opportunity to sit for several minutes and hear an organist practicing on this instrument.

From the sculpture garden of the adjacent Einar Jónsson Museum I captured this better-lit image of the Hallgrímskirkja tower.

Joan and I hiked back to our room to clean up and take a short break before meeting Katie Crafts, one of our NatHab guides, and the rest of our group (total guests: 12) for an orientation session at the hotel and the group dinner at a Reykjavik restaurant.

At dinner Katie reminded us that this meal might be our last chance for fresh vegetables for the next nine days -- veggies in Greenland are often pickled or canned. For my main course I opted for a traditional Icelandic 'fish stew,' a mash of haddock, potato, and onion baked under cheese. This was a hearty choice made often by Icelandic mothers and grandmothers.

After walking back to the hotel Joan and I finished the organization of our luggage and turned in, but at first we could not achieve the blissful state of being asleep. It was Friday night and the hotel bar was just below us in a town well-known for its nightlife. Eventually the commotion diminished and we managed a few hours of sleep, followed by setting our luggage outside the door by the prescribed deadline.

On to Greenland!

East Greenland: First, Reykjavik

Welcome to blog post #400! I never imagined such a number when I started reporting on our barred owls back in 2009.

In August Joan and I embarked on an journey with Natural Habitat Adventures to their East Greenland Base Camp. We had taken a ship-based trip in 2013 that visited one fjord in East Greenland, but otherwise docked at towns on the much more populated west coast, including the capital, Nuuk. The east coast has historically been more difficult to reach and is much less settled; its largest town, Tasillaq, has about 2,000 people. The easterners also speak a different dialect of Greenlandic from the westerners.

To get to the east coast of Greenland we first had to fly to Reykjavik, the capital of Iceland. Joan and I arrived a day ahead of most of the group. After a seven-hour layover at JFK we took a sleepless overnight, 5 hour flight to arrive in Iceland in the early morning. Our strategy was to keep active on our extra day in order to stay awake.

The Keflavík airport had expanded considerably since our previous visit in 2006, and our ride into Reykjavik was enlightening. Tourism has skyrocketed since the end of the Great Recession, and it shows. Construction was everywhere. In 2016 Iceland hosted over 1.7 million visitors, and the prices in Reykjavik keep rising with the visitor count.

We registered at our hotel, the Reykjavík Marina, dropped off our luggage, and then began strolling along the inner harbor, which hosts whale watching boats, fishing boats, and the occasional coast guard cutter.

Joan and I headed towards the Harpa, Reykjavik's new (opened in 2011) cultural and social center. Click on the map to enlarge.

Along the way we encountered a guided bicycle tour,

and saw a bevy of cranes. This one looks bent only because I had to use the panorama mode of my camera to capture it all.

The Harpa is an astonishing piece of architecture.

The walls that you see are made up of hexagonal elements that echo the basalt columns common to this geologically active island.

Inside the effect is striking.

A picture from a higher floor.

Joan and I took a half-hour tour, which filled us in on some of the history of the Harpa and visited several of the performance spaces. Then we stepped outdoors and admired it from the sides we hadn't seen yet.

The fourth side.

We walked out to the end of the harbor wall.

Across the harbor, a man was mowing the hill of the Þúfa, an art installation. The hill was so steep that he was raising and lowering the  mower on a rope, or perhaps a cable.

There was time left before meeting our walking food tour guide at the Harpa, at 12:30, so Joan and I took a long walk along the shore, on a delightful paved path.

Along the way is the Solfar Sun Voyager sculpture, evoking the Viking ships.

New apartment towers are clustered on the level ground between the sea and the old town.

We returned to the Harpa and met the other four guests on the tour, and our guide. He said to call him "Thor," but it's really Þórður, or something close to that, if you can pronounce the Icelandic!

Our stops criss-crossed the old town:

• traditional Icelandic lamb stew.
• sampling 3 cheeses and 3 cured meats.
• Loki's, for a frozen dessert (rye crumbs and chocolate shavings in ice cream).
  
• skyr from Thor's backpack.
  
• the "best hot dog stand." Ordering hot dogs (made from lamb) at street stands has become an Icelandic passion. Thor told us that it's best to order "with everything," which includes mild mustard, mayo, deep fried onion, and raw onion. I got mine without the raw onion. Yum!
  
• soup of shredded rock crab and Icelandic shrimp, down in the harbor.
• At Apotek, located in an old apothecary, an apple sorbet with chocolate shavings, and a parfait with apricot juice and praline fillings.
• finally, again from Thor's backpack, milk chocolate bars made in Iceland.

Joan and I definitely did not need dinner by the time we got back to the hotel. We checked into our room, organized our stuff a bit, and then slept very hard.