Waiting was taken in the centre of Reykjavik last
July. My eye was caught by a lady sitting in the window of an
old-fashioned café with its name etched into the glass.
This is the original image straight from the camera. There was quite a bit of Photoshop cloning work to remove the person in the background and the camera on the table. I also removed some superfluous reflections in the window and an up-turned flower pot at the bottom. This was followed by monochrome conversion in Nik Silver Efex Pro 2 and toning in Nik Colour Efex Pro 4. Just like an old-fashioned darkroom print, this image also required significant amounts of dodging and burning in order to bring out the lettering etched into the glass. Canon 5DmkII. 70-200/2.8L mkII, 1/160s @ f/8, ISO400.
The hearty man ate a condemned breakfast, or so the saying goes. Such was our experience at the "Cabin" hotel...
As expected, neither of us had a particularly restful night's sleep. Harriet was disturbed in the early part of the night by lots of door banging, but then managed to sleep soundly until 9:00. Meanwhile I managed to sleep at the beginning of the night, but woke up about 05:00 with coaches revving up outside the window and, from 06:30 onwards, lots more door banging. We went up to breakfast about 09:30, hoping that it would be reasonably peaceful and that there would still be some food left. Astonishingly both were true. The breakfast was almost as poor as the first day, but the bread selection was slightly better. The muesli was still like horse-food, and the jams were red, orange or brown (take your pick, but they all tasted the same). At least it was all part of the package, although an officious notice warned us that if we attempted to take any breakfast food out of the room as a packed lunch, we would be charged 15 euros for the privilege. I think this says everything we needed to know about the type of clientele at which this hotel is aimed.
Speaking of which, we discovered a bit more about the door-banging culprits, courtesy of a label on the front of their coach.
Harriet packed while I went back into the centre of Reykjavik in order to buy a couple of presents. It was dull, grey and humid, and the area in which I walked wasn't exactly picturesque.
This is the very last fire hydrant of the entire trip. Promise.
By accident I entered a rather nicer area of the city, although one of the local moggies decided that it didn't like the look of this strange foreigner with a camera, so came to give me the once-over.
Even corrugated iron can be made attractive with the correct colours and a few plants.
A couple of places along the sea-front: one a modern "steel and glass" building which housed a coffee shop; and the other a more traditional building which looked like it was associated with something nautical.
The final picture of the trip is of a shop at the airport entirely dedicated to "Ice-Tat": mainly the same stuffed toys and wooden gifts which we'd found on sale all over the island. Not that there are many polar bears in Iceland, of course, but clearly they have an "ahhh" factor (unlike a stuffed whimbrel, for example, which I would happily have bought). As for the wooden artefacts, they all seemed to have been imported from Norway!
In summary, with the obvious exception of the "Cabin" hotel, our visit to Iceland was a truly magical experience. The combination of breathtaking scenery, fascinating history and abundant bird life was difficult to beat. Also, the simple tranquility of the island - outside the two cities and tourist hot-spots - was exactly what we wanted from our holiday. Will we go back to Iceland? Definitely, although probably at a different time of year in order to experience some snow and (hopefully) the aurora borealis. It's just a matter of saving some pennies...
We knew we had to stay in the "Cabin" hotel again, and were bracing ourselves for the inevitable anticlimax. This time we were put in a "Superior" room on the top floor, which seemed reasonably good apart from a rather "drainy" smell in the bathroom. More of this later...
The people at the car hire company were very efficient, and asked us where we wanted to be dropped after giving the car back. We decided on the Central Museum as a way of killing some time, but we discovered that this was closing in 40 minutes. Instead we walked into the centre of town for a wander around some shops and the old harbour.
Harriet wanted to go to the Vikin Maritime Museum, but it was closed. Typical. We then walked back towards the Harpa: Reykjavik's Concert Hall and Arts Centre. I promised you some more pictures from this amazing building after our brief visit at the beginning of the holiday, so here they are.
By this point we were tired, hungry and running out of steam, so decided to go for a bite to eat and then walk back to the hotel.
The "Superior" room was fine, initially, and I started to download my pictures from the day. When we opened the bathroom door, however, the "drainy" smell had become significantly worse. Less "drainy"; more "sewagey", in fact. I went to talk to the reception people who offered us two choices: move to a different room (only "De-Luxe"); or attempt to get rid of the smell by running lots of water down the drain and spraying the room with a powerful de-odoriser. The bathroom had become worse still by this point, so we decided to move rooms. It was tedious packing up and moving all our stuff, but at least we ended up with a room in which we could breathe.
It seems that our anxieties about the "Cabin" hotel were well justified. In addition to a room stinking of raw sewage, we had the third rate breakfast to look forward to the following morning. Yummy. This, combined with a lack of Internet service and the constant banging of doors by a large group of Scouts and Guides (English) on the same corridor, it was certainly a night to remember.
The journey from Hveragerdi to Reykjavik was a short one, so we had some time to kill before returning the hire car. As a result we decided to go to the Natural History museum. First problem was finding it, because Icelandic maps seem to work in a strange way: turning the page forwards takes you west, and turning it backwards takes you north (for example). We did manage to find the location - after much searching and cursing - and parked outside what should have been the correct address. Unfortunately it was a private house and we were on the wrong street! There was quite an impressive church at the top of the hill, though, but sadly it was shut.
On the second attempt we found a Concert Hall which appeared to be in the right location, but still couldn't find the museum. Eventually we asked and were sent to the basement. Bingo. Not a big museum, but apparently they are very proud of their collection of molluscs. Enough said...
I just had to take a picture of my favourite bird from the Iceland trip: the ubiquitous, and rather charming, whimbrel.
We still had a bit of time to kill before we could check into the hotel, so headed north of the city to a headland where it is possible to catch a ferry across to an island which has no cars. There we watched the fishermen and some very enthusiastic gulls and Arctic Terns who were attempting to steal their bait.
Eventually we bowed to the inevitable and took our trusty hire car back. The 2 litre VW Golf Diesel had taken us 2,590 kilometers (about 1,609 miles) at the astonishing average of 58 miles per gallon. That's a proper honest-to-goodness UK gallon too!
We were then dropped back into the centre of the city for an evening's walkabout. Watch out for this thrilling (and penultimate) episode in our grand odyssey.
We picked up a hire car in Reykjavik, and headed out of town. Relatively soon we were given the choice between going all the way around a fjord or taking a short cut across a bridge; so, naturally, we opted for the latter. Just before the bridge my navigator decided to turn right, based on a signpost she'd seen. Needless to say the main road carried on, and we soon realised we had taken the wrong turning. The only problem was that Harriet wouldn't turn round because "she couldn't see no ****ing bridge". I looked at the map and observed that the bridge was shown in a different colour to the main road. Perhaps it was under construction? There again, an engineer might simply have looked at the key to discover that the "bridge" was, in fact, a 7km tunnel! In order to preserve marital harmony, for the rest of the holiday tunnels became known as Underwater Bridges...
The morning was spent in Borgarnes - a small town which houses the Icelandic Settlement Museum. Given there was no human habitation before the Vikings, this only filled half an hour or so. In fact, more than half of the museum was dedicated to a series of tableaux depicting scenes from Egil's Saga, along with an audio narrative. What a bloodthirsty lot the first Icelanders were!
Compared to Reykjavik, Borgarnes was a haven of tranquility. Here are a few pictures of the place, including some of the flowers growing along the shoreline.
The most common flower on the whole island has to be the purple lupin, and there were plenty of then to be seen in Borgarnes. We wandered up to a strange monument at the top of a hill; but, having seen it closer, we still had no clue as to what it was supposed to represent. A shell with wings, perhaps?
There was an impressive rain storm across the bay, and "statue hill" was a good place to observe it without getting wet. It was also a good place from which to see the the town, and I decided to make a panorama. Obviously there are size limitations when it comes to posting pictures on a blog, so I've also added a short video which animates the sweep along the panorama. There's not a lot to choose between these two, but later - much longer - panoramas seem to work better in the video format.
We stopped for lunch in a small settlement called Alftartunga, which boasted a church, several houses, a field of horses and an enormous range of weather conditions. We had everything from bright sunshine to hail and torrential rain, but it was still a pretty spectacular location. The horses were wonderful, and one became particularly inquisitive and friendly while I was attempting to photograph the redshank. Some people may have seen my Icelandic Horse portrait before, but I thought I'd also post the original from which the image was created.
After lunch we drove slowly on towards Grundarfjordur, stopping when we saw a cinder cone by the side of the road. Everything in Iceland is volcanic, of course, and the lunar landscape felt incredibly alien to me. Lava from older eruptions is now covered in moss or grass, and some hardy flowers had even managed to take hold in a few places. There was also plenty of bare ash and pumice to be seen, however, which presumably points to more recent volcanic activity in those areas.
We arrived in Grundarfjordur at the end of the afternoon; and, because its principal industry is Fish Processing, we were able to smell it almost before we could see it! The waste from the processing attracted huge numbers of birds, including fulmars which congregated in large flocks just behind the hotel. There were also kittiwakes, terns, various flavours of gull, and even a seal bobbing around in the harbour.
Finally a picture of the Hotel Framnes where we were staying. Very small, comfortable and welcoming - in stark contrast to our experiences in Reykjavik.
