Hello again, again, Reykjavik

[Upon arrival in Edinburgh, after rental car return debacle]

Hayl: I never want to rent a car again… except for in Iceland two days from now.

Such grand plans we’d had for how to spend our two and a half days in Iceland. We would spend one day at the Blue Lagoon, and we’d rent a car another day and drive to Eyrarbakki (EY-ra-bock-y) and Stokkseyri (STOKE-serry) [note: pronunciations are approximate, as we non-Icelanders don’t possess the know-how to even attempt some of these vocal sounds). We’d head to the country and hike the beaches, possibly see a ghost museum…

But before all that we had to catch the Flybus into town.

[On Flybus]

Hayl: What are these roundabouts doing here? I thought we were rid of those!

Thayer: I don’t know why you thought that. Do you not remember Mosfellsbær?

[Please see our 2010 video here for our little ditty about Mosfellsbær.]

We checked into our final Airbnb, an apartment above the Ruby Tuesday several blocks east of downtown Reykjavik (RAKE-ya-vick). There we met Ragnar, who showed us around his Ikea-filled one-bedroom apartment that we had all to ourselves. We hit the local Nóatún grocery store and found ourselves well outside of Kansas. In the downtown groceries, the labels, they help you out a little. Here we had no English assistance, which is why we spent about ten minutes staring at sugar packages, patting and squeezing them, trying to determine which would be raw, brown, and granulated. Eventually we just picked one and went with it. We chose incorrectly, of course, but luckily cornflakes and molasses sugar go rather well together.

That night we had our first “home-cooked” dinner in three weeks while couching it with a Richard Burton Bond movie before heading to the nearest swimming pool at Sundhöllin. There we wandered from hot pot to hotter pot to steam room and back again, reveling in a spa evening that would cost a fortune in the States but was a mere $4 thanks to Iceland’s crazy geothermal water pumping system. A word of warning, though, for all you modest Americans. All pools, including the fancy shmance Blue Lagoon, require you to shower without a swimsuit before entering. It's not up for debate. You’ve just got to own it like bam, here I am, Iceland, and in return you’ll find that, naturally, no one cares.

Requiring additional couch time after that, we proceeded to indulge our newfound obsession with British Royalty by watching The Queen with Helen Mirren, courtesy of Ragnar’s extensive movie collection.

The next morning it was time to get a move on—rent a car, drive southeast—and right about then is when we decided to check ourselves before we wrecked ourselves. Neither of us had even the tiniest desire to get into another car, so instead we chose to spend our next two days as Reykjavikians.

We wandered downtown and into the tourism office where we picked up a couple of “welcome cards” that would cover museum admissions and bus fares for two days. With that, we hit the Culture Center, where we learned more about the Icelandic sagas that were written in the 13^th and 14^th centuries and how they’d all have been lost were it not for a Dane who came over and compiled them in the 1600s (Iceland was ruled from Copenhagen at the time) and took them back to Denmark. It was a huge deal when the sagas were returned to Iceland in 1974, and they play a large part in national pride.

After cruising the incomprehensibly overpriced shops downtown, getting thoroughly soaked with mist as we did, we returned to Sundhöllin for another couple of hours at the pool. While we sat in the outdoor hot pot, the clouds finally broke and the evening sun shone gloriously. As the sun tends to bring out the chattiness in people, we soon found ourselves talking with a bright-blue-eyed and red-bearded Icelandic/American named Villi. With an Icelandic dad and an American mom, he’d grown up in Iceland and gotten his bachelor’s degree—but where else?—at Evergreen College in Washington. Villi gave us the lowdown on Reykjavik’s club scene, where folks really stay out until bar time. No, not at wee early hour of 2 a.m. like in the States. Bar time in Reykjavik is 6 a.m. At $8 to $9 for a pint of brew, we are far too old and miserly to afford a typical all-nighter in the city.

Instead, Thayer’s college friend Shauna—who lives in Iceland now—came over to our Airbnb with a bottle of wine, and we spent a lovely evening in the living room catching up on our lives since last we saw her in 2010.

Day 3 saw us at the National Museum of Iceland checking out fascinating exhibits from the beginning of Iceland’s recorded history around 800 A.D. The final exhibit was an oval baggage claim conveyer upon which sat groups of items representing daily Icelandic life from 1900 to the present. Thayer and I were stunned to learn that homes did not have running tap water until 1900, and the first Icelandic grocery store was founded in 1955. No grocery stores until 1955! My personal fave was the 1970s exhibit, which contained a teenage Björk’s first record album.

[leaving the museum]

Thayer: Takk. That means “thank you,” right?

Hayl: Yeah. Takk. I like that. Nothing’s cuter than two K’s in a row.

And then it was time for the pool. This time we tried out Laugardaslaug, a much larger facility with not only hot pots but a giant hot outdoor pool with kid waterslides and the whole bit.

“Hi,” came a familiar voice shortly after we submerged ourselves in the warm water. And there was our red-bearded friend Villi from the day before at the other pool, having “guys night” with his little nephew. We’d heard that Reykjavik, a city of 250,000 people, had a small-town feel, and having run into one of the two people we “knew” in town, we experienced that for ourselves. We were stoked to happen upon our new friend again, and we spent some more time chatting in the hot pot while Villi’s nephew squirreled adorably around him. It turns out Villi's dad, Villi Senior, runs the popular Volcano Show at the Red Rock Cinema, which we hadn't previously heard of, but were now totally bummed to miss out on. I guess this means we'll have to go back again to see it.

After a late dinner of overpriced burgers and brew at Islenski Barinn, we crashed back at our Airbnb, waking early to pack and clean up so we’d have time enough to hit the pool for the fourth and final day. As we floated in the pool, we talked about how great it would be to have pools like this in Seattle, lamented the impossibility, and laughed as we said our goodbyes to Iceland and happily discussed returning to home and Frank and Stu.

[on the Flybus]

Hayl: They have a Kaffitár at the airport.

Thayer: What’s that?

Hayl: That coffee shop. And do you know what they have there?

Thayer: No.

Hayl: No? You haven’t heard?

Thayer: [laying on the sarcasm] Nope.

Hayl: Let me tell you a little story about a beverage called the Swiss Mocha…

Thayer: You are a desperate fool, you know that?

We made it to the airport with time to spare, so we hit the Kaffitár and grabbed some floor space in our terminal.

[waiting for boarding]

Hayl: Someday we should fly Saga class. I bet they have hot pots in their airport lounge. Hot pots, swimming pools, sheep… someone to massage your shoulders…

Thayer: Someone to cut your head off…

Hayl: What?!

Thayer: The Sagas were dangerous times.

And here we are, on our return flight to Seattle, cozily watching movies as we fly over the clouds. UK/Iceland 2012 has been a long and unforgettable three weeks, and I think I can speak for us both when I say meeting new people was one of the very best parts. There are wonderful people all over the world, and we feel lucky to have met just a tiny handful of them.

And with that, I close the trip with a big thanks to all the family and friends who have kept up with this blog.

Skól!

Slàinte mhath!

Cheers!

.

Exhausted in Edinburgh

The nearer we came to Edinburgh (that’s ED-in-bur-ruh) the more palpable our relief at soon being rid of our rental car. The little Fiat 500, Fifi, has been grand on these country roads, but the time was nigh to give it up. So much navigating and driving and getting lost has exhausted us to our cores, but at least we can still laugh about it. Each time we find ourselves circling somewhere we’ve already passed, I quote Jim Carrey in the Truman Show: “We’re on a loop! We just go round and round!” and Thayer responds by quoting Chevy Chase in National Lampoon’s European Vacation: “Look, kids, it’s Big Ben!” I can’t tell you quite how many times we’ve had this exchange.

To reach the Budget Rent-a-Car return on the outskirts of Edinburgh, I frantically wielded three or four different maps, trying to reconcile them against each other, and I nearly wept with joy when we finally arrived. Sadly, this joy was to be short-lived.

While Thayer went inside to take care of business, I stayed outside and unpacked the car. I took it as a very bad sign when I finally went into the office and found him on the phone saying, “…but I’m looking at our paperwork and it says to return the car here.”

Our online Budget booking had directed us to this office for the return but, as we were horrified to discover, this office was a franchise that did not take corporate returns. There was “nothing anyone could do” but send us off to the car return at the airport, about a 20-minute drive away, and yet no one in the office could quite tell us how to get there. No truer words have been spoken than when Thayer, very calmly, explained to the Budget associate how desperately close to “losing it” we were. The memory of it makes me laugh now. It didn’t then.

[On the way to the airport]

Thayer: Two roundabouts here, are you kidding me?

Hayl: Nobody is kidding us, honey. Nobody.

Well, we made it to the airport, freed ourselves from the car, and took a bus to downtown Edinburgh. There we met up with Simon, who let us into his partner James’ Airbnb apartment, which we had all to ourselves for the next two nights. James joined Airbnb last year, thinking he would just stay with Simon when someone wanted to book his place, but interest in it was so high that he fully moved in with Simon and rents his place pretty much constantly. Rightfully so—the sleek one-bedroom apartment overlooking Edinburgh’s old rooftops and Arthur’s seat—the remains of an extinct volcano—is fantastic.

We spent the next day and a half exploring Edinburgh on foot and by hop-on/hop-off audio-tour bus, stopping into nearly every cheesy-wonderful Scotland tourist shop on the Royal Mile, touring Edinburgh Castle, gawking at the stunning St. Giles’ Cathedral, and visiting the National Museum of Scotland. There the highlight for us was viewing the taxidermied Dolly. Remember her? Dolly-the-sheep was the first ever animal to be cloned; born and raised in Scotland, she was, aye. And named for Dolly Parton, for she was cloned from cells from her mother’s udder.

[reading some information at the museum]

Hayl: I knew that already because I have a brains in my head.

Thayer: You do? You have a brains?

Alas, the exhaustion had finally reached our brainses. We dropped off our purchases at the apartment and then made our way to Grass Market, a narrow street running up a steep hill, its different colored storefronts contrasting adorably with each other. We spotted some people up above us on a terrace we hadn’t noticed before, so we climbed a staircase and enjoyed the view of the dimly lit old street from a story above it. Up there we enjoyed delicious Kurdish food at a patio table at Hanam’s before hoofing it home and collapsing into bed, grousing the whole way about our old, weary bones. We are not in our twenties anymore, that much is for certain.

In the morning, after not nearly enough time in Edinburgh, we quickly bustled ourselves and our luggage down the 60-step circular staircase and to the rail station about a mile away. A relaxing train ride to Glasgow and bus ride to the airport followed, and with a quick zip-zip over the pond, we landed again in Reykjavik.

Until next time!

.

Fàilte gu Oban

Fàilte is the Scots Gaelic word for “welcome” and, having no idea of pronunciation, we’ve ungracefully been articulating it as FAIL with a “t” at the end. This has come in handy for every mistake and wrong turn we’ve made along the way. “Fàilte!” we shout and then laugh at each other. Lest ye make the same mistake, fàilte is pronounced “FALL-cha.”

We knew we must be nearing the end of our travels when we finished off our 12-pack of car crumpets. We’d purchased the crumpets over a week ago and had been eating them with peanut butter—basically a sacrilege—for makeshift car lunches. Kirsty-the-Irish-lass had informed us of our folly: everybody knows they must be toasted and covered in butter. I suppose we’ll have to save the proper crumpet experience for our next trip abroad.

On our way to Oban, we drove by the Glenfinnan railway bridge—the 21-arched bridge over which Harry Potter and his wizarding friends ride the magical Hogwarts Express. Everything begins with “Glen” in this region because glen means valley, and this terrain is covered with them. The next glen we hit was Glencoe, also known as “The Weeping Glen,” named so because of the 1692 Campbell/MacDonald showdown. The MacDonald clan chief was late in swearing his oath to the British monarch, and the local Campbells led the British Redcoats into the glen, where they were sheltered and fed by the MacDonalds for twelve days. On February 13, the soldiers were ordered to rise early and kill their hosts. The stunning glen still weeps with cliffside streams when it rains.

The nearer we got to the bustling town of Oban (that’s OH-bin), the more people we saw out and about, clad mostly in summer shorts and sandals. Now, we were just as stoked as the Scots about this seemingly endless warm sun, but let’s not forget that that this “warm” is upper 50s, Fahrenheit style. We were quite comfortable in our jeans, long sleeves, and North Face jackets. But that kid we passed on our way into town was quite comfortable in his swim trunks and bare feet, splashing in a kiddie pool.

[Passing a sign for A’Chonghail]

Hayl: The Gaelic sure needs a lot of letters to say “Connell.”
(Seriously, "Connell" is how you say A'Chonghail.)

After winding up very narrow one-lane hillside streets and getting thoroughly lost, we finally found and checked into The Old Manse Bed and Breakfast, where the windows overlooked the whole town and the tea tray contained a tiny glass-stoppered bottle of sherry. From there our first stop was the Oban Distillery. The late afternoon hour prevented us from going on the tour, but we were able to read some information about the brothers who founded the distillery in 1794 and the town that was built around it.

We grabbed a tasty dinner at Cuan Mor, Gaelic for “the ocean,” and then set out to find a pub and meet some locals. Enter Donald MacFarlane.

Donald was lugging an enormous duffel bag from pub to pub, as he had just returned from four weeks at sea—old hat to a 32-years fisherman, such as he was. Our American accents are a beacon in some of these towns, and Donald chimed in as soon as he heard us order our respective cider and whisky.

Two gents nearby were joking about fighting one another, and Donald informed us that bar fights were common, as any old thing might set a couple of inebriated Scots to fighting for their honor. “Like the clans,” I ventured. Donald stared at me in stunned silence until his face broke into a grin. “Like the clans!” he agreed, laughing.

We had heard (from Rick Steves) that “the ‘45”—that is, the 1745 campaign of Bonnie Prince Charlie of Scotland to retake the British throne—and the subsequent 1746 Battle of Culloden are still rather immediate to some Scots, and with Donald we learned that was true. He fired right up as he talked about it, this 250-year-old event. By the end, we learned that the MacFarlanes—his kin—and the MacGregors were the only two clans never to have surrendered to the British monarch. “Never have, never will,” he said, utterly solemn.

We shared stories about driving around our respective countries, and he told us of his youthful drive from Oban down to the south of England to see his then-girlfriend. The harrowing 120-mile-per-hour drive took him nine hours and, naturally, required him to hit “every bloody stop for bloody petrol!” We told him a drive of the same length might get him across one American state in some instances and he, horrified, declared that when he takes his wife traveling stateside in a few years, they will stick to exploring Utah on horseback. He really, really wants to see Utah.

Later he begged our forgiveness for “so rudely” having neglected to offer us his home to stay the night. We told him we’d already secured our lodging, but that we’d be sure to look him up the next time we visited Scotland. “And you will be truly welcome,” he replied, never breaking eye contact. The old clan hospitality is alive and well.

We awoke—a bit worse for the wear—early next morning and had our “full Scottish” breakfast, differing from the full English by the absence of beans and the presence of a potato pancake. After briefly chatting with the Old Manse host Simon about the similarities between Scotland and Seattle weather, we headed out on our last drive to our last stop in the UK: Edinburgh.

Until next time!

.

The Highlands Part 2: Isle of Skye

From Dundreggan we made quick time west, stopping first at a ruined church and its surrounding cemetery that held many MacRaes, just because it was a beautiful day and ruined churches fascinate us.

We continued along Loch Duich until we reached Eilean Donan Castle (that’s EYE-lin or ELL-in DOE-nin), stopping to tour the inside, which was dressed from head to toe in MacRae clan tartan. Clearly they owned this region; in fact, a MacRae had purchased the castle ruins in the early 1900s and had it restored. Today the MacRaes still own it and use it for summer stays and clan gatherings. A giant portcullis raises and lowers the castle gate, but only in April when the MacRaes have their annual banquet. I had no trouble imagining them, dressed to the nines in their clan tartan, listening to bagpipes play as the gate opened to allow them inside for their ceilidh (read: big dance party).

On we drove to the Isle of Skye and found our next Airbnb: a “traditional croft house” with a white stucco exterior and slate roof, two one-window dormers on the second floor, a large garden out front, and a line of laundry billowing in the wind. Our sweet hostess Sarah welcomed us in and allowed us to use her kitchen to heat up some leftover pasta we’d saved for lunch. We ate at a picnic table in the yard and soaked up the unseasonably warm sun.

Not wanting to waste a moment of our one day on Skye, we hopped into the car and drove the loop around the Trotternish Peninsula, stopping to see rock formations like Kilt Rock, a cliff whose dried lava columns look like kilt pleats. Intoxicated by the weather—gusty wind with a bright, baking sun—we stopped frequently to hike around cliffs, falls, and beaches and breathe in a distinctly earthy Scotland smell.

About halfway around the peninsula loop, we stopped at the Ferry Inn for a mocha and a rest. There were two bartenders and three patrons including us, and the locals entertained us with amusing conversation about how it was the Sabbath and we were in a “heathen place.” Until recently, there’d been very strict expectations about not working on the Sabbath, so the deviation from this tradition is relatively new. It was wrong even to tidy your house on Sunday, but as the little gray-headed bartendress reasoned, “Would you really miss out on a day like today to hang out your laundry?”

Scots everywhere have been abuzz over the glorious weather, as were the English and likewise the Welsh over the sunny—though cooler—weather we’d experienced there. Warm days are not lost on us pale-faced Seattleites, and we consider ourselves fortunate to have been rained on only once so far. (Knock on wood.)

In the evening we had dinner next to a wood-burning fireplace at Cappuccino’s in Portree. You think you’re getting off easy with the pronunciation of Portree, but you’re wrong; it’s Por-TREE. Cappuccino’s served us up a mean sticky toffee pudding for dessert, and we thus discovered that “pudding” over here means “cake.”

After dinner we returned to ye auld croft house and cuddled up for an early bedtime, waking in the morning to have breakfast and chat with Sarah and her two other guests: a mother who was driving her college-aged son around Skye while he studied religion and its importance to small, close-knit communities. He might do well to visit the bartenders at the Ferry Inn. We went on to debate the merits of coffee versus tea in the mornings, with us firmly on the coffee side and him deeming our high-tech coffee makers silly and excessive. That is, until we told him about the machines you can program to grind your beans and brew your coffee by the time you wake up, which he sleepily pronounced “bloody brilliant.”

Instead of being sad about leaving, I prefer instead to focus on Skye as a place I know I will go again someday. It has become my favorite part of Scotland, easily and immediately. I can’t wait to see it again.

Until next time!

.

The Highlands Part 1: Inverness

On our way to the Highlands, I decided I’d heard enough of the Scottish accent to begin trying to imitate it. As you may well know, accent imitation is something I love to do but rarely do in front of anyone because I get stage fright and my mouth freezes up, the resulting lilt like none found on this planet. A few stops ago, a glass or two of wine made me bold enough to show off my English and Irish accents to Kirsty-the-Irish-lass, but the Scottish burr was uncharted territory.

It’s safe to say my version of it was pretty terrible at the start, but I am getting the hang of it better than I’d thought I would. I like to practice it while I read our travel books.

[Reading aloud to Thayer about William Wallace, about three sentences in…]

Thayer: So it was Edward I who was in power at the time?

Hayl: I have no idea what I just read. I can’t do the accent and process information at the same time.

We soon stopped in Pitlochry (that’s Pit-LOCK-ry) and toured the Edradour (ED-ra-dower) whisky distillery—the smallest distillery in Scotland. Only about three people work it, producing in a year what the larger distilleries produce in a week. They pride themselves on using much of the same equipment as they’ve always used, only upgrading when they absolutely must. To hear our tour guide talk about their whiskies—his voice going soft and his eyes closing gently—you’d think perhaps they were his mistresses. The time, effort, and love put forth, from tapping the spring to bottling the spirit, indeed suggests a loving and giving relationship. Our guide poured us each a small dram and toasted a reverent Slàinte (SLON-juh, the Gaelic “cheers”).

From there we continued north to the general Inverness area and stopped to walk the battlefield of Culloden (Kuh-LAW-din), the site where in 1746 Bonnie Prince Charlie and many Highland clans (the Jacobites) fought against the English government for control of the throne, resulting in a horrific bloody massacre for the Scots and the end of clan life as they knew it. Thayer and I knew about the Battle of Culloden from reading the historical fiction Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon and were thankful to have that background as we walked the paths around the battlefield.

The field has been kept mostly as it was back then: boggy, hummocky, and barren save for long, matted-down yellow and green grasses. Memorial gravestones were erected in the late 1800s for each of the mass clan burial sites, and lines of red and blue flags show where the front lines of the government and the Jacobites stood, respectively. The eerie sadness cuts through, added to by the sinking late-afternoon sun, thick haze, smell of wood fires burning, and white noise of passing cars that can almost be taken for the echoes of battle chaos.

Just down the road are the Clava Cairns, hair-raising ancient burial sites from 3000 and 4000 years ago. Can you even process that? I have a really hard time with it. The cairns are made of stones stacked into a ring standing about six feet tall, with a long hallway-like entrance, also of stones. Once a cairn had been used for a burial, it was closed and surrounded by a circle of tall standing stones. This area, too, felt a bit ghostly, but we lightened the mood by acting out the scene in the Outlander series where the protagonist gets pulled back in time through the stones. If you look at our UK pictures on Facebook, you’ll recognize this part by the photo of my head and torso disappearing between a split stone while my legs splay out the side.

Twilight was falling by the time we headed through Inverness and south along the Loch Ness. Ness is big around here—there’s the city Inverness, or “mouth of the Ness,” the river Ness, and the lake Loch Ness. And of course, there’s Nessie, the fabled Loch Ness monster.

We only saw Nessie in plush huggable form inside the area’s many tourist shops, but I will say this for the Loch Ness. It is creepy. Driving alongside it in the near-dark, everything cast in a grey-blue glow and shrouded in mist, I was so thoroughly spooked that I needed to play some Robyn on the car stereo, hoping my Swedish songstress would soothe my frazzled nerves. A few minutes later…

[Hayley switches from Robyn to ABBA]

Hayl: Even Robyn isn’t doing the trick. I need the cheesiest sh*t imaginable to make me not terrified.

ABBA’s cheerful song stylings indeed made the freaky drive more fun, and we soon arrived at Graineag (GRAIN-aig) Bed and Breakfast in Dundreggan, where the chatty hostess Barbara was kind enough to call the closest restaurant to make sure they were still open for us to get dinner at the late hour of 8 p.m.

We raced to the Glen Moriston Arms in Invermoriston and enjoyed having dinner in the fancy restaurant decorated in clan tartan carpet, curtains, and seat cushions. It was there I enjoyed my first ever Kopparberg Pear Cider, the lightest, freshest, peariest cider I’ve ever tasted. It was Swedish, naturally—the third Swede to rescue me that night.

I continued to practice my Scottish burr and lamented the lame boringness of the American accent, to which Thayer wisely replied, “Sometimes you just have to live with your own mediocrity.” Life is full of hard truths.

The next morning over breakfast, Barbara explained the thin line of liking/loathing between the Scottish and the English. Many of her loved ones were English including—“unfortunately”—her husband, yet the Scottish would never and will never root for the English in any sporting match. No matter who they’re playing, the Scottish will root for the other team.

Barbara: It’s not that we don’t like England, we just never want them to win… anything!

As she went on to talk about the Highland region of Scotland, she interrupted herself to ask, “Have you read the Outlander books by Diana Gabaldon?” We were thrilled to learn that her father had spent his life working at the Fraser estate—the modern-day iteration of the Clan Fraser castle featured prominently in the books. Not only that, but she once went to a book signing and met Diana Gabaldon. Gabaldon was headed to a Clan Fraser gathering, and Barbara said to send her regards. Gabaldon then emailed Barbara—emailed her!—to tell her that her regards were warmly met and the Frasers fondly remembered her and her father. And that was our brush with a brush with fame in the Highlands.

After breakfast we drove to Cannich (KONN-ick) and hiked around Glen Affric, then drove back to Invermoriston and hiked around the falls that tumbled down either side of a giant sheer slab of rock. We tooled around the small town of Beauly before exploring more of Culloden, and then we found a scrumptious dinner at the Gathering Place, a Chinese restaurant in Inverness.

On our drive back to the B&B, I considered how all I’d ever read about Scotland’s landscape had called it “rugged.” Rugged, rugged, rugged until I was blue in the face. Quit with the rugged, I’d thought. Surely there’s another word to describe it. As we drove through England, I even wondered how the landscape of Scotland would be so different from what we were already seeing there. Well, guess what. It is different. And guess why. Because it’s rugged.

The next morning we packed up and had breakfast, this time sharing stories of our travels thus far with a young couple from Essex who were also on holiday. Then we hopped into the car and headed for the sky. The Isle of Skye, that is.

And with that, I leave you with a quote.

[While practicing the Scottish “aye,” said while inhaling sharply, like you’re gasping out a “hi!”]

Thayer: Except we look like we’re convulsing and they don’t.

Until next time!

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Fa’side Castle Forever

Up we drove, out of England and into Scotland, stopping just outside of Edinburgh at Fa’side Castle where we had reserved their tower suite for just one night. Neither our pocketbooks nor our brains could handle such lavish treatment for any longer than that. Just kidding; it was just the pocketbooks.

The lady of the castle, Sue Brash, met us as we ducked through the five-foot-tall arched stone doorway. She showed us up the narrow, circular castle staircase, the first five steps of which were original from the fourteenth century. The fourteenth century. In their extensive research, they found the first mention of the Fawside estate from 1124 A.D., the castle proper having been built a couple hundred years later. Since its construction, it changed hands several times, its ruins owned by the Fa’side Preservation Committee from 1968 until a couple bought it in 1976 and restored it. The Brash family purchased it in 1989. They’ve found upwards of thirteen different spellings, so they’ve decided on “Fa’side” to imply that there’s a choice.

Our first stop on the staircase was around third-floor level, where Sue opened a heavy arched wooden door with a big metal sliding lock. We “minded our heads” as we ducked through and found our sitting room. Adorned with leather furniture, lamps galore, ornately painted wood-beamed ceilings, a wood-burning stove, a piano, a stone chess set, a tartaned-off fourteenth-century loo, and even a jail, this room was the stuff of little girl fantasies. And it only got better from there.

Our bedroom was up another seven million or so castle stairs, the bed, chairs, dressers, and armoires plush and fancy. A plate of grapes sat on the dining table, and a set of China was just waiting for tea time. Even an antique telescope decorated one of the alcoves. Surely I could have been Queen Anne Boleyn reincarnated but, as Thayer so lovingly told me once during my Tudors-on-Showtime obsession, “You are my queen that I love and do not want to kill. You are my queen that I do not cut the head off of.” My hubs—he knows how to treat a lady.

We left the castle only briefly to grab some dinner in the nearby town of Musselburgh, but we hurried back to spend every waking hour soaking up castle life. We sat at our table and had tea in precious China cups, we lit a fire in the sitting room and curled up in chairs, reading as much as we could find about castles, William Wallace, and British and Scottish Royalty, and we had a bath in the enormous claw-foot bathtub. Bedtime finally rolled around, but I didn’t want to sleep, for that meant my time as a queen was up. As we lay in bed, I kept Thayer awake with a steady stream of “Hey, honey!” making him laugh until even I got too tired.

The next morning we woke up in our king-sized bed and had some leisurely morning tea. I took another bath—heck no, I was not going to let that mammoth thing go to waste—and we packed up and headed out, Thayer gallantly lugging our suitcase down the many, many, many castle stairs.

Before departing, we chatted with the Brash family and learned a bit about farming life in Scotland and its limitations on their travel ambitions. Perhaps real castle life was not for us after all. After both of their dogs claimed ownership of our rental car in the only way dogs can, we set off for Inverness.

Until next time!

.

Slowing down in the Lake District

We left the Cotswolds and headed north toward England’s Lake District. The rolling bright green countryside gave way to the immense pastel purple and gray Cumbria mountains rising up along either side of the car as we wound our way through to Keswick (that’s KEZZ-ick).

We’d planned to use our two-night stay in Keswick as a jumping off point to drive to Hadrian’s wall and other nearby attractions in the Lake District, but once we drove into the quaint historic town with its pedestrian-only Main Street and checked into our beautiful and cozy room at Parkfield Guest House, we decided simply to park the car for a couple of days and explore only what we could on foot.

We carried our bags up the floral-carpeted stairs to the third floor of the old Victorian house. Our room was decorated in calming cream colors with textured floral wallpaper, a gold and glass chandelier, and windows overlooking green grass and the mountains in the distance.

The proprietor invited us to relax with some biscuits and a pot of tea in the sitting room. As our first order of business for “Operation: Be Still,” we sat for over an hour, getting fully into tea time and enjoying the sweet quiet in the bright front room. After we had thoroughly decompressed, we went for a leisurely stroll along the edge of Hope Park, turned around and headed back downtown, and scoped out a place to have dinner.

[reading the guidebook]

Thayer: There’s a place called The Dog and Gun, where you can bring your dog into the pub.

Hayl: Oh my God, we have to go there.

Thayer: Yes, we do.

Hayl: Won’t you just die?

Thayer: Yes, I will. I am already dying.

Of course we went there, and we ate delicious curry while watching the pups come and go, learning that the British are quite keen on bringing their furry friends along on weekend getaways.

We made it an early night and returned to the Parkfield to climb into bed and watch My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding, a reality TV show about Irish travelers that we’d just been talking about with Kirsty the night before—a happy coincidence.

The next morning we had “the full English” in the breakfast room and then headed out for a three-hour walk around Derwent Water, the lake in Keswick, using a twelve-years outdated walking guidebook provided by the Parkfield. It seemed many more signs were posted back in 2000 when the book was published than were there now; the story of our traveling lives.

The terrain was serene and pastel and quite like a Thomas Kinkade painting. I know it’s not cool to love Thomas Kinkade the way I do, but there’s nothing to be done about it. The ridiculously sweet pastoral images he creates are real, and they’re over here in England; I knew it.

Soon we came across a pair of swans who approached us as we passed. Isn’t that sweet, we thought. Such pretty, friendly swans, we thought. I’d never been so close to a swan, so I took a few steps closer until the nearer swan opened its beak and hissed at me. Hissed, like a cat. You might not think a hissing bird would be intimidating, but you would be mistaken. These birds are about three times the size of your average cat, and this one had a deadly serious look in his eyes. Just to prove how tough he was, he started gnawing a hunk of green moss, lest I doubt his ability to gnaw me too. He won; we decided to be the bigger birds and walk away.

After the run-in with the swans, it’s hard to say what compelled me to run flailing into a flock of large geese, but when we saw them all grazing on the top of a lush green hill, I just couldn’t resist. I’d thought it would make such a dramatic video: running right into the flock while they all took off and flew away. Thayer got the camera ready and I started the run up the hill. Closer and closer I came, suspense heightening, excitement bubbling as I watched for the first signs of disturbance that would signal their impending flight.

I was mid-flock when I finally gave it up. These geese could not have cared less about my presence, avoiding me with only mild annoyance, their bodies waddling like supersized footballs on legs. At least Thayer and I could amuse ourselves by continuing to try to ruffle their feathers by following them. Still no amount of chasing would make a single one of them take flight. We were no longer the bigger birds. We were the dodos.

We headed downtown to lunch at The Old Keswickian, where there were no more birds and thus no more bird puns for me to foist upon you. We spent the rest of the afternoon hitting the shops and having coffee, eventually supping at Oddfellows Arms and returning to the Parkfield.

Back in our room we fortuitously found a BBC program all about British Royalty, which we have been reading about and piecing together for days, our brains straining to remember who was who of Henry VIII’s children, and who usurped who and who killed who and so on. There was a fair amount of nerdy excitement in our room as we sat in bed and watched the program, riveted, for hours.

Early next morning we had our last breakfast in England and made a run for the border. The Scottish border, that is.

Until next time!

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One night only in the Cotswolds

Our three days in Wales passed far too quickly, but as we've found every step of the journey so far, there is more beauty and more good times to be had with each new place we go.

From Cardigan we drove all the way back across Wales and back into England—destination: the Cotswolds. The Cotswold region covers almost eight hundred square miles, of which we only glimpsed a scant few, covered by rolling green hills and the most Englishy of English villages. The buildings are cream-colored sandstone with dark thatched roofs, giving the impression that the towns are made of chocolate-frosted shortbread cookies. It was in one of these cookie towns that we were to meet up with our friend Kirsten, an Irish lass we met in a Dublin pub six years ago and have kept in touch with ever since.

We picked up Kirsty at a nearby train station and drove to The Churchill Arms in Chipping Campden. The pub was warm and inviting with its sandstone and dark wood interior, tapered candles, and booths made of church pews. We were shown to our rooms upstairs—just four rooms to let in the place—and dropped off our suitcases. I skittered around our room, squealing in delight and snapping pictures of every detail: the antique vanity, the wood-beamed ceiling, the dim wall lantern, the sandstone brick wall in the bathroom, the tiny jars of shower soaps. The preciousness was almost too much for my fragile heart to bear.

We met Kirsty back downstairs in the pub and had a scrumptious dinner—the Churchill is, after all, a 2011 Cotswold Life Food & Drink award winner. The location is a mile or so outside of the main Chipping Campden "thoroughfare," and its off-the-beaten-pathness meant there weren't many patrons other than us. They told us they would keep the bar open as long as we were spending enough money, though, so we kept the wine flowing until they called it at around 10:30 p.m. We spent the rest of the fabulous evening in Kirsty's room, talking and practicing our respective Irish and American accents. She evidently thinks we all sound like George W. Bush. I thank Thayer for having the foresight to take a video of her hilarious and terrible rendition of an American reading a Bulmers Cider bottle.

Also fascinating is that Kirsty attributes the Irish use of the word "like" to Americans! Trouble is, they use it all backwards. For example, as an American, I would say, "I was there for, like, twenty minutes." Contrarily, Kirsty would say, "I was there for twenty minutes-like." When I commented that I loved how she tacked "like" onto everything, she blamed us! "It's because I'm hanging out with you Americans; I don't normally do that," she said, to which I replied that she had vastly bastardized the American usage.

[finishing the bottle of wine]

Hayley [to Thayer]: Here, you can finish this.

Kirsty: Ah yes, it's your lot in life. Men must drink the manky drink and eat the manky food.

It was one night only, but it will go down in memory as of one of the best. The next morning we had our authentic English breakfasts and rushed Kirsty off to the train station so she could head to Coventry for her work conference on mathematical something something carbon capture something. 

As for us, we headed northward for England's Lake District. On the way...

[We pass a sign for...]

Thayer: Cockermouth. Really?

Until next time!


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That good old Welsh hospitality

Second post of the day! Do go back if you missed the post on Avebury and Bath.

At any rate, from Bath we continued west to Wales, where the presence of signs in both English and Welsh announced our presence there.

[nearing a tollway, trying to decipher signs]

Thayer: None of those pictures mean anything to me.

Hayley: The first one’s a car. The second one’s a… giraffe.

Thayer: Really? I thought that one was a turd.

Are the Welsh known for their hospitality? If not, they should be, as we encountered nothing but friendly and generous folks throughout our three days in Wales.

We arrived at Louise and Adele’s house in Pontypridd (that’s PONT-uh-preeth) at around 8 p.m. They showed us to our pretty purple room with our own little en suite bathroom, and recommended some places for dinner in Ponty’s tiny downtown, though we’d have to hurry because they generally stop serving food at 9 p.m. We settled on Trattoria and enjoyed some Italian food and a bottle of wine in a hurry because we wanted to make it back before Louise and Adele went to bed.

We happily found our Airbnb hosts still awake, watching soaps on the couch and playing Words with Friends. They invited us to sit with them and have a drink, which turned in to two or three, and we stayed up until 2 a.m. chattering and laughing the night away with the delightful Welsh couple, talking life and politics and fawning over their cat Milli every time she pranced into the room. In the morning they left us a buffet of bran flakes and granolas, juices, coffees, and teas, which we took our time enjoying before heading out. Louise’s appreciation for Jimi Hendrix may have sparked a trip to Seattle for them in the future; we certainly hope that was not the last we’ll see of Louise and Adele.

From Ponty we continued northwest via the Brecon Beacons. Brecon is pronounced with a short e, as “Brecken,” but it was hard to break the habit of calling it “Breekin.” We spent the drive frequently busting out into an R Kelly-style “It’s the Brecon Beacons, baby I’m about to have me some fun.”

The beacons are big, fat, tall rolling green hills, often dotted with sheep, their fields separated by lines of thick hedges, making the landscape look like a flowing bright green patchwork quilt. The hedges themselves may be thousands of years old, living history, and they also run along much of the road, leaving little wiggle room and rampant claustrophobia, as do the dreaded roadside rock walls in Ireland.

Thanks to a detailed map from Alex and Renie (a diminutive of Irene), our Airbnb hosts in Cardigan, we found our way through the Welsh countryside along unnamed one-lane roads lined with grassy moss-covered stone walls that were taller than the car—a bit like driving through a car-sized ditch. A chalkboard in the kitchen of their old farmhouse read, “Welcome, Hayley and Thayer,” and our room and bath were cozy and warm, the bathroom rustically decorated with shell and beach art. Most noticeable was the absence of a shower—only a big green bathtub—a welcome reminder to slow down.

Alex and Renie are an American ex-pat couple in their fifties who have lived and raised their family in the UK for the last twenty years, in Wales for the last fourteen. They chose the west coast of Wales because Alex once had a dream in which he was running down a hill toward the water with Renie and their youngest daughter. Years later while visiting the west coast of Wales, he recognized it as the place in his dream, and they bought an old derelict farmhouse and moved their family, steadily upgrading the house over the years.

They invited us to sit down with them and their daughter Jess, who had just finished nursing school, and have some tea and homemade cookies and cream ice cream—the thickest, creamiest, most decadent treat of my life. Here’s what happened when we asked where the rest of their children lived these days, now that they were grown.

Renie: Hmmm… well, Jess lives with us, two of them live in Wales, two of them live in America, three of them live…

It was at this point that our eyes began to bug out, and Renie giggled as she explained there were nine of them, spread out all over the world.

After a terrific night’s sleep in our cushy guest quarters, we enjoyed an authentic English breakfast in the kitchen with Alex, Renie, and Jess, complete with beans, toast (made from homemade bread), eggs (fresh from their own chickens), potatoes, and mushrooms. We’ve found that Wales does not mess around with its mushrooms. Every time we’ve had a meal with mushrooms, they’ve been huge, fresh, wild things, not the few tiny chopped up things most often found at American restaurants.

That afternoon we took a long hike along some cliffs in Newport, the views of the ocean endless and stunning, the ground muddy and slick. We’d thought the walking poles Alex and Renie loaned us would be just a nice convenience, but it turns out they were paramount to keeping us upright rather than us taking digger after digger as our ungraceful bodies were wont to do.

We then drove south and out along the Gower Peninsula, arriving at its tip at Worms Head just in time for the sunset. As “worm” is from the Old English “wyrm,” meaning dragon, the outcropping of rock vaguely resembles a dragon rearing its head out of the water, enchanting at sunset or any time. Since it was getting dark now, we began our drive back up to Cardigan.

Thayer: All these little cars—they look like they’re either from the seventies, or… space pods.

By the time we made it back up to Cardigan, it was almost 9 p.m. and we were in danger of missing last call for dinner. Shivering from the freezing cold outside, we went into a very old-looking place called The Lamb Inn and glanced around like lost sheep. “Well, come on in, then,” said an old gentleman at the bar, as several of his friends gestured the same. The bartendress came out, clad in a very short, sleeveless jumper, and told us they served only drinks, not dinner. A gentleman in a Wales rugby jersey, whom we understood to be the owner, told us to go next door and get take-out pizza and bring it back into the Lamb Inn, which we did happily.

The Lamb was warm and small with stone walls and low, wood-beamed ceilings. “Seventeen eighty-three,” Rugby Jersey said when we asked him when the inn was established, smiling proudly as our young Yankee jaws dropped.

Pretty soon the Lamb’s regular crowd came a-flocking. “With those accents, we’re quite sure you’re not English,” one man ventured. Upon revelation of our U.S. origins, we learned they all had a common acquaintance who lived in Florida. Everyone buzzed about the Americans in the Lamb, and even the Inn’s proprietress—a roundish middle-aged woman named Jill—came out to meet us. On and on she went about her son in Florida. Following were story after story about a woman named Gemma. Actually, several women named Gemma. After all, “it gets a bit confusing with four Gemmas living in the parish, innit?” It does, Jill. It really does.

Other chatty folks included Jamie—Rugby Jersey—who was Jill’s son and also ran the inn, Jamie’s son Nathan; a lady who joked that we’d come all the way to Wales just to go to the Lamb; a man named Gerwyn with a broken leg he’d sustained by falling off his roof; a man whose Welsh accent was so thick the only words we could distinguish were “Kurt Cobain;” and…

Hayl: Oh, that toothless guy who came and hugged us goodbye.

Thayer: Yeah, who was that?

Hayl: I don’t know, but I’m pretty sure he wanted to marry me.

We were sad to leave such friendly company, but found more of it back at Alex and Renie’s house when we returned around 10:30 p.m. Alex invited us to join in a game of five-person solitaire with Renie, Jess, and himself, and they told us about how they went on a walk that afternoon with Toulouse, their tiny poodle mix, and a stray lamb had mistaken him for one of its own, following them until they came upon the rest of the lamb’s flock. Possibly the cutest story ever told.

In the morning, we had granola and coffee with Renie and Jess, as Alex had already left for work. The “Welcome, Hayley and Thayer” sign had become “Bon Voyage, Hayley and Thayer,” and we sadly packed our car and climbed in. Renie, Jess, and Toulouse stood on either side of the driveway, and as we drove through—I am not kidding you—they tossed daffodil petals onto our car. I nearly wept with gratitude that I have the opportunity to meet such wonderful people around the globe.

Now we are headed back east into England to meet up with our Irish friend Kirsty and spend the night at The Churchill Arms, a pub/inn in a Cotswolds town by the name of Chipping Campden. I am already dying of the cuteness of the name alone.

Until next time!

Bath and beyond

March 18, 2012, 7:53 p.m.

After we took the train out of London, we disembarked in Basingstoke, where we had a Fiat reserved at the local Budget Rent-a-Car. We'd booked the car so far out of the city on the recommendation of everyone who has ever been to London: you do not want to drive there. Ever, ever. That could not be more true. In fact, I was terrified just walking in London. The cars, they’re so fast, and they’re coming at you from the opposite direction you expect. In the States you kind of watch left and glance right, but if you do that over here you will get yourself smushed. My heart raced every time we approached an intersection, and I got into the habit of booking it across like a total spaz, even if we had a green walk signal. I found it a satisfactory way to handle things.

But now we were out of the city and had to participate in UK traffic from an actual motor vehicle. Sh*t just got real.

The first hour or two on the road was a heart attack a minute for me, but Thayer—ever as cool as a cucumber—handled the learning curve with his usual grace under pressure while I hyperventilated and squawked like a strangled chicken. These roundabouts. Only the devil could have created something so horrifying.

We made our way west through the lush green English countryside and wound up foregoing Stonehenge for Avebury, another circle of ancient megaliths, only bigger and accessible, rather than roped off. We wandered among the giant stones, some of them tipped and balanced on one corner buried in the ground, and learned how the purpose was for one central stone to cast shadows on each of the outer stones at various points in the year, kind of like a yearly sundial. The henge (circle) at Avebury is so wide, it’s the only one to have had a village built within it.

From there it was off to Bath, where we spent several hours touring an ancient Roman bath with an audio guide. The amount that was able to be uncovered and excavated is most spectacular: the bath itself with its columns and even its water, the stone staircases, the giant hunks of rock carved with ornate designs of gods and goddesses, and the curses! Ancient Romans who were cheesed off at other ancient Romans would carve their curses on a thin sheet of lead, roll it up and toss it in the fountain so that the goddess of the bath, Sulis Minerva, would take care of it for them.

Throughout the tour they have pictures and models and even 360-degree digital views of what the bath would have been like in its heyday, so you can envision it against the decrepit ruins in front of you. All told, I found the whole thing quite creepy. Thayer did not share this opinion, but I had some low sinister music playing unbidden through my mind the whole time. Something about how it used to be a bright and expansive open-air structure for worship and play, and now it’s a mass of underground ruins, its inhabitants now only whispers of ghosts. Despite being thoroughly creeped out, I was also thoroughly enthralled, and I’d happily go back to pore over all the parts I missed due to time constraints.

From Bath we continued west into Wales, so I will end this post here, as Wales will be quite a mouthful. Next post up very shortly!

London is a circus

March 17, 2012, 2:17 p.m.

I’m not sure what I expected from London, but safe to say it blew my expectations. It was far more than I’d anticipated. More, bigger, louder, prettier, scarier, busier, older, better.

We landed at Heathrow and were promptly forced to figure out the workings of the tube. A bit iffy at first, we got off a couple stops too early, planning to transfer to a different tube line there. Quickly realizing our mistake, we hopped another train, made the proper transfer, and made it to our hotel. After a couple more tube rides, we pretty much were old pros. That’s the thing about the tube. If you screw up, you can right yourself in a matter of minutes.

After mastering the tube, we fell in love with it. That thing will take you ANYWHERE. It’s so organized, so streamlined, so FAST. I know Londoners have their complaints about it—crowding, delays, lack of air conditioning—but I’m not hearing it. Coming from Seattle and our so-far sorry excuse for a mass transit system, I was pretty much ready to marry the London tube.

After checking into our tiny yet well-appointed room in the very grand Grand Royale Hyde Park, we explored our neighborhood on foot and got some Indian food at Curry Palace. From there we strolled through Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park, stopping to appreciate the Princess Diana Memorial fountain, a very large concrete meandering ring set into a shallow hill, the water bubbling up from the highest point and trickling down each side like a slow river.

Afterward, we walked around the Piccadilly Circus neighborhood, which was remarkably like New York’s Times Square with it’s enormous digital billboards, flashing lights, and crammed sidewalks. We visited Trafalgar Square and then confirmed the Queen was in residence at Buckingham Palace, her red, blue, and gold flag a-waving. We capped the night with dinner and brew at a pub back in Hyde Park.

On day two we saw Big Ben and Westminster Abbey, took a spin around the London Eye, and explored Leicester (LY-ster) Square, another extremely busy and fast-paced neighborhood. My favorite from the day was our tour of the Tower of London, where past kings like Henry VIII lived and beheaded various wives like Anne Boleyn and tortured and killed various trusted friends and public figures like Sir Thomas More. In Beauchamp Tower, you can see the “graffiti” that prisoners carved into the walls during their stays, some of them elaborate works of art. We also got to see the crown jewels, which was pretty trippy. You see an old painting of a queen on the wall, and there in front of you is the actual crown that's painted in the picture, in all its gleaming glory. Our yeoman tour guide Moira was from Scotland, and when we told her we were headed there, she recommended a pub in Oban where she knows the proprietor. In about a week we’ll take her advice and find Lainey at O’Donnell’s pub, bringing her Moira’s regards from the Tower of London.

We spent several hours at the Tower before meeting up with Thayer’s high school friend Rina, whom he hadn’t seen since graduating from Exeter in 1997. At the Princess Louise Pub near Covent Garden the three of us enjoyed some pints in a gorgeous alcove of ornate dark wood and frosted etched glass. Later on Thayer and I stopped at a cheap show tickets stand and scored ourselves some seats at the following night’s showing of Wicked. Surely my musical-freak friends are appalled that I’d not yet seen it.

We began our third and final day in London at Harrods department store in the ritzy Knightsbridge neighborhood. This seven-floor behemoth is shocking in its luxuriousness. The “food court” is an array of oyster bars and caviar houses in a large hall decorated in white and gray marble and pastel-colored tiles, like a beautiful, precious candy shop, or a tea party for a princess. The children’s toy store has toddler-sized luxury cars you can purchase for £10,000. That’s nearly sixteen grand. The Ford Festiva I drove in college was $600.

Harrods was owned for twenty-five years by Mohamed al Fayed, father of Dodi Fayed, Princess Diana’s boyfriend who died with her in the 1997 crash. Al Fayed thus had two memorials erected within Harrods: one has framed pictures of Diana and Dodi and a pyramid containing the ring Dodi had bought and the wine glass from their last dinner together, still smudged with lipstick. The second is a bronze statue of the two of them releasing an albatross together. Both are fascinating, if a little creepy.

All that Diana-stalking and luxury-not-affording made us pretty hungry, so we went to Borough Market to scare up some lunch. I never imagined any market could be more impressive than Seattle’s Pike Place, but walking through Borough Market made me feel like when I think Earth is really huge and then I see a picture of it next to Jupiter.

The British Museum, which we cruised through next, also dwarfed every other museum I’d ever been to. Among the thousands of captivating ancient relics were the Lindow man—a murdered man so well preserved in an acidic peat bog that you can still see his skin and hair after nearly 2000 years—and the Rosetta Stone, whose perfect engravings of text in Greek, Demotic, and ancient hieroglyph made me nearly pull my hair out with its awesomeness.

We jetted off to St. Paul’s Cathedral just in time for the 5 o’clock Evensong service. The sounds of the church choir echoing through the domes and caverns gave me the shivers, and Thayer and I both agreed that with its ornate adornments, everything seemingly dipped in gold, it was even more spectacular than Westminster Abbey.

We capped our three days in London with Wicked, a perfect way to spend a both relaxing and exciting evening. What a show. There may have been some weeping coming from my general direction.

Then we went “home” and vegged in our hotel bed, watching a news program about overcrowding on the tube. Since we were Londoners now, this was quite concerning.

The next morning we got up early and hopped a train out of the city, and thus ends the story of Hayley and Thayer in London. I think we’ll only need a few decades there before we’ve seen everything there is to see.

(P.S. Happy St. Paddy's Day! We almost forgot about it because nobody over here is decked out in green.)

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Hello again, Reykjavik

March 16, 2012, 8:12 a.m.

True, this trip is concentrated mostly in the U.K., but first things first; we began our trip by spending twenty-four hours in Reykjavik, Iceland.

We’d taken the same Icelandair flight just two years before and had experienced the particular frantic heaven/hell of that first day in Iceland with no sleep, so thrilled and ecstatic even as our bodies shut down and we had to consider toothpicking our eyelids to stay awake. This time, we thought we’d be smart about it and have a little snooze on the plane.

The excitement had already set in, though. And no matter how disciplined we were, it seemed a feat of magic to fall asleep at 4:30 p.m. home time—magic we did not have.

Instead we stayed awake, watched movies, and chatted up our seatmate—a woman who does research for the University of Washington on women in commercial fishing. Her focus had been on Brazil for the past several years, and she’d recently moved her focus to Iceland. Since she spends months there at a time, she had plenty of advice to offer.

Before we knew it, it was 7 a.m. Iceland time, and we were still awake. Time to go. Time to go, go, go.

We took the Flybus from Keflavík airport to the terminal in Reykjavik, and for the first time we saw Iceland in the dark. You might recall that during our May 2010 visit, the sun only just dipped below the horizon, leaving a 24-hour glow that our body clocks had to fight in order to sleep. Now, in the dark, it was easy to remember that it was our bedtime, but we had only one day there, and we sure weren’t going to spend it sleeping.

So we walked to Marteinn’s apartment on Laugavegur (street) in the “heart of town,” as boasted on his Airbnb website. Marteinn is an artist—a painter and music composer. We’ve heard that some very high percentage of Icelanders are artists, that field of work being strongly encouraged as opposed to mainly discouraged as in the United States.

Right smack in the middle of downtown, we unloaded our stuff in Marteinn’s guest room and followed as he showed us around his small apartment, the highlight of the tour being the combination bathroom/kitchen complete with dish drying rack and space shuttle shower.

Marteinn gave us our keys and went on his way, back to his other house outside of Reykjavik in an area that doesn’t even have a name. Sadly, we soon discovered that our key to the building’s outer door did not work. Hoofing it up and down the three flights of stairs about six more times proved that none of the room’s other keys did the job either. But no matter; we met a kindly neighbor who generously gave us her spare. The Icelanders are a trusting lot.

Hayl: Amun…dar…dalur.

Thayer: What was that?

Hayl: You heard me.

After some cream-and-sugar-stuffed pancakes and coffee at Café Loki (hello again, Swiss Mocha), we walked to Perlan, Reykjavik’s Saga Museum. Before entering, Thayer noticed some steam rising up from the ground nearby, so we went to investigate. There we found a bubbling, boiling water pot in the middle of the woods. I crept closer to snap a picture, and a nice fellow sitting at a nearby picnic table snickered and said, “That’s not Geysir.” Heheh. We felt a little silly, gawking at a regular ol’ pit of boiling water in the woods, but what can we say; we’re Yankees. Gaui first took us for Canadians, having met Canadians at each and every stop on his recent European tour. We were happy to represent North America’s midsection.

Gaui didn’t give us too much guff about our boiling water fascination. He chatted us up for a while, as he’d just been passing the time reading his book outside on the overcast, 32-degree-Fahrenheit day. “Good weather,” he’d said. We laughed, as we’d never find the likes of him stateside on such a day. Gaui is pronounced “Gwee,” and it’s short for Guðjón, pronounced “GOOTH-yown.” Gaui, if you’re reading this, I apologize if I’ve just butchered the phonetics. I’ve got to make sure we’re on good terms, because we’re taking him out for coffee when we get back to Reykjavik in a few weeks.

Inside Perlan is the Saga Museum, where they have wax figures telling all the stories of the Icelandic Sagas. The museum did much to outline Iceland’s founding history, but we both found some of the stories confusing and difficult to relate to one another, as far as chronology goes. Clearly we need more lessons. My favorite story is of Ingólfur Arnarson, who threw three pillars from his ship overboard, planning to settle wherever the pillars came ashore. After a time, he sent two men around the island to find them, and when they returned, they were all, “Dude, no, you can’t settle there.” But Arnarson did indeed settle there. He named it “the Smoky Bay,” or rather, Reykjavik.

After Perlan we followed a trail down to a beach where a map told us there was a warm water inlet and, in the middle of that, a hot pot. We found the inlet, but it was not warm, and the hot pot in the middle was bone dry; still, any Icelandic beach is lovely to us.

[during the long walk from the beach back to downtown]

Hayl: Hmmm, maybe I’ll lose a couple pounds on this trip.

Thayer: Maybe if you watch the Swiss mochas.

Hayl: Watch them go down my gullet?

Thayer: Right.

On we went to Tjörnin, a manmade lake in the middle of downtown where people like to feed giant geese and where a webcam is set up, which I like to check often when I am at home in the States. Being the super sleuth I am, I spotted the camera and took a picture of it, which will be ridiculously boring to everyone but me. When we get back to Reykjavik, I plan to locate all the other webcams I check obsessively and take pictures of them, too.

Next was dinner at Hressingarskálinn, where I had something non-scary like a pizza and Thayer had a towering mountain of fish stew. At about 9 p.m. it was time for bed, or rather, for lying awake all night long while the very loud sounds of downtown Reykjavik echoed up to our third-floor window and our fears of missing our early morning bus kept us in a near-constant state of frantic readiness. We think we finally succumbed to sleep around 2 a.m.

Up we jumped at 5:45 a.m. and walked the kilometer back to the bus terminal, tiptoeing through the sleeping city and cringing whilst our suitcases thundered along the uneven sidewalks and cobblestones.

I slept the entire flight to London.

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