Oliver is 8 years old today. All hail Oliver.

We arrived back from Iceland in Halifax late last night, having met up with Olle and Luisa, en route from Copenhagen, in Keflavik. We stashed ourselves at the Quality Inn by the airport, and then took a swing through Halifax proper this morning. Coffee at Cafe Ristretto, lunch at Wooden Monkey, then drive and ferry home for supper at [[The Noodle House]]. Not a bad introduction to the east coast culinary scene.

Tomorrow we rejoin our regularly scheduled programming.

We’re off to the bus station in a few minutes. I’m a little groggy as I decided to catch the 10:30 p.m. showing of I’ve Loved You So Long at the Reykjavik International Film Festival (very good movie and redemption for Kristin Scott Thomas).

This morning we went for one last coffee, at the organic, fair trade, worker cooperative Kaffi Hljómalind:

We stopped at 12 Tónar to buy some music (Oliver developed a last-minute taste for Icelandic electronica) and we’re busy cleaning up the operation here before heading off (well, I’m blogging while Catherine and Oliver patiently wait for us to leave…).

See you on the other side.

We started off today, our last full day in Reykjavik, with coffee at Babalú, a pleasantly eclectic café just up the street on Skólavörðustígur. Coffee was acceptable, service was really pleasant, and the strawberry crepe for Oliver was a tour de force.

Next it was down the hill to the port for the weekend flea market: flea markets are obviously the same the world-over, and we found the usual collection of 10 year old VHS tapes, old clothes and postcards, and military regalia.

From the flea market it was a quick walk to Reykjavík 871±2, a museum that proves that value of doing one thing and doing it really, really well. The museum exists because, during renovations of a downtown building, the remains of a house from 871 (or thereabouts, hence the name) were found. The renovation proceeded, but the plan for the basement was changed to include the preservation of the site and conversion to a museum.

It’s hard to do justice to the museum: the structure is at its heart, surrounded by a panorama of Reykjavik implanted with video screens that show reenactments of practises of the day:

Walking the full tour around the structure you learn both its story, and the story of the settlement of the city. The technology is subtle and actually enhances the storytelling, a rare thing in museums these days. Highly recommended site.

To squeeze every last drop from our “Welcome Card,” (and because we thought there was a guided tour in English; alas there wasn’t) we walked up the shore of Lake Tjornin, past City Hall…

…and on to the National Museum:

This museum’s focal point is a permanent exhibition on the history of Iceland, and it should be the model that other jurisdictions follow to tell their stories. Using its collection as the jumping off point and, like 871±2, injecting technology where it helps to tell the story, the museum does an excellent job of covering Iceland’s history from settlement to the present day. So you start your tour at settlement, move through rule by Norway and Denmark, Catholicism and the Reformation, the Black Death, the Haze Famine, the road to independence, and end up with a mobile phone and a Dell laptop.

The text of the panels in the museum is breezily written, the objects from the collection are meted out with efficiency, and when I emerged I felt I’d received a solid introductory overview in Icelandic history. Again, a recommended stop on any visit to the city.

After a quick stop at our apartment, we decided to take one last plunge into the water, and walked back out toward and past the National Museum to Vesturbæjarlaug, another of the city’s network of geothermal pools:

Laugardalslaug, where we swam last night, was a shining, modern showpiece facility; Vesturbæjarlaug had more of a neighbourhood feel. We spent a pleasant hour between the shallow children’s pool and the coolest of the 4 hot pots (36 degrees, as opposed to 44 degrees at the high end), and had a nice chat a local about geothermal energy and the cities of Canada.

Refreshed, we headed off into the drizzly Reykjavik sunset, stopping to pick up a few groceries to supplement our dinner of leftovers. Tomorrow we stash our luggage at the bus terminal, do a little last-minute shopping, and then head out to Keflavik on the bus to rendezvous with Olle and Luisa, en route from Copenhagen, to fly to Halifax.

We’re installed at our apartment in central Reykjavik (it’s exactly as described: central, bright and nicely furnished — it’s also much less expensive than a small hotel room and 3x the size).

After an excellent trout dinner cooked by Catherine (she thinks it was trout: our local fishmonger didn’t speak English, and the best Catherine could get was that it was a fish that swam in a river) and some TV (Rachel Ray with Icelandic subtitles!) we all fell fast asleep.

This morning after a quick breakfast of muesli and Skyr (“a remarkable dairy product unique to Iceland”) we walked around the corner to the tourist information centre to pick up a Reykjavik Welcome Card — 1,700 kronur for 48 hours worth of public transit, museum admissions, and access to public pools.

After a quick coffee we immediately put the cards to use by walking up Laugavegur to the Hlemmur bus station to catch bus #19 out to the Reykjavik Zoo & Family Park.

Along the way, a black and white cat walking along the sidewalk somehow managed to run between Oliver’s legs, causing Oliver to trip and fall flat on his face. By the time any of us knew what had happened, the cat had disappeared. Oliver was fine, but he may never go near a cat, or at least a black and white cat, or at least a black and white ghost cat again.

The Zoo, more “farm” than “zoo” to be true, was obviously in its off-season mode: almost deserted, many animals off on vacation or otherwise hidden, and most of the “family park” shuttered for winter. There was a tiny temporary science museum; this delighted Oliver, and it was certainly the highlight of the visit. It was standard stuff from the Exploratorium play-book, some of it was broken, and the space was dark and uninviting; fortunately Oliver is easily impressed.

From the Zoo we walked out along the Botanical Garden and past the sports stadium and the Laugardalslaug pool and caught bus #14 back through the downtown and out to the port to see the Reykjavik Maritime Museum. Oliver is a maritime museum veteran, having visited them in Halifax and Genoa before; this one didn’t add much to the experience: your standard ships models, tales of the hard life at sea, pictures of dried fish, etc. The best part of the museum is its recreation of a wharf scene, complete with realistic-looking dock workers; otherwise, we wouldn’t have minded giving it a pass.

By now it was mid-afternoon. We debated going to yet another museum — the 871±2 was right around the corner — but we opted instead to take advantage of the open stores to do a little shopping. Although my eyes danced with visions of exotic Cintamani outdoor-wear, it was not meant to be: I have neither the physique nor the wallet to support it. Catherine, however, succeeded in finding some raw fleece from Icelandic sheep at the Handknitting Association store around the corner, she was very happy.

After a quick stop back at the apartment we suddenly realized that it was getting late in the day and we jumped into action to assemble our packs with necessary gear to go swimming. We decided to go back out to Laugardalslaug, the pool we’d passed earlier in the day. Bus #14 would have taken us right to the door, but we missed it by 2 minutes; fortunately bus #12 stops a block away, so by 6:15 p.m. we were walking in the front door.

To imagine what Laugardalslaug is like (assuming you live in PEI), take the CARI Pool and then quadruple it in size, add a competition pool outside, with grandstands, and, also outside, an expansive 1 metre deep children’s area beside two large round hotpots that can hold 20-30 people each. Add in a fitness centre, restaurant, sauna, steam bath and hot dog stand. Oh, and an 86-meter-long water slide.

As detailed on the offical tourism website, using the public pools in Iceland involves some strict rules: most notably that you must get undressed, walk to the shower without your bathing suit on, shower thoroughly with soap, and only then suit up and head out to the pool.

All this nudity makes perfect sense, but it does cause issues for some. I’m an old hand at the nakedness — when I first joined the YMCA (when I was Oliver’s age) the “M” meant Men’s and we all showered naked (the men actually swam naked). Oliver is nonplussed by nakedness of any sort, so he was happy to follow along (he didn’t like the showering part, but that was his regular shower-aversion).

My only fault along the Soup Nazi empooling routine was forgetting to leave our towel in the rack provided in the shower room — I took it out to the pool with us, realized that nobody else had a towel, and quickly ran back inside before it was too late.

The pool itself was Maximum Fun: we lolled about the outdoor shallow kids’ pool with lots of other families, playing catch, hanging on to floating dragons and enjoying the warm water (more pleasant still when you looked at the outside air temperature of 8 degrees C flashing on a display).

I’m not a waterslide kind of guy — or so I thought. I had to give it at least one go, and it was so much fun that I did it five more times in a row. It’s a little cold climbing up the concrete stairs — sheltered from the wind but not from the cold concrete. Once you’re hurtling down the slide, the sheer terror of it all negates any effects of the cold, and before you know it you’re plunging into a warm pool of water at the bottom.

Oliver was unwilling to attempt the Big Slide (probably wise; he might have been scarred for life), but he did take a go at the Little Slide, a huge leap of bravery for him, as he’s slide-averse on dry land at the best of times. Coming down the slide I saw as close to a look of unmitigated panic as I’ve ever seen on his face, but Catherine caught him at the bottom, and although he didn’t want to go again, he seemed happy at the accomplishment.

After about an hour, and a soak in the hot pot, we headed back into the locker room to reverse the nakedness procedure, the Big Rule on this end being dry yourself off before you head out of the shower.

On the way out of the pool we noticed the hot dog stand, and Oliver, to this point free of this Icelandic delicacy, allowed that he’d like one. Catherine joined him. They seemed to enjoy the experience. Back on bus #14 we were home in 15 minutes and are now all utterly exhausted. Tomorrow we rise again…

We returned our rental car today now that we’re done the rural part of our Iceland trip and are installed in our apartment in Reykjavik.

We rented a Toyota Auris from Hertz: it’s a hatchback like a Volkswagen Golf, and was a pleasant car to drive. Total cost for a four-day rental was $360 Canadian, or $90 per day. Because the Icelandic Hertz is an affiliate the rental, which I made on the Hertz website, was deducted from my credit card immediately on reservation and I was faxed a voucher to show to the rental desk in Iceland; this wasn’t an issue, but it may have made cancelling the reservation more difficult.

I compared pricing from Hertz with pricing from locals like Geysir and there didn’t seem to be a significant enough price difference to warrant going local.

Pick-up at Keflavik Airport was seamless: the rental counter is just outside the arrivals door and we were in and out in 5 minutes. They sell a very comprehensive road atlas at Hertz which I recommend: it’s got details of every road in the country along with commentary about sights to see, detailed town and city maps, and charts detailing everything from Icelandic sheep breeds to hospital locations. It’s only about $17. There’s also a nice coffee shop that makes a good cappuccino and croissant — it’s right up the hall from Hertz.

The car itself was outside in the parking lot a short walk from the terminal, and it’s easy to find your way on to the main highway (Keflavik is about 50km from Reykjavik). At the Hertz desk they gave me a card to stick in the machine at the exit to raise the gate.

Although it’s possible to see rural Iceland by bus — either public transit or organized tours — having a car allowed us to get, literally, off the beaten path, and we saw things that we couldn’t have seen, and stayed places we couldn’t have stayed otherwise. I’m glad we opted for it.

The main “ring road” around Iceland is paved, and is of the quality that you’d be used to in North America or Europe. In fact it’s probably much better quality than you’re used to. Off the ring road we found routes to major tourist destinations — Geysir, Gullfoss, etc. — paved and of similar quality; further into the hinterland we encountered a mixture of paved and gravel roads.

Some of the gravel roads were “washboarded” because it’s been raining all throughout September, but they were generally wide enough for two cars to pass each other, and while we did encounter some fairly massive potholes in the really rural areas, especially on the approaches to bridges, this was the exception rather than the rule, and there’s no reason to avoid gravel roads — just be sure to follow the speed limit and watch the transition from paved to gravel.

The only genuine adventure driving required was on a brief stretch along the south coast that was under construction: there was one patch that felt a lot like off-road driving, and I think if I’d let my foot off the accelerator we’d have sunk into a quagmire. But, again, exception not rule and easy to avoid.

Outside of Reykjavik traffic was non-existent. In fact saw only two other cars on the first half of the first day, and on our journey off the main roads into the valley yesterday we didn’t see a single car for most of the day. There were more cars nearer tourist areas and in Reykjavik we encountered a genuine traffic jam. Of course we’re here in the off season; I expect you’d fine more traffic in the rural areas in the summer.

With our simple 2-wheel drive car we had to keep off the roads marked with an “F” on the map and on road signs: you need a 4x4 for these. We caught a glimpse of one of these roads, and drove about 500m in to take a picture: it was obvious why you needed 4-wheel drive and a high clearance.

We drove a total of 710 km over four days, taking in sections of the south and west parts of Iceland. Gasoline was around $1.85 a litre, and the car averaged 35 miles/gallon (7.8 litres/100 km) over the trip; we spent about $100 on gasoline in total.

One thing to note if you’re from North America and don’t have a PIN number with your credit card: the automated gas stations won’t work for you. This wasn’t a big problem for us, as we found staffed stations when we needed gas, and no PIN was required there.

I returned our car to the Reykjavik City Airport Hertz location — there’s wasn’t a “one-way” charge for this and, in fact, I think I saved money doing this because I didn’t have to pay the Keflavik Airport fee on the return end. In any case, it was certainly a lot easier to return the car in the city than it would have been to make our way out to Keflavik and then back into the city. Although the Hertz location at the City Airport seems suburban when you arrive there, it was only 20 minutes walk into the heart of Reykjavik.

We didn’t really have a plan for today. So we woke up and headed down to breakfast here at Hraunsnef Country Hotel with only a sketchy idea of what the day would hold.

I choose this hotel almost completely at random: I knew we wanted to see something of Western Iceland, and that we wanted to be in the countryside, but that was about it. Iceland Farmholidays was where I turned first, but they have a “you can’t book a specific place” policy that didn’t strike me as all that convenient. Hraunsnef, although a member of their network, also allows independent bookings, however, so lured in by their website, I booked two nights. It wasn’t until we arrived that we got some concept of the area.

Under the counsel of our friendly host, we decided to spend the day looping up Highway 518. It was quite a journey: by my rough calculation we passed through about a dozen geologic epochs and just as many biological regions: we saw everything from verdant riverside fields full of sheep to bouldered Moon-like landscapes:

Highway 518 winds its way up one side of a valley and back down the other. At the apex of the loop you can almost see the Langjökull glacier — if we’d had a more powerful car we could have driven closer, but one look at the “F” road that led that way (the designation given to “you need a 4x4” roads) and we realized that we had to be content with a faraway look:

Down the other side we passed a little country church with an “organ” made of rocks:

And a little bit down the road an impressive waterfall that came out of the side of a river:

The tiny village of Reykholt was where we stopped for lunch. Alas we stopped at 2:06 p.m. and the only restaurant in town, at the big tourist hotel, closed for lunch at 2:00 p.m., so we had to be content with bread and cheese from the gas station (good bread, though). Reykholt is an important historic site in Iceland, a centre of literature and religion; while the modern and historic churches are indeed impressive, the museum under the church is moribund and not at all a must-see. We did learn, however, that it’s time to cut Oliver loose next week:

At the end of Highway 518 is Deildartunguhver, the largest geothermal spring in the world: it spews out 50 gallons of boiling water a second, water that’s piped long-distance to the towns of Borgarnes (34 km) and Akranes (64 km):

By this time the day was late, and Oliver needed to pee, necessitating a quick over-land jaunt to the gas station. Then back to Hraunsnef for a soak, another excellent supper, and, soon, sleep.

Oliver and I have both become a little obsessed with the Icelandic scheme for assigning names to children. When I first read that one side-effect of this is that the telephone books are sorted by first name here I didn’t believe it, but yesterday I got a chance to open one up, and it’s true:

We have solved the mystery of why Oliver’s ice cream sundae was called Ok — across the valley from our hotel lies a volcano named “Ok.” Catherine spotted it on the map this morning.