Building up our reserves

We seem to have spent the last 24 hours in Iceland eating our way through Reykjavik. I keep justifying my food choices with, “the last time we were here, Hawk took us on many ‘short’ hikes”. When in actuality, he would haul us 2000 feet straight up the side of a mountain for over 2 miles. It took me a few hikes to realize, Hawk and I have different definitions of “short hike”.

But back to food. After 13 glorious hours of sleep, we needed sustenance. Well, first we needed to spend 45 minutes trying to figure out if the washer in our unit had a dry cycle, only to realize it was part of the wash cycle which we had stopped because it said “End”. So now our clothes are really clean, and still somewhat wet, because apparently they make washer/dryer combos that don’t do “dry only”. I’d share a picture of our creative “maximum surface area air drying” setup. But Peter just bought new underwear, and I wouldn’t want to embarrass him.

We took a relaxing walk down to the Sun Voyager sculpture on the water. The last time we were here, we went at sunset and had to muscle our way through dense crowds to make a photograph. This time, the wind was whipping through the water at 25+ mph and there were only a few people who were keeping their distance from the splash zone. One guy opted to walk through the city with hiking poles to help keep himself upright in the wind.

We thought we would check out THE CHURCH, the one every one talks about, but God forbid we actually pay to go inside. I suspect we maxed out our religion quota for the year in Spain.

Mark told us about The Settlement Exhibition which walks through the origins of Reykjavik and Iceland, and includes an archeological ruin of an original Viking home, that is currently 1-story underground. The exhibition was factual, and thorough, but I found that I was missing the stories and the archeological debates about who did what when. There were also times, when I felt like the museum curators were messing with me.

For example, on one side of the ruin that included a wall of stones, the placard said walrus bones were placed among the stones in a wall for good luck. It even had a diagram to show you where they were. I looked, and looked, and looked super hard, and couldn’t find any. Maybe because it was almost movie theater dark in there, or because my eyes are crap or because I have no idea what a walrus bone looks like. But I’m going with, they just did that to mess with people.

Now back to food. We watched the episode of “Somebody Feed Phil” for Iceland, and just happened to serendipitously walk by the place Phil ate at and declared to have the best cinnamon rolls in the country. I mean I couldn’t remember the name of the bakery, but I sure recognized those rolls in the window. And since it had been an hour since breakfast, I muscled my way through the crowd and told Peter to “get ready to pay the lady”.

We opted for the “Happy Marriage Cake” (also translated as “Blissful Marriage Cake”.). You probably choose your translation depending on if you just had your husband, for the upteenth time, tell you a car is coming and not to cross the street). I mean who doesn’t need a little extra cosmic help every once in a while. The Icelandic name is: Hjonabandssæla, say that while you’re taking a bite. The cake is simple and easy to make, but not really easy to say. Peter declared the historical origins of the cake to be sexist and inappropriate for this blog. I’ll let you look it up on your own but I will share the ingredients. Imagine the crumble on top of a strawberry rhubarb crumble desert. Now double it and treat it like sandwich bread. Drop the strawberry part, and spread a thin layer of rhubarb jam in the middle. Peter’s favorite desert is Dutch/French Apple pie. He was in heaven. We bought one “to save for later”. It was gone in 10 minutes and I think I maybe had 14%. Love is not fair when it comes to pastry, and I don’t think sharing this delightful treat leads to a blissful marriage.

I love Icelandic humor. It’s everywhere and it’s clever. At our very nice lunch, which had a salted pretzel and dill cream cheese course, the door to the kitchen had this sign.

Peter opted for another Fish Feast. It’s so nice that you can go to a place and have fish varieties other than salmon and tuna. He had 5 different fish as part of his lunch.

We typically don’t buy water when we travel, we use our refillable water bottles. But in our apartment, the water tastes like sulphur, so we opted for a couple of bottles. We were surprised to see the Kirkland brand here all the way across the ocean here. If you were in Iceland, which one would you choose?

For those of you who like interesting facts here are a few from the museum:

• The hills around Reykjavik were covered in birchwoods. 100 years later they were all gone.
• þorkell mani, the Law Speaker, was one of the most civilized heathens that ever lived. We could use more of those.
  *Research on the Icelandic genome shows most male settlers came from Norway, while more than half the women were from the British Isles. So much I could say about this, but I’ll practice a rare form of restraint.
  *In 1960 about 40% of the residents of Reykjavik were children. This is about 30,000 kids. Which is the size of the entire population of Reykjavik 30 years earlier. One child for every 1.5 adults.
  *Beer was not legalized in Iceland until 1989.

Reflecting on raising all those kids, and there was no beer. No wonder Icelanders are such hearty people.

Under the category of: Random Photos