Well that’s it. It has been an amazing 21 days here in Iceland. This is our second trip here in 3 years, and when we were planning, I said “After this second trip, I think we will have covered everything we want to see on the island”. Apparently I was delusional. I am leaving Iceland, with an even longer list of things I would still like to experience, and many places I would like to visit again. I mean, I only just discovered Happy Marriage Cake 21 days ago and sampled it only in the Westfjords (for the most part), there is almost an entire country left…..I am nothing if not thorough.

So where did the HMC taste test end up? We ate 9 versions, we tried hard for 10 but could not find #10 our last few days here. First, let me start with, no 2 HMC’s were alike, and they were all delicious. It may be a universal thing in Iceland, but like tiramisu in Italy, everyone has their own take. After many spirited debates about things like jam to oats ratios, oats to sugar, dry versus moist, etc., Peter chose Braud & Co’s version as his favorite. It was also our first HMC so maybe that also had something to do with it. It was imprinted on our brains from the start like a baby duckling to its mama duck. My favorite was the one we had at the Samuel Jonsson Museum. That is the version I would like to make for friends and family. The woman who made it, said her HMC was different and better than all the others, I would have to agree. I wish I would have had the foresight to ask for her recipe.

I asked Peter if he were to share 3 memorable things about Iceland with friends, what would they be. Would you like to guess? If you said “waterfalls”, you would be correct. According to my waterfall expert, Iceland has the largest concentration of beautiful waterfalls that he has ever seen. And there are 10,000 here, so there are a lot more photographs to be made. The other two things he wanted to share were the amazing food culture here and the beauty of the landscape.

The landscape here is stark and beautiful, black lava with bright greens, and an endless variety of visual subjects. We drove 1,812 miles and the hours just melted away because there was beauty all around us.

Now on to food, I’ve had more fish here in 3 weeks than I’ve had in 3 years, especially cod. And it’s not just cod on a plate with a few token vegetables. It’s cod prepared perfectly with a beautiful sauce (or 2) on a bed of vegetables, well you get the idea. And the bread……the bread……I will really miss the bread. I would encourage friends not to contact me for the next week or so, as I will be going through severe carb and sugar withdrawal and may be “slightly” cranky. As Peter said when we woke up first thing this morning, “Tomorrow we are back to regular order”…whatever that means.

I don’t believe we are done visiting this beautiful country, it has become a place that has captured our imaginations and hearts. And we still have to get to the bottom of whether James Bond was Icelandic. It’s a current countrywide debate right now.

As with our previous trips, I posted mostly iPhone photos on these daily trip logs. We will spend the next few weeks, editing and processing the thousands of images we made on our “big cameras”. When we are done I will share the link to the FLICKR album with you.

Thank you for following along and for all of your “likes” and nice comments. It’s nice to know that not only my parents are reading this.