Iceland, ho!

here, we are in boston.

here, we are in iceland!

our flight out was at 6pm (with a brief stopover in halifax, nova scotia, where they have trees and not much else), and we arrived at 5am. we hung around for a while until happy campers picked us up, then we got our happy camper all happy. happy campers is a family run business, and they’re really very happy! they have a friendly little office, and in their little office you can rent extra things for your happy camping trip. but some things they just have for free – in the “green zone”: they take all the groceries and other things people have leftover at the end of their trips and put them on these shelves, so when you start your trip you can just take whatever you want: handy!

most of it was gluten-y, but we were happy to snag some toilet paper. and a guitar! they have several guitars, and you can just borrow them for your trip – also free :-).
you might have noticed, i have TOTALLY drunk the happy koolaid.
actually, in our case, the happy koolaid was champagne, because they knew we were on our honeymoon so they put champagne in our little cooler for us. awww! see? happy camper is the greatest.

anna rósa, our icelandic herbalist friend, picked us up at the happy camper place for a first-day excursion. we had some trouble arranging it though, because technology is hard when you’re sleep deprived overseas. so she tracked down the cell phone number of the guy driving the shuttle from the airport to the happy camper place, and just called us on his phone. because that’s just how they roll in iceland.

our day’s excursion (please note, we haven’t slept yet) was to the west in Grundarfjörður, where we were planning to tag along while rosalee (another american herbalist) was filming anna rosa talking about plants for herbmentor.com.

here i am taking a picture of a plant. because i’m in iceland and i’m an herbalist: volcanos! ocean! ooh, look at that plant!

on the way we stopped for lunch (anna had packed us a picnic breakfast, and i didn’t even know i was hungry yet!) and discovered kjötsupa, which is lamb soup, and which – despite that i don’t even like soup – is my new favorite thing ever. EVER! next to harðfiskur, which we will discuss later.

here, is Kirkjufell (church mountain), which stands to the right of Helgrindur (the gates of hell mountains). i think they’re mountains. or hills? mountainettes? volcanic detritus. we filmed angelica here, and dulse on the beach below this big stand of angelica. that’s the ocean, that water there. Kirkjufell (keer-kyoo-fet-luh) is at the very tip of a penninsula.

here is anna rósa pulling up some rhodiola (burnirót) – with permission, of course! – to talk about on herbmentor. afterwards, she gave the plant to us for salad, which we enjoyed for a good part of the week (it was a big one!) i had been really wanting to spend time with rhodiola in iceland, because initially (when i tried it once a year or so ago) i was not a big fan of the tincture, but anna rósa loves it, so i wanted to give it another chance. i was super excited to spend time just eating it as salad. we learned later that in alberta (canada), where rhodiola also grows (in the north, anyway), the leaves are the part more traditionally used as medicine, as opposed to the roots. in iceland right now, it’s hard to harvest rhodiola, because the sheep love to eat it, so although it grows quite happily and natively there, it’s kind of hard to find in any particular quantity. if you’re an herbalist and you’re planning a trip to iceland, please do NOT harvest rhodiola when you see it. instead ask for some from somoene’s garden! they’ll probably say yes!

here are some friendly icelandic cats.

here is a very good waterfall. this waterfall is on the property of …someone’s house. when i mentioned that i would love to own that house, it was ferreted out that i could in fact do that for 30 million icelandic krona. which is a steal really, especially given it has land and horse barns! it sits back from the ocean, across the street is the bay and kirkjufell. and did i mention the amazing waterfall right there in the side yard? plus we’d be practically neighbors with a fabulous woman we met named shilagh, who is hysterical. we definitely plan to visit her on a future trip! 30 million icelandic krona sounds intimidating, but it’s really “only” $250k.

this is my fruit dolphin. no, really.
we ate dinner that evening at shilagh’s restaurant, which was delicious i might add (i had lamb chops and he had monkfish, which i discovered i like!). after dinner she said that no one goes without dessert, but they didn’t have gluten and dairy free desserts, so she commanded a fruit cup, and voila, fruit dolphin! by the way, you can find info about her lovely hotel and restaurant here: http://www.hotelframnes.is/ and if you’re planning to go to the west of iceland, definitely, definitely stay with shilagh!

around 10pm, we headed back to reykjavik, i think i slept in the car some, and about midnight we were settled in a place to park for the night to sleep. we weren’t ready to head out of town yet, and we were SO. TIRED. so we crossed the highway from the happy camper pickup place and parked in the parking lot of the grocery store we planned to go to in the morning. the only problem? no bathroom was open at a million o’clock (which looks approximately like 6:45pm, because it’s summer and the sun doesn’t set). we did find a stealthy place to pee before bed, and we’re pretty sure no one (and probably no security cameras) noticed.