Chez Syrah: Iceland is Green and Greenland is Ice (apparently)

Iceland seems to be one of those mystical places that you know about, without really knowing anything much about it at all. As an exchange student ten years ago, I spent a weekend in Vieux Boucau on the French Atlantic coast with a bunch of friends, including an Icelandic girl. I can't remember her name, but she had the Nordic blonde hair and blue eyes and was really down to earth and fun. Fast forward a couple of years, and Sigur Ros became all the rage, showing up on 'mix' CDs and playlists put together by friends. They are an Icelandic band from Reykjavik who I have probably not listened to since about 2007.

18 year old me with Swedish (pink) and Icelandic (white) friends

I guess I forgot about Iceland for a while, you don't meet a lot of Icelandic folks in New Zealand and our countries are probably about as far apart as you can get geographically. More recently however, friends and acquaintances started going there on holidays, the economy completely crashed and a volcano erupted, causing an ash cloud that held flights up all across Northern Europe at Christmas time. Iceland became accessibly or at least familiar-ly foreign.

About a month ago, I finally went there to see Iceland for myself. Much like Lisbon earlier, a long weekend in Reykjavik was a panicked booking when I thought my English number might be up, and Joan and George mentioned they were all going there for a long November weekend. Yet again, I did little other than book the flights and Google a token restaurant recommendation after Jess mentioned 'the one at number 1 on Trip Advisor is great'.

When we boarded the purple plane, the air hostesses excitedly informed the flight about the FIFA qualifier happening as we flew, with Iceland playing Croatia on home turf for a place in the World Cup. Then about half an hour before landing, the crew told everyone that they would switch the lights off and suggested we find a spot to squint at the Northern Lights out the right side of the plane. Magical. It was clear pretty early that Icelandic people are friendly and welcoming and proud of their tiny, beautiful country. Not surprising to later learn that the population is a mere 300,000 or so. It was snowing outside when we arrived, we stuffed our wallets with thousands of krona and went to pick up the car to drive from Keflavik into Reykjavik to the apartment.

Having overlooked the fact that the sun would rise late, it was about 11am by the time we woke up on Saturday. A quick hustle and trip to the bakery and we were on the road for the day 1 road trip. Public transport is great, but there is nothing like the freedom of a road trip. Especially with a pre-planned play list featuring everybody's new number one fave song about animals. What DOES the fox say?! A one hit wonder for those Norwegians, surely.

Marty with co-pilots Joan and TomTom, guiding us up to the Golden Circle

We ooohed and ahhhed our way around the Golden Circle, braving the cold to check out waterfalls and geysers and allowing blasts of air in through the window as we snapped happily away with our cameras dangling out the windows of the Qashqai. It was pretty chilly. Parts of the drive were a bit hairy as the weather really closed in on our way home so we were very glad to have upgraded to a four wheel drive.

Gullfoss waterfall

What it would look like if it snowed at the geysers in Rotorua, NZ

We had an early booking for dinner at Fredrik V. It was our first Icelandic 'proper meal' and therefore first introduction to the value Iceland places in sourcing local produce, and indeed to how much variety there is there, in spite of the whole place feeling like a frozen planet. Fredrik takes local sourcing to the extreme, with everything except the Spanish peppercorns being from Iceland. I loved the concept of a surprise set menu, you just turn up, decide on 3 or 5 courses, with/out beer or wine matchings, and you get whatever is on the menu that night. We went with 3 courses, and our delightful waitress explained every course and ingredient in great detail as each one was brought out. There was even a little map of Iceland on the table to point out where each main component came from, and she explained how things were grown - Iceland seems to be quite clever with using energy to grow things in spite of the cold, and they even grow bananas! It was clear how much love and attention went into each dish and it all tasted exquisite. The highlight for me was actually the second amuse-bouche: an espresso cup of creamy wild mushroom soup served in between the trout entrée and lamb main course. Simply heavenly and a definite contender if I had to pick my last supper.

Fridrik himself (magazine from Waterstones)

From dinner, we went home to put tights on under jeans and basically wear all the clothes we'd brought with us before getting picked up to go on a Northern Lights tour. Long story short, we were driven around in a bus for 5 hours in the dark and didn't see anything. Had hot cocoa from a thermos and a dry doughnut in a snowy coach park, then returned home circa 2am.

Sunday came and we had planned on doing a 9 hour road trip to see some glaciers. I've seen photos and they look beautiful. However despite Marty being a very safe driver, we vetoed this plan given the snowy conditions, especially as we accidentally didn't wake up until half way through the day again, pushing our timings out quite considerably. Everyone had heard mixed reports about riding Icelandic Horses, one of the 'things to do in Iceland', but we decided we could do micro-breweries anywhere (the other option - for next time) and signed up for the horses.

Looking out to sea off a side street in central Reykjavik

Reykjavik Cathedral up to the right

After breakfast and a wander, we were picked up and driven to the riding centre, where we donned ski/sky-dive style onesies and were given a rather long introduction about the horses. I might have been the only one to find this genuinely pretty interesting, and Inga the guide was certainly a passionate lady. The horses are a unique breed, aptly described in a magazine I bought as "hardy work horses, with the personality of a puppy". When you consider the geography and isolation of Iceland, it is no wonder that the Icelandic people would not have survived if it was not for their horses, stocky little animals brought across the North Atlantic by Norse settlers. The Icelandic Horse is the only breed of horse in the country and is so protected that once an Icelandic Horse leaves Iceland, it is never allowed back in. It was love at first sight when I was introduced to Somi! Since a picture tells a thousand words, I will simply say that what started out as a lovely sunset ride very quickly became a trek through a blizzard. An adventure, to say the least.

Sunset/ serenity team pic

Horizontal shards of blizzard (me laughing my head off)

Our evening meal was at another highly regarded restaurant that everyone seems to talk about in Reykjavik, The Grill Market (or Grillmarkadurinn, in Icelandic). Probably one of our best decisions of the weekend was opting for the tasting menu for 5, which went down great with a couple of bottles of red. Whale and puffin sliders as one of 4 entrées were a bit controversial for us, so these were swapped out for some epic beef skewers, following a calamari/salt fish combo, duck salad, and pork ribs. We were then served 3 mains (salmon, lamb, beef) and a rather outrageous dessert tasting extravaganza. I loved the way everything was presented in the middle of the table with the perfect amount for 5 people. No pesky how-do-you-divide-4-ribs-by-5 situations here! We toasted the excellence of the weekend, and the recent engagement of Joan and Marty.

Small subset of Grill Market tasting menu

To no real avail, the Northern Lights were again attempted after dinner, since we loved that 5 hour bus trip so much. Joan at least got to try out a new setting on her great new camera.

With an afternoon flight back to London booked, we got up at a 'normal' time on Monday morning. 8.30am looked like midnight. by 9.30, on our way to breakfast, nothing had changed and we got to Laundromat Café in the dark. I grumble like most Londoners about the darkness and shortness of the days, but Iceland daylight hours (lack of) is next level. The sun pretty much rises and sets at the same time. Monday eventually dawned a beautiful clear day for taking some city scenery pictures and heading onwards to the Blue Lagoon thermal pools, en route for the airport.