Of land and way, the ice and nor variety

Pronoun and character introduction: In the retelling of this journey will be C, she of world-traveling renown and amateur travel agent prowess and me, of this blog. The two of us will be the "we" to which I generally refer. If other we's sneak in, I trust that context will provide appropriate clues. Get on with it, then.

September 14- After a stint in the late twenties- to thirties-island-haven Hoboken and a plane ride across some of the Atlantic Ocean, we arrived in Keflavik, Iceland. The hour by Icelandic digital watch was in the sixes, but in my mind it was much later and earlier than that. We'd taken herbal "no jet-lag" pills, but even their black magic was not strong enough to overcome insufficient shut-eye. The bus from the airport to our hostel rolled through a grey-cloud covered land dotted with houses and cairns. We arrived at the downtown youth hostel at 0730, plopped down luggage and hundreds of krona (ISK) and enjoyed our yogurt that's also a website, skyrs.is. Too early for a room, we wandered the streets of the capital city, Reykjavik. We visited a church, Hallgrimskirkja, that was under construction and tried to find ways to battle weariness by wandering the streets and doing a little shopping. We eventually made our way to a library where I read a collection of Peanuts comics and dozed off.

After a restful three hour nap in our hostel, we had dinner at Geysir, the restaurant with cute little lamps in the windows, not the hot steam erupting from the ground, and I had my first introduction to the soft drink Malt. Malt was a sweet stout-like beverage. My taste buds found it curious and kind of wonderful. We capped off our night with a swim and some relaxing in geothermal pools. There are several of these pools around the city, but this was not really a tourist spot. It was a community pool with some geothermal heating. It was warm (39 and 42 degrees Celsius) and relaxing and made sleep even easier.

September 15- After some deliberation regarding the various touring options, we decided to rent a car. I'd started to get excited about driving a manual transmission vehicle when the rental agent asked, "Is automatic ok?" We took the red Opel Corsa to the streets, some of them gravel, and hit the tourist hot spots in Southwest Iceland. We found Geysir, where Strokkur erupted every 6-10 minutes, more often than even Old Faithful, as a crowd gathered to watch. Geysir itself has been quiet for some time, but to its credit is the reason that we call geysers by their name. We drove on, chasing rainbows through the black and green of lava rock and rolling rocky terrain to find the waterfalls and rainbows of Gulfoss. It was postcard perfect and I'm told that it's quite a sight in the winter when it's frozen. We stopped at a Pylsa stand for Iceland hot dogs and a Malt. Pylsa were everywhere. We ended up with hot dogs at more meals than I think either of us would have anticipated. The pylsa at this stand were quite good. We hit more of the dirt roads, drove along the coast, had some consistent sunshine for a few hours, saw just a few cars, and bounced and pitched our way to the Blue Lagoon, passing gorgeous views and rocky hills along the way.

The Blue Lagoon lived up to its billing. The water was milky-blue and warm. The price was high. I didn't want to leave until I'd shriveled into a prune-y version of myself with hardened hair. There were saunas and massage areas available, but we mostly stuck to slowly wading and floating around, sometimes with our silica masks. Silica masks and beards don't go that well together, but I tried. After nearly two hours of geothermal lagoon time, we polished off Iceland with my whale steak and Viking stout and C's reindeer burger and Polar beer. The steak was good, but I don't think the burger held up so well. I'm certain that Santa is none too pleased.

September 16, 17- We arrived in Oslo, Norway and almost immediately took a train to Finse. Our travel days were consistently sunny and few more gorgeous than this one. The train ride was about six hours long, but at every turn, at least when I was awake, beautiful views were just outside the window. There were lakes and streams with backdrops of mountains, some colored by evergreen and others starting to turn in the fall. We were on a rolling brochure for the natural majesty of Norway. As darkness came, we arrived at the highest train station in Norway, Finse, at 1,222 meters above sea level. The small town had sent a brisk wind and a light rain as a welcoming committee. We were right next to a glacier, but wouldn't know until the train brought us through again in several days. We made our way through the cold and dark to our shelter about 200 meters back of the train station and out on a peninsula. I could see the dark outlines of snow-capped mountains pouring into the wind-blown lake and couldn't contain my excitement.

Our lodging was spartan and cold as there seemed to be no heat in the rooms. After dinner with three interesting Norwegian fellows who were headed out to hunt the next day, we threw on our stocking caps and buried ourselves deep beneath the heavy comforters. We managed to shiver to sleep and make it through to morning fitfully, but without freezing. The temperature didn't rise well either and we set off on our bike ride in spitting rain at three degrees Celsius. We wore most of the clothes we'd packed, which made our bags light. I was nervous about our fingers and toes and a little upset with myself for not being better prepared. It was mid-week and bordering on the miserable, so for most of the trip down we were alone, or only in the sight of one older couple. The trail was rocky and the sky was gray, but the scenery remained unbelievable. I took more pictures that consist of colored homes, bodies of water, and rocky hillside than I should probably admit. Our route followed close to the train tracks, but there were a few moments when I wondered how long it might be before someone would find our frozen bodies on the trail. I talked C into wearing her spare socks as gloves and I worked hard to warm up my hands at every chance I got. The day eventually got warmer as we made our way down. We descended 1,220 meters over 56 or so kilometers. Our patience was separately tested, but I was mostly prepared and spent my time waiting enjoying the scenery. We survived without much incident after a 6.5 hour ride. The last 20 km had been crazy steep. Our destination was Flam, 2 meters above sea level and on a fjord. I was unimpressed by the Flam-fjord view after enjoying so many mountain views, but my perspective would be altered another day. We had dinner in Norway's only train car restaurant. The Norwegian meatballs and the faux-attraction of a train car restaurant were only enough to sustain, not entertain. The hostel shower, even at 10 krone per 5 minutes was glorious. I may have been tired, but I hatched a theory that "upstand" might mean urinal in Norwegian. That amused me. I probably could have asked since everyone spoke English well, but I already felt guilty enough about that.

September 18- After 13.5 hours of sleep in our hostel cabin, we ate our co-op shopping-procured-breakfast on our porch. We covered all the Norwegian breakfast bases as we understood them, drinkable yogurt, cheese, bread. Our drinkable yogurt may have been blueberry flavored milk, but the line there looks pretty blurry to me. We hiked about 9 km over fjord to Aurland, had lunch, and then caught a boat to Gravunden (?). "Oh, my fjord!" I have run out of ways to describe the views we saw. It was "fjords gone wild," and I only stopped taking pictures because I couldn't find any new ways to show how impressive it all seemed as our ferry-like boat slid through the water framed by high rocky gray and green mountains climbing into the sky on both sides. We took the bus back to Flam and went through the mountains. It was the only way to save space on my camera's memory card and there were no boats back.

September 19- It was another bright and sunny day spent traveling. We took the Flamsbana train ride, but the views were familiar as we'd already biked them. We could see from the train window how much busier the bike trail was. I still admired the scenery as we took another train back to Oslo. We skipped a possible Venga Boys concert at Oslo University, but saw where the king sleeps and some of Oslo in the night. The hip section of town on the harbor reminded me of an Ikea catalog explosion. The architecture was that mixture of awesome and sparse with hard corners and functional square shapes. The buildings in this area seemed to be high-priced lofts and places of business.

September 20- I had trouble getting going despite "breakfast in a bag" at the P hotel in downtown Oslo. We finally made our way through the gray skies and sprinkles to Vigeland Park where it was all-you-care to see naked statues. We stopped for coffee and then decided to tour separately. C went to see Munch and I went to see mini bottles. The entrance fee was steep, but this was the largest mini bottle collection in the world. I saw thousands of mini bottles. If Oslo were a giant hotel, this building would have been a brilliant mini bar. It had bottles from all over the world and in all shapes. Some were quite beautiful in blown glass, while others were quite crude and included or were part of lewd humor. I was quite interested in the Scotch section and in section of cognacs where a whole collection of mini bottles shaped like Napoleon resided.

We had dinner at a hipster joint and drinks at Olympen. We were expecting a dive, but instead found ourselves in a pretty nice bar with large wooden tables and 20 foot tall red velvet curtains. I tried the Norwegian drink Aquavit which I'd discovered at the mini bottle gallery. It was a bit like cough syrup. It grew on me as I sipped it, but I think I was supposed to shoot it and I don't know that I ever need to have another taste.

The end- Icelandair took us back to Iceland and then on to New York. We slipped on to a standby flight and made it home in time to be exhausted. The pictures turned out great and reliving it a month later is not a bad way to go. I've told everyone that I was quite taken by Norway, but I think I'd enjoy more outdoor adventures in either place. I'm keeping my passport handy. The world awaits.