A Stitch in Haste

For those still guessing which I*eland I'm in, here's a clue:



Students of geopolitics should recognize the structure.

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Apparently I was too smart for my own good and some people interpreted the "*" in "I*eland" as a snowflake and simply thought I was talking about Iceland all along. (For the record, I've been to Ireland twice and love the place and would gladly go again with anybody at any time.)

And a salute to all those who recognized the white building as the "Peace House," where Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev held an impromptu summit to discuss nuclear disarmament in October 1986.

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Anyway, here's a travel tip: If you ever have the opportunity to explore a cave formed by a prehistoric lava tube -- don't.



I'm not saying it wasn't fascinating; it definitely was.



It's just too much work. The brochure said "must be able to walk on coarse ground." Okay, I reasoned, sounds like a typical Brooklyn sidewalk. Well, something certainly got lost in translation because "walk" does not mean crawl on your hands and knees on ice-covered rocks for two hours.

For the excessively spritual types who see the Virgin Mary in grilled cheese sandwiches and such:


"The Lord is my icicle, I shall not want..."

Of course, the Lord promptly smote me for thinking that by intelligently designing a loose rock in my path that maketh me and my blasphemy to lie down in fall down onto tumble over and crash into green pastures coarse ground ice-covered rocks. And I have the stigmata to prove it. Ouch. I'll spare you the picture of that.

Anyway, Reykjavik is pretty cool (and cold too). Tomorrow I've off to Akureyri, which at 15,000 people is the second largest city in Iceland. I think more than 15,000 people live on my block on the Upper East Side. My destination there is the volcanic crater called Viti.

"Viti" is Icelandic for "Hell."

I'm sensing a pattern here...

Well, the road to Viti, or "Hell," in northern Iceland was paved not with good intentions but rather with snow drifts, so we couldn't go.

But here are some other pictures of the Akureyri and Lake Myvatn areas:



Meet the Fokker... (or, "I've got the little Fokker in my sights...")


Godafoss, or "Falls of the Gods."


Viti Crater from a distance. NASA brought the Apollo astronauts to this part of Iceland to train, since it was the closest thing to the lunar landscape available on Earth.


Snowmobiling on frozen Lake Myvatn. Notice the kids being dragged on sleds. Neat-o.


Geo-thermal mudpit.


Geo-thermal mudbrains.


Lava piles. The geology is a bit complicated, but the short version is that a natural dam burst and the lava that was in the process of cooling drained away leaving these already-cooled piles.

I'll try to post pictures of Reykjavik later.

Some final pictures from Iceland:



The great megalopolis of Reykjavik. There are 300,000 people in Iceland, sixty percent of whom live in Reykjavik (and that percentage is increasing, as the country has been undergoing a steady de-ruralification in recent years).



Duck pond in the city center. Iceland is the only place in the world where American and European fowl cohabitate. Northern Iceland has a large bird sanctuary, but it was out of season, so no I didn't see any puffins.



The rift at Gullfoss. The left side is North America, the right side is Europe. The plates are moving apart (i.e., splitting Iceland into two) by two centimeters per year.



The falls at Gullfoss. While it was about 30 degrees outside, the wind chill was so ferocious that you could not leave your hands exposed (i.e., to use the camera) for more than a few seconds.



Little Geysir -- the English word "geyser" comes from the town in Iceland where these hot springs are located. The larger geyser erupts every few minutes, but not as regularly as Old Faithful. So people have to stand in that fierce wind watching for the main spring to erupt. But it's worth the wait. Sorry I can't post the video here.

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My next trip will be to Prague around Labor Day -- anyone want to join me?

And if I can ever be of any help to anyone traveling to New York City -- anything from sightseeing advice to a free couch -- feel free to ask.