Returning to Iceland

Back in May of 2022, I went to Iceland.

It was a wonderful, magical place. It felt fresh and new. We sat in hot springs, we enjoyed the local food, we saw the basalt columns… it was a perfect trip. 100%.

So I was a little confused when my bud suggested we go back. “Why? We had the most amazing trip! We’re not going to catch lightning in a bottle the second time. Now, I’m not saying that we shouldn’t go someplace but we’ve already done Iceland.”

He explained that we wouldn’t be going for us this time… we’d be taking the girls (Scout, Kiddo, and Toddler) and his wife (also a good friend) would be bringing her childhood bestie. So we’d be tour guides instead of tourists. My bud and I would go out a day early and we’d prepare everything and everybody and meet up with the friends and, when his wife and the other kiddos arrived, we’d have a rental car and space for their bags and everything.

Okay. I can see that. We rented an AirB&B that had room for 8 or 9 and made our plans. Fly out, spend the night in Minneapolis, fly to Iceland, make ready for the fam. (I’m going to stop saying “My Buddy” and “His Wife”. It’ll be “Asmo” and “Alamaraine”. Also, the kids, from oldest to youngest, will be Scout, Kiddo, and Toddler.)

Asmo, Scout, and I arrived in Minneapolis around 6ish and we realized that we were in the Marriott that was approximately a half mile away from the Mall of America. And it was suppertime.

We got a shuttle over to the Mall of America and, lemme tell ya, if you’ve never been, you should go. It’s the mall I remember from when I was a little kid. Mom took us to the Westland Mall in Michigan back when we still had to hold hands as we crossed the parking lot and Westland was THE BIGGEST MALL IN THE WORLD. Mall of America was just like that. It’s freakin’ *HUGE*. It has dozens of restaurants (and, like, a half dozen of them devoted to nothing but boba tea). It’s got a bunch of huge anchor destination stores like the m&ms store, the Lego store, the Crayola store… and each one of those was, like, 2000 square feet. Huge. It’s got a freakin’ *AMUSEMENT PARK* in the middle!

I was sure that there was no freakin’ way that they were moving half as much product as they’d need to so I’m guessing that the rent is exceptionally subsidized. There were two mini golf courses! Two! And while there was a good amount of foot traffic while I was there, there wasn’t a *GREAT* amount of it.

Anyway, the Mall of America is awesome, has awesome restaurants, has awesome stores, it’s an awesome place to visit and you could make a good minivacation just there. It feels like malls felt in the late 1970s. Bring an empty suitcase, go shopping, go home with a full one.

Anyway, the next day we went back to the mall in the morning before we had to go to the airport to take our flights to Iceland itself where we’d pick up our car rental, make sure we were set up at the hotel, and doubly ensure that everything was perfect.

As we stood outside, teeth chattering, waiting for the shuttle to take us to the car place, we looked over and saw a red glow in the distance. Holy cow. That’s lava. WE SAW LAVA LESS THAN A MILE AWAY FROM THE AIRPORT!!!!

All of us, all of the people going to rent a car, squealed and pulled out our phones and started snapping pictures until the shuttle arrived.

Of course, the car rental place looked like something out of Mad Max: Fury Road (assuming that it took place in -20 weather instead of wasteland). We fought and elbowed our way to the “take a number” station and, oh my gosh, we were stuck behind tourists from around the globe. Japan and Germany were ahead of us in line and, lemme tell ya, I’m thinking that they’d not only never rented a car before, they’d never driven one because they had to have a *LOT* of concepts explained to them. Finally my number was called and they gave me the wrong car but I didn’t care because I didn’t notice. We drove to our favorite little pastry shop and picked up a half dozen of the good stuff.

And, at that point, we only had to make it to suppertime and then we could go to bed and pick up Alamaraine and Kiddo and Toddler. We noticed that we were still close enough to the airport to see the lava from the window at the end of the hallway. Holy cow. *THAT’S* *LAVA*.

Now, as you can tell, it’s waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay off in the distance. That said: HOLY COW THAT’S LAVA.

We stopped by the little Italian restaurant by the hotel and enjoyed some pizza that was advertised as being spicy and… you know what? It wouldn’t have been advertised as spicy in the US but I could easily see it being the favorite of stoner college kids if there was a little local place that served it near the college.

So, I’m guessing, there has been a major uptick in tourism since we went there in 2022.

We met up with Alamaraine’s bestie and Alamaraine’s bestie’s main squeeze for some pizza and vino and then it was bedtime to prep to pick up Alamaraine and the girls and head out to The AirB&B.

Did you see the episode of Zac Efron’s “Down to Earth” where they went to Iceland?

Well, our AirB&B was literally YARDS from where they filmed that scene. We talked about how we wanted to make eggs and cake there on the beach.

We get to the AirB&B and it is one of the houses that you visit after you die and go to heaven.

My bedroom was the upstairs room on the left:

(The picture of the TV room was too blurry and the pictures of the dining room and the map room had people in it but… lemme tell ya. This house was heaven.)

They also had a “hot pot” outside. The difference between a “hot pot” and a “hot tub” is “amenities”. A hot tub, for example, has seats. The hot pot just had bricks that we sat on.

A spigot, some bricks, and a drain. That’s what the hot pot had. Also capable of 103 degree water and we were there on nights that it got under freezing, which means that the steam from the water got in our hair (or beards) and froze them.

I thought “there have been kings that didn’t know this luxury” as my mustache froze while I chatted with my dear friends.

One of the big events was, of course, the basalt columns (just like last time).

And then we went to something that I was entirely certain would be a tourist trap kitschy kinda thing but ended up being absolutely RIVETING. It was a little thing called The Lava Show.

They melt some rocks and then pour the lava down a black sand channel. They play with the lava and then show it off and then kick everybody out with a piece of obsidian and bring in the next batch of rubes.

I loved it. We were sitting about 8 feet from the lava and the heat was magnificent. It doesn’t smell like anything. I guess I expected some light brimstone. As it is, it didn’t even smell particularly earthy.

Lava up close is one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen. It was beautiful the way that something that will kill you is beautiful.

One of the tricks they did was to pick some lava up with some rebar and then drizzle it out on the black sand. At the end of the show, they walked the now-cooled drizzle around for the rubes to look at but not touch.

At the end, they opened up the door to the outside and we saw a bunch of particulate in the air and thought “oh, we’re all going to die from mesothelioma in 20 years.”

It was worth it.

I gave my obsidian to Maribou. She loves it.

We daydreamed about making some of the bread that you saw earlier in the Zac Efron clip and, of course, he ruined it for everybody. You can watch someone else make the dough and then enjoy a piece of fresh bread from the sand (for a small fee), but you don’t get to wander down to the beach and do it yourself anymore. (Maybe if we had a film crew.)

I had some bread. It was delicious. I went on to have some bread and salmon. I hate salmon. But the bread and salmon was surprisingly good. I still hate salmon, though.

And as we were walking back out, we saw a rainbow.

We did a bunch of other stuff while we were there but a lot of it was pretty mundane. We went to Costco and got groceries and debated getting a chicken bake or a hot dog.

The kiddos went on a horseback ride and fell in love with riding. We all cooked together and made a fine Thanksgiving feast with chicken and spinach salad and wine.

We went to the OmNom chocolatier again.

I got the same thing I got last time.

I’m probably going to get it next time I go as well.

The local bar sold wine by the bottle and that was where we kept stocked up but I asked the elderly bartender “Hey, England is a gin country. Russia is a vodka country… what kind of country is Iceland?”

He pointed to a bottle of Brennivin and poured me a shot.

I said it tasted a little bit like licorice. Anise, I think the official name is. The old man corrected me. “It tastes like cumin.”

So I guess it tastes like cumin.

There were a handful of other things we did but above are pretty much all of the highlights. (We went to the power plant again and we showed Alamaraine’s friends Gullfoss and Geyser and we picked up another paprika hot dog from Pylsu Vagninn but those events were pretty much covered in the last visit.)

We all sighed happily and wrung the ice out of our hair back into the hot pot and got ready for one last sleep before wandering back to the United States when we got the notification. The Northern Lights.

We drove a couple of miles outside of the little hamlet where we were staying and got away from the light pollution and HOLY COW WE SAW THEM!!!

Now, I admit, those pictures are kind of cheating. Those are all 30 second exposures. If you want to see what they’re more like in person, these pictures gets a lot closer:

They’re like… I don’t know how to describe it. They’re like cirrus clouds, floating in the sky. Last time I went to Iceland, I remember standing in the parking lot looking up at what looked like a cirrus cloud that winked in and out and I didn’t know whether I really saw the northern lights or not.

Now I know: Yes. I *DID* see them. I just didn’t know what they looked like.

This time? They were unmistakable. Now, they were a mild version of it. It wasn’t a Carrington Event or anything like that. The lights weren’t green to the naked eye. They looked like something that could be mistaken for light pollution, floating and weaving across the sky.

I imagined an ancient shaman being asked what this sign meant and I could easily see the shaman saying “Eh. Nothing much is going to happen. It’s all okay. We’re all going to be okay.”

And we got really cold really quickly and so we came back to the AirB&B and went to bed and got ready the next day and then we came home.

You should go. It’s absolutely gorgeous.