Fireworkstravaganza

Just like Icelandic food, Icelandic fireworks merit their own conversation. I had never been to a country as fireworks-mad as I am… and I’ve been in Asia for Lunar New Year. Enter Iceland.

A truth – but joke at the same time – of Iceland is that they have a lot of “most x per capita” records. It’s the nature of a small country. Most professional footballers per capita. Most authors per capita. Most energy generated per capita. If you ever have a reason to spend New Year’s Eve in Iceland, you would not be hard pressed to say, “most fireworks purchased per capita” either.

For what it’s worth, the fireworks sales support ICESAR, the Icelandic Association for Search & Rescue. So you can feel doubly good when blowing things up.

All of Reykjavík (or so it seems) gathers at Hallgrímskirkja after the annual NYE special Skaupið is finished, of course. There are actual blast zones designated for lighting fireworks, but beyond that it’s fairly a free for all.

You have everything from full-on rockets to much tamer sparklers, spinners, and cone fountains. All of the rockets have the advantage of exploding near the absurdly picturesque background of the church tower.

I could do this every New Year for the rest of my life.

More Snakes + Funerals

I don’t know what it is about Iceland that lends itself to CinemaScope aspect ratio, but I can’t drag myself away from it. (I wrote about my feelings on the ultra ultra wide here.) Nothing much to say, other than omg is this the most beautiful place or what?

Matur og Drykkur

This isn’t solely about the Reykjavík restaurant Matur og drykkur, nor musings on the venerable cookbook whence it’s named, but rather a discourse on Icelandic food and drink (that is, matur and drykkur) from the eyes of a mostly-American tourist. (We’ll get back to the full recollection of the trip next post; this digression felt absolutely necessary with the number of food photos I took!) Prior to my first visit to Iceland I heard two schools of thought when it came to food and drink on the island:

1. Expensive and boring

2. Gastronomic wonderland

The latter viewpoint was espoused solely (though vociferously) by my friend Samer, who has written an excellent guide to Reykjavík dining.

After a few visits, I understand where the misapprehensions of school of thought Nº1 arise… even if I think it’s completely off-base. Food in Iceland is expensive (as it is on so many islands), but the cost difference between uninspired and sensational isn’t as dramatic as it might be elsewhere. If you’re already spending a lot for a meal, why not spend an incremental percentage more to have a fabulous one?

The good news is that even if you’re on a strict budget, there’s always the option of the best hot dogs ever. (Technically, the best hot dogs in town but I’ll go with ever.)

My first visit was marked by a lingering cold that I could feel coming on as I waited in the lounge at LAX (another story entirely, but that was the start of a bizarre LAX-LHR-HEL-KEF routing, courtesy of oneworld, not to mention my first flight on the Dreamliner) and it meant soup soup and more soup. I found some pho early on which I’m fairly certain was good (it was hard to tell with zero tastebuds working well), but I spent a better part of the trip eating Kjötsúpa (translated simply and literally as “meat soup”).

I had eaten the soup probably about four times, thinking it a perfectly pleasant vegetable-heavy, brothy thing, before my cold had lifted enough for me to notice that the predominant flavor was in fact lamb. There’s something so comforting and earthy about lamb when you’re sick. And having had it well on another trip, all I can say is I must have been really sick to be able to taste none of that lamb flavor the first few times.

Fine dining in Reykjavík has been a bit of a revelation – somehow managing to pull off white-linen, in-the-Michelin-Guide dining without the stuffiness and (I think) at very reasonable prices for that caliber of meal. The lamb theme continued at a visit to Grillmarket with my mother last summer; I have truly never had a better piece of that meat. We were also able to try puffin, which was interesting but not entirely my thing texture-wise. Imagine if a duck ate sardines and there’s puffin.

Nostra, meanwhile, was the site of the most luxurious dinner I think I’ve ever had: foie gras, fresh truffles, caviar, port, oysters, Churchill’s favorite Pol Roger champagne, gold. Like literally, gold on the dessert. It was decadent perfection with thoughtful, creative preparations; the foie, for example, was frozen and then grated over rutabaga. Genius. Oh and the beef tallow mashed potatoes! I could go on. If you ever have cause to be in Iceland for New Year’s Eve – and you really should, particularly if you like fireworks – try to get a reservation at Nostra. I’ve now dined there twice and could probably go back a hundred more times and still crave it.

And it’s not to say that Nostra is merely a special occasion place, though it can be your special occasion. From reindeer to charred leeks to kohlrabi cream cheese “dumplings,” it was all brilliant and my compliments as ever to Chef Carl and his team.

If fish is what you’re in the mood for, Messinn has you covered. There’s a location in Grandi with a spectacular buffet (try all the fishes) and another easily accessible on Lækjargata. Their offering comes in the form of Fiskipönnur – fish pans – which are the best possible iteration of an Applebee’s skillet. Excellent excellent fish (the joys of being on an island) with sauce and veggies. Done.

And then of course, the aforementioned Matur og Drykkur, a brilliant restaurant also out in the Grandi neighborhood (which itself is foodie paradise). That was also the site of a NYE dinner, though sadly at the tail end of my cold. We had some truly perfect smoked lamb; it’s traditionally done over dung fires which I know sounds odd, but the taste is unreal, all earth and funk and Iceland. The duck breast was equally perfect, with the prettiest potatoes.

Another particular favorite Icelandic treat is the licorice ice cream from Valdis – if lamb is the savory note that sticks out most in my mind when I think of Icelandic food, then licorice must be its sweet counterpart. They recently opened a location closer to downtown which means more in my future.

My favorite combination was Salted Licorice and Passion Fruit, two flavors that were honestly meant to be together. I think licorice pairs so well with bright, acidic fruits – a sitruuna-lakritsi (lemon-licorice) ice cream while waiting for the ferry at Kauppatori in Helsinki was one of the great delights of my first visit to Finland. At any rate, lacking that, you can make your own combination at Valdis, and you can’t really go wrong.

And let’s not neglect the drykkur. My favorite brewery has an outpost in 101, Mikkeller & Friends. A newer addition is the brilliant Session, for beer people, by beer people. It’s actually a brilliant beer scene, particularly considering that beer has only been legal there for the past 30 years after a long period of prohibition in the 1910’s.

Viking World or Bust

Or, Viking World Is a Bust

I started traveling on my own in 2007, right as Mapquest was giving up the ghost and smart phones were poised to shake up travel as we know it. There were two options, really: do research and head out into the world with a plan or show up somewhere and cross your fingers that it worked out. Both methods had their highlights – the former brought me to the charmingly named burg of Pizzighettone in search of a golden, mosaic-bedecked church while the latter sustained me through multiple winter trips to Venice, traversing the canals under cloaks of fog – and their lowlights (getting stranded at the Milano Porta Garibaldi station for the umpteenth time in spite of both a plan and a back-up plan comes to mind), but ultimately a combination of the two sparked my love of adventures.

Then iPhones showed up and all spontaneity died. Where to eat? I’ll spend half an hour on Yelp trying to comb through real feedback and casual competitive sabotage only to come up with an insipid meal. Train delayed? Here are five alternate routings. Something off the beaten path? Check Atlas Obscura, of course. I find myself missing the chaos and excitement of those early days when I didn’t know what would come next, but the phone is such an easy trap to fall into.

In the hope of recapturing that spirit, I made the decision to spend my surprise day in Keflavík at a place called Viking World because I saw it on the map. VIKING WORLD. The name alone had me sold.

If you shouldn't judge a book by its cover, then it's true too that you shouldn't pick a museum by its name. 

The highlight of the museum is ostensibly the Íslendingur, a recreated viking ship that actually sailed across the Atlantic. I loved the smoky, resinous scent (made, as I understand it, from actual Norwegian wood... which I could not keep myself from making dad jokes about in Norway. Anyway.) and it was obviously an impressive piece of work, but the museum was a bit lacking otherwise.

The real highlight was the building itself, a spectacular glassy modern dreamboat of a thing. And that's what I got – for all my troubles – and now you can spare yourself the visit.

Trekking and Trekking

It started as these things so often do: a sprinkling of rain in the East Coast, a late plane, a missed connection... the typical song and dance.

I’ve had a particularly bad run of travel luck lately, culminating in 3 cancellations and 12 hours of cumulative delays across 5 days and, ultimately, 9 total flights. (1 flight became 3 in a particularly loathsome rerouting.)

Plane karma is, sadly, not a real thing, and instead of being a given a grace period, the plane gods decided to instead transfer the bulk of my luck to my mother.

A quick caveat: canceled flights on vacation are the ultimate first world problem. They’re also stressful and exhausting and no doubt will increase as climate change continues. And this means that we all need better coping mechanisms, airlines included. I'll hop off my soapbox now.

This semi-structured chaos led to two different treks: my mother’s Odyssean journey across three different carriers and my walk to and from Viking World.

It sounds like they shouldn’t compare, but you’d be wrong.

We had one day in Keflavík before flying to Bergen and the original plan was to do either a Golden Circle tour or see about exploring the Reykjanes Peninsula. I instead had the day to myself and the most reasonable place to visit – picked solely for the name and not because I actually did research – was Viking World. It was the perfect day for a long walk: warm (for Iceland) and sunny and not terribly breezy to boot.

The hotel was at a converted NASKEF building, which meant crossing the airport road to get to Keflavík proper. My primary concern was how to run across four lanes of traffic without turning into Frogger. What I neglected to think about was my poor choice of footwear (espadrilles – I’d packed those and rain boots given the pre-departure forecast. Mistake, but more on packing later.) for traversing the wide open expanse of the base.

I expected sidewalks. This time, I was wrong. 

Before I got anywhere near the highway, I was crossing a patch of lava rock, came down crooked, and took a spill. I took the hit on my right side, landing on my camera which in turn landed on my phone. Amazingly, nothing broke except for my good thermal leggings and the skin of my palm and knee, but the camera lodged itself right under my rib cage and knocked the wind out of me. I was a sight.

Not to be deterred, I kept going (once I got my breath back), got honked at and waved to by some bro-y tourists, and eventually made it to the highway and strategically made my way across, no Frogger-ing to be seen. Bruised and bloodied, albeit no conquering hero, I made my way to Viking World.

Snakes + Funerals

In Mexico City (and in returning from Mexico City), I felt an urgency to create. A rush of frustrated energy. A rebirth of a part of my soul I'd thought I'd lost for good.

(No one said I wasn't dramatic.)

I returned to digital photography in the latter half of 2014 for purely documentary purposes. Film stocks were vanishing right and left, and I'd moved 2,500 miles from my C-41 lab, just to add a layer of complication. It never felt quite like art. It still feels like studio work or stock.

Digital photography without introspection, without focus, and without process is easily soulless. Sterile, perfect, real images of real things. In truth, the medium is limited only in what you allow yourself to do with it, and adherence to supposed orthodoxy seems unnecessary at a time when producing any work is a struggle itself.

In seeking satisfaction for these urges, this energy, I thought – for whatever reason – of Fritz Lang in Le mépris giving his commentary on CinemaScope and went instantly to that aspect ratio. And much to my surprise, it worked. It worked for crowds. It worked for small, self-contained scenes. It worked for the lush tableaus of the Icelandic countryside, to the surprise of no one. Had the opportunity presented itself, I’ve no doubt it would have worked for snakes – and funerals.

You can take a look at the full gallery below or here.