New Year's Eve in Reykjavik

It's a month since my New Year's Eve Reykjavik style. It's a quite a traditional thing to do to go to a bonfire and there are about a dozen big bonfires at various locations around the city. Luckily when I went for a walk to the animal park from the City hostel I happened to notice a rather large bonfire being built up just at the back of the hostel.

The snowy hostel

New Year's Eve fell on a Saturday and in the morning I ploughed my way through high piles of snow to walk into town. I'd wanted to go to the flea market but it was closed, so I just ended up having a bit of a wander and then going for coffee. The buses all stopped running early afternoon and I didn't fancy walking back so I made sure I was at the bus stop in plenty of time. I thought the bus might have been full, but there was hardly anyone on it.

A lazy afternoon with a bit of a snooze followed. In the evening I joined other hostellers in the common area for chat and vodka. We also tried a traditional Christmas and New Year soft drink that is made by mixing a malt drink with fizzy orangeade. It wasn't nearly as bad as it sounds. There was what sounded like a Mass in Icelandic being played out over the TV speakers. This in itself wasn't so interesting, but instead of showing the Mass itself on the TV there was just a very long series of slides picturing lots of wonderful shots of Iceland in winter.

Cosy and Christmassy inside the hostel

At about 8.30pm, through the large living room windows we saw the bonfire start to flame and so all wrapped up and drinks in hand we walked over to it. It was huge and wild and hot with great reflections in the puddles of melting of snow. People of all ages were out lighting fireworks and flares and waving sparklers. We could see fireworks all around Reykjavik from where we were so had a great show. Bits of hot ash, some still aflame, wafted from the fire and the fireworks and flares were going off in all directions. It would have been a health and safety officer's nightmare, but luckily there didn't seem to be any present.

Bonfire and a view of Reykjavik

Bonfire reflections

As the fire started to die down people drifted away. This was the time every Icelander heads for a TV set to watch the same programme: Áramótaskaup, a satirical look a year just gone. We watched it and it did seem quite funny, but as it was in Icelandic and as we hadn't spent the previous year in Iceland, we didn't get any of it. Apparently this programmed will be the main topic of conversation for Icelanders over the next week or so.

Flares

Red hot ash flying everywhere

At midnight the sky exploded with fireworks. We went upstairs and got a great view. They were going off all over Reykjavik and went on for ages. Around New Year the law allows anyone to purchase fireworks and around 500 tonnes are imported each year. They are sold in benefit of rescue charities and are a great money-raiser for them. There had been plenty going off ever since I arrived, but this was just practice for the real bonanza.

And fireworks

Once the sky started to quieten I went to bed. There were still plenty of fireworks going off, but they were more random. Some people in the hostel walked into town to hit the bars, but I had an early start as I'd booked on to a Golden Circle tour for the next morning so decided to be sensible. And I didn't fancy getting all my layers back on to trudge through the snow again.

Tips for Kilimanjaro

I went to the Destinations Travel Show in Manchester today. It's comprised mostly of stalls run by travel companies advertising their tours. As I tend to avoid tours this isn't of much interest to me. Even the talks are basically a half hour of advertising blurb. I've been to these shows before so I knew what to expect and only went because I had a free ticket and didn't have anything else planned.

I did find one thing of interest of though.  A talk on climbing Kilimanjaro by a tour leader who's already been up and down ten times. He works for Exodus, so of course some of the talk was on what Exodus do for you if you go with them (good breakfasts served in a mess tent and the open-sided toilet tent always positioned with a great view), but a lot of what he had to say was more general and included a lot of good tips. Here are some of them:

• Acclimatisation - each day when you reach your camp for the night, don't stop there. Have a bit of a rest then climb for about another hour, before coming back down to the tents. This starts getting your body ready for the thinner oxygen, but you're sleeping at a lower altitude to recover from your first exposure to it.
• Take plenty of chocolate - healthy food is all well and good, but there are times when only comfort food will do. This will be one of them.
• Expect pain, lots of it.
• Headaches aren't only caused by altitude, but by the intensity of the sun hitting your eyeballs too. Take a really good pair of sunglasses.
• Wear a hat - don't fail to summit because you've got sunstroke.
• Take some really good earplugs - you'll be sleeping in close proximity to a lot of people some of whom will snore. And snoring is amplified at altitude.
• Don't panic if you can't sleep. As long as you are horizontal and resting, you are still doing your body some good. On this note, don't take a nap when you arrive at camp as this will really throw your sleep patterns out.
• If you're hungry you're doing ok. People who are hungry make it to the top. If you're not hungry, it doesn't mean you won't make it, but it is a sign that you may struggle a bit more.
• There isn't a lot of snow at the top and what there is is very compacted and frozen. Normal walking boots are fine, you won't need crampons.
• You need to drink a lot of water even if you're not thirsty. However, water bladders will be frozen when you start heading for the summit at midnight on the final day. Carry your water in an alternative way.
• There are several reasons why the last day starts at midnight. One is so that you can't see where you're going. It's about 7hrs on a switchback path that would destroy any moral you had left if you could see it.
• If you use an ipod wrap a heat pad round it otherwise it won't work.
• After the first few days, you'll be above the cloud cover so it won't matter what the weather's like - you won't be in it.
• The weather is really changeable and no one time of the year is particularly better than any other.
• The climb starts at around 1600m - spending a few days in the area first will help your acclimatisation.
• Running, swimming and cycling are the best training. They have to be done to the extent that you really get your heartbeat up and sweat a lot.
• Walking across 'The Saddle' (the strip of land that dips between the lower peak and and the summit) is soul-destroying. It's a day of walking with nothing ever seeming to get any closer.
• Don't expect to do too much talking whilst you're walking - you'll be conserving your oxygen for breathing.

Planning

Having plans for fun things to do in the holidays or at weekends is what keeps me going through term time. Especially when I work 14 hour days like today. And know that I'll be late again tomorrow. And even that won't be enough; I'll still be behind with everything I need to do. So the plans are really important.

This week my plans have really been coming together for half term. I'll be going down to London to stay with a friend in Chesham for the first part of the week and then heading round the M25 to Kent to stay with different friends for a few days.

On the Monday I'm going to Wembley to do a tour of the new stadium. We're then heading into town to have a late lunch at Jamie Oliver's Fifteen restaurant. To finish off our day we have tickets for a Night of Adventure at the Vue Cinema in Leicester Square. This is a roll call of people who do interesting, adventurous and intrepid things. They each present a slide show of their 'adventure' but have only 20 slides and 20 seconds per slide to present it. I'm hoping for inspiration.

We also want to go to the Vertigo bar on the 42nd floor of the Nat West Tower. This is the second tallest building in London and the bar is small and surrounded by windows with amazing views. It's expensive so we'll only be having one drink there. I don't know if we'll have time to fit it in on Monday between the restaurant and the show so may have to postpone it till another evening.

For the Tuesday and Wednesday I have my tickets for the Hajj exhibition at the British Museum and the floatation tank. I'll have plenty of time on these days to do other things as well, like visiting some of my favourite shops: Stanford's, the Algerian Coffee Stores, the bookshops on Charing Cross Road ...

As well as plans for this half term, I also have the England game to look forward to in the June half term and Womad in the summer. A few weekends are getting booked up too, with friends coming to stay at the end of the January and a weekend in Nottingham planned so I can go to my first ever ice hockey game with a friend's daughter (she's a bit of an expert and so will be able to explain it all to me).

The 14 hour days don't seem so bad when I think about all of this.

Eating lunch in Reykjavik

Swarta Kaffi

Swarta Kaffi must have an owner who has spent time in South Africa. It's a small place on the first floor of a building on Laugevegur. It's very cosy inside and has a definite African theme - there are masks and other African artefacts all over the place. What makes me think it's a South African connection rather than African in general? Well, it's the food. Swarta Kaffi is famous for serving soup in a bowl made from bread. Each day they have a meat soup and a vegetarian soup - generally cauliflower. The 'bowl' is a loaf sized bread roll with the middle pulled out. It is then filled with soup and the extracted bread is served on the side. This is an Icelandic play on the bunny chows of Durban. Durban has a large Indian population and so curry is pretty much a staple. A bunny chow is a loaf of bread hollowed out and filled with curry; the extra bread is also served on the side. I haven't seen this done anywhere else. I might have thought it coincidence except for the African theme in the cafe. Last time I was here I did ask the waitress about the origins of their main dish, but she didn't know.

The soup and bread is delicious. The staff are friendly and the atmosphere is welcoming. It's a bit more expensive than buying soup in some places so it's somewhere I don't make a habit of going to, but it's definitely something to look forward to once on each trip. 

Groen Kostur

This place is hidden at the back of a kind of small shopping centre\office block, opposite a car park and a branch of Bonus (the cheap supermarket chain). It's only a minute or two walk from Laugevegur. The place is small and modern with small, round, high tables and high chairs. So it's not the most comfortable of places to sit. A lot of people seem to get takeaway from here so I suppose comfort isn't the priority.

The food is all vegetarian and vegan and there's a good choice. There are always several choices of 'plate' as well as snacks, cakes, soup and so on. The 'plates' are made up of a mix of salads, quiches, rice, potatoes, and so on. They are served with a small bread roll and each type of 'plate' has a fixed price. There are a selection of dressings on the counter and a selection of jugs of water. One jug has plain water and the others each have a different fruit such as lemon, orange or apple floating in them. 

The food is delicious. Each time I've been here I've tried one of their plates of food, but the soup served with bread and houmous also looks really tempting.

Gardurin

Gardurin is located about five minutes walk from Laugevegur and is another tiny lunch place. It closes in August each year for holidays so I wasn't able to come here last time. Each week they produce a new menu with a different dish for each day of the week. This means there isn't much choice but the food for each day sounded good and so I suppose it saved making a hard decision. The main dishes are served in full or half portions and there are soups and cakes as well. Everything is vegetarian.

The place is very hippie-ish with incense burning and Indian pictures and artefacts. The tables are small but as they are regular height this is a nicer place to sit than Groen Kostur.  It was quite friendly and the food was good, but if I had to choose I think I would go for Groen Kostur (even though it means sitting on a high chair) because although the food here is good, the food at Groen Kostur is even better!

Coffee shops of Reykjavik

One thing I love doing is sitting in a nice coffee shop drinking really good coffee, maybe indulging in a slice of cake, imbibing the ambience and generally just relaxing; chatting if I'm with a friend, reading or writing if I'm on my own. Reykjavik is a wonderful city for this. There are so many little coffee shops and cafes and although they all seem busy, it's usually possible to get a seat. The decor and atmosphere is very different depending upon where you go, but one thing they all have in common is great coffee.

I don't like milky buckets of coffee so I tend to avoid Starbucks type chains and rarely drink lattes or cappuccinos. In the UK I'll usually ask for an Americano so that I know it's freshly made. Coffee which has been standing around and kept warm for half hour or more (hours in some places) does not taste good. In Reykjavik I drank 'regular' coffee. This is usually in a big flask that you help yourself too. Because the cafes tend to be busy and Icelanders seem to drink a lot of coffee, the coffee in the these flasks in replenished frequently and so never has time to get stale. The coffee is dark and very strong which is just the way I like it.

A regular coffee is usually refillable as well, meaning I could sit for ages and have a couple of cups. The price was usually between 300 and 400 krona (about £1.60 to just over £2). Drinks from the espresso machine are usually more expensive and not refillable. Here are my thoughts on the coffee shops I went to:

Cafe Paris

This is a popular cafe situated on a corner overlooking the square in front of the cathedral. In summer there are tables outside. In winter everyone huddles inside, but as it's quite large it doesn't feel cramped. There are pictures of volcanoes on the walls and a bookcase in the middle. It serves full meals and has a bar, as well as selling coffee and cake.

The first time I went in I had an Americano as it was free with my Reykjavik Welcome Card. It was strong and dark and had a little bar of Milka chocolate alongside. I had a piece of apple cake with it which arrived beautifully served with cream and fruit and a sliver of chocolate.

Next time I ordered regular coffee. Instead of being given a cup to fill myself at the counter, the coffee arrived in a silver insulated pot. Very posh. I got two and a bit cups of coffee out of it and still got a Milka chocolate even though it was regular coffee. I thought it would be expensive, but it was only 400kr.

Cafe Paris can be found at Austurstræti 14 and their website is here.

Tiu Dropar

Tiu Dropar is in the basement of Laugavegur 27. It's a cosy, quirky looking place. To get to the cafe you have to go down steps at the side of the building. The door leads in to a long thin room with a counter at the far end. There is another room at the back. The decor is old-fashioned enough to be retro; there are old teapots and jugs and things used to ornament the place.

I was here fairly early in the morning and so there were only a few other customers. Later in the day it does get very busy in here. The other customers seemed to be having breakfast, whereas I just had a regular coffee and a pancake. The coffee was refillable and good. The pancakes were piled up on the counter and I couldn't resist. They were thin and sugary and rolled up into tight cigars. It was served cold, but tasted delicious.

The website is here but doesn't seem to be working very well.

Cafe Haiti

I discovered Cafe Haiti when I was here last time. It was a tiny one-roomed place with a couple of tiny tables. The owner is from Haiti and from what I can make out came to Iceland because she married an Icelandic guy. Her English isn't great so it's a bit difficult to talk to her. She imports coffee beans from Haiti and roasts them herself.

In the two and a half years since I was last there, she has moved into much bigger premises in the touristic harbour area. Although nice, her new place doesn't have the cosy ambience of the old one. It was very quiet when I was there this time, though this could have been due to the blizzard that had whipped up over night and was still going on. In the old place there was a steady stream of Icelanders coming in to buy takeaway coffee. It might be a bit out of the way for them now and maybe she's relying on the tourist trade instead. But because of the weather it was hard for me to really know.

I had a regular coffee here. It was just as good as last time, but I don't think I'd bother walking down to the harbour especially for this. Not when there are also so many other good places located more centrally.

Here's the facebook page for Cafe Haiti.

Te og Kaffi

This means tea and coffee in Icelandic. It's part of a chain and the one I went in was in the square opposite the Prime Minister's offices. This was beside my bus stop and so was quite handy. It has a modern look and red cups. I just had coffee here which was refillable and tasted good.

Their website is here.

Kaffitar

Kaffitar is also a chain and seems quite Starbucksy. I resisted going in at first as I didn't expect to like it. But one afternoon I really felt like a sit down and a coffee and I could see a free table here. So in I went and was pleasantly surprised. I had an Americano and a slice of Snickers cake. The cake was amazing (I really must try to find a recipe) and the Americano tasted like real coffee. This was the branch on Laugavegur.

A few days later I went to the National Museum and the cafe in the museum is a branch of Kaffitar. The cafe here is on the ground floor and has plate glass windows looking onto a water feature. I sat by the window with a regular coffee (refillable) and watched the birds bathing in the water and the moon rising over the houses opposite.

It does feel like a chain and I prefer the ambience of the quirky little one-off places, but I certainly can't fault them on their coffee.

Here's their website.

Munnharpan

This is the ground floor coffee shop and restaurant in Harpa, Iceland's new concert hall. The concert hall is all glass and reflections, with lots of black. It's a big open space and the cafe feels like it's in a cavernous hall. It's very modern with tables and chairs in rows almost resembling a school canteen. There are also some high tables with bar stools. Behind the coffee area is a formal eating area. The cafe serves meals and has a bar as well as serving coffee and cake.

I had coffee and although it was refillable it was made on the machine. It was good coffee, but I wasn't tempted by anything else. This place is fine for coffee if you're already in Harpa, but isn't worth making a special trip for.

The website is here.

Don't know why this won't go the right way up!

Reykjavik City Hall Cafe

I'm not sure if this cafe has a name, but it's usually just referred to as the cafe or the coffee shop in City Hall. City Hall has been built at the northern end of Tjornin (the pond) and seems to be half on land and half in the water. The cafe juts out into the water which was frozen solid when I was there. I sat in on a comfy sofa by the window watching the geese slipping and sliding around as they strutted past.

The place is very cosy with sofas, colourful cushions and big candles. The wall onto the pond is all glass so summer or winter this would be a great place to sit and feel part of the view.

I just had a coffee here and as with everywhere in Reykjavik, it was good.

Here's some information on City Hall.

Babalu

Babalu is a tiny place upstairs at Skólavörðustígur 22a. Sitting in Babalu is like a cross between sitting in someone's living and sitting in an Aladdin's cave. The walls are brightly coloured, there's a sofa under the eaves, and everything bit of available space is taken up with kitsch and what is basically junk. I loved it.

The coffee is refillable and they have nice cakes. This time, instead of cake, I had a bowl of really warming potato soup. There's a tiny roof terrace which I was able to sit out on the last time I was here and watch everybody on the street below. (It was Culture Night/Day and so there was a lot to watch). This time it was far too cold to sit outside and wasn't too warm inside either. There was quite a draught coming up the stairs from the open front door. But I love this place so much I stayed for a quite a while anyway.

Kaffi Mokka

I'll include Mokka here even though I didn't get to it this time. I did go last time and the only reason I didn't go back was that I was too busy trying out other places.

Mokka is one of the oldest coffee shops in Reykjavik and was the first to get an espresso machine back in the 1950s. Its decor doesn't seem to have changed since then. It's always been a bit of an arty place and now has photo exhibitions on its walls. This cafe serves what are said to be the best waffles in Reykjavik. I had one with my coffee the last time I was here and it was fresh and fluffy. All the locals seemed to be eating them too, which is always a good sign.

Kaffi Mokka can be found at Skólavörðustígur 3a and its website is here.


Follow up to a previous post: As I've just been looking up websites for coffee shops I thought I'd check Trip Advisor to see if my review was still the only one on there. It's not. There are loads. So I'm not famous after all.

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Earthquakes and weather

Iceland has a lot of weather. The local joke is that if you don't like the weather, just wait five minutes and it will change. In summer this is true. I would be hot and cold in the same day; have rain, hail, wind, sun and fog all within the space of a few hours. However, in the winter the weather seems a bit more stable, though as I was only there for a week and a half maybe I didn't get a true picture. Most days it was cold and snowy with clear blue skies in between the snow showers. I can understand though, why Iceland would need a pretty good met office with a pretty good website. However, the Icelandic met office website excels itself by also doubling as an earthquake website. There is a whole section of the website devoted to earthquakes and they constantly have a list showing the biggest earthquakes that have occurred in the last 48 hours. Yes. The biggest earthquakes that have occurred in the last 48 hours. There are that many. One was felt by some of the guests in the hostel whilst I was there, but I didn't feel anything. So I missed out on adding 'experiencing an earthquake' to the list of things I did on my holiday. (I have felt tremors before in Manchester, so I wasn't too upset to miss out). But this is a cool website for anyone going to Iceland.

The St Kilda mailboat

St Kilda is an island (actually a small archipelago) out in the Atlantic way west of Scotland. It was abandoned in 1930 when the way of life become unsustainable for the remaining 36 inhabitants. It's now owned by the National Trust for Scotland and one of the best ways to visit the island (and one of the only ways to spend more than a few hours there) is to take part in one of their work parties. So far it hasn't been feasible for me to do this, but one day I will.

Until their evacuation, the residents of St Kilda lived in almost complete isolation. The only way they had of communicating with the outside world was with the aid of a St Kilda mailboat. These mailboats were small wooden boxes in which letters and money for a stamp would be placed. They'd be sealed up, an inflated sheep's bladder would be attached as a float and the mailboat would be launched. They usually landed in Scotland or Scandinavia where the finder would hopefully post the letter inside.

Today I saw an article on the National Trust for Scotland's website about a mailboat launched by one of last summer's work parties being found in Norway. Although there are other means of communication now, each work party launches a mailboat as a way of re-enacting the tradition. Until I saw this article I hadn't realised they did this.

I wonder who'll find the one I launch when I eventually join a work party there?