Iceland, land of wind, ice and 27-letter names

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Iceland Jan 7th

I never thought I'd get to Iceland. Not because we were flying with Qatar Airways (thankfully we aren't!) but because it sounds so damned expensive. But then along came Groupon and for a mere £189 each we got flights, accommodation and a northern lights tour. We may not be able to afford to eat but hey, we are here!

There's always some trepidation when flying. Not because it scares me in any way but because airlines are about as trustworthy as David Cameron locked in a room with a pig's head. Quite often you end up being the pig's head.

I've had luggage lost twice, had a flight cancelled when I was already on board, missed a connection due to airline staff and had an airline go bust on me the night before I was due to fly back from New York. Still, better than being in any sort of room with David Cameron.

The worst bit is waiting at the carousel at the end of a flight and watching all the happy people collecting their bright pink cases or the golfers trying not to look embarassed by the fact that everyone else knows they're golfers by their stupidly huge bags. Actually, maybe they'd rather their luggage go missing to save their blushes.

For me though there's a lot of anxiety as everyone else's cases plop onto the belt and it's like winning the lottery when my case finally emerges. Not a big win obviously, say £500 or so. Comparing getting your luggage to winning millions of pounds would be a bit dumb to say the least.

As it was an early start this morning with a 7.45am flight we stayed in a Travelodge in Luton last night. Travelodge get some flak but you know what you're getting with a Travelodge. A room basically.

This time we flew with Easyjet. They get a lot of flak but you know what you're getting with Easyjet. A flight basically.

The Wednesday night drive down to Luton was actually quite traffic free; littered with roadworks of course, but they didn't hold me up at all. Strange, driving for over two hours and not having to swear. It's like driving in the US; not LA of course. When you drive there you HAVE to swear, in between the screaming with terror of course. All better than driving down at stupid o'clock this morning though.

It was chucking it down this morning so it was nice to be jetting off somewhere else. Arriving at Luton Airport we headed for the check-in desks and were rerouted to the Speedy Boarding counter. We had the treasured SB on our boarding cards apparently and skipped a bit of queuing. I can only think that this SB came because I had prebooked our seats as I hadn't been expecting it. We decided to revel in our newfound unexpected status!

After a splendid Japanese breakfast at Wasabi we skipped another queue and were amongst the first on board the plane. We were a bit diappointed that SB didn't come with a Ferrari to whisk us to our plane but I guess we avoided having to stand out in the rain like the peasants without SB.

The flight left the parking spot on time and after a short delay while the runway was checked was actually explained to us....are you listening Qatar Airways....we were off. The couple of quid extra I had paid for extra legroom was well worth it as I could manage without having to get into a yoga position. Not enough room to sleep much obviously but hey ho.

And the flight was fine, we arrived early and then it felt like we'd won the lottery when our bag mustered its way onto the carousel. Outside we boarded the bus that would take us on the 50min drive to Reykjavik. The journey was pretty uninspiring apart from some distant mountains but it wasn't helped by the lack of daylight....you know, what with it being only 11am and all...

It was a bit lighter by the time we got into town and then was going dark again at 4-I wonder how many of the locals suffer with SAD here?! The sun barely gets above the horizon and it barely gets above freezing all day.

Our hotel is in the middle of a predominantly industrial area although it is not far to bus stops and restaurants. It's called the Arctic Comfort Hotel and we were in a superior room. I know how to look after my wife; speedy boarding, fly bus plus and a superior room all in one day!!

Fly bus plus simply meant we were dropped off outside our hotel, but it felt pretty special for a while....until we were next to last to get off....

Now we'd been told by some friends that it isn't slippy here as there's no mositure or something. Well it was raining when we got here, there are piles of snow taller than me and the ice patches are more slippery than a million banana skins on an ice rink. You can get round some patches but how I've managed to stay on my feet so far Claire has no idea. There's been lots of frantic waving of arms and the narrow avoidance of a very deep nearby puddle and we're only on day one.

The most extreme weather though has been the wind. I don't remember ever being in winds so strong they almost knock me over and that's saying something as I live with Claire! Even her gusty guffs have never almost knocked me over, knocked me out maybe but never knocked me over. People were being blown sideways and hats have been tumbling past us. The most sensible thing to do in this situation is to go to the top of the tallest tower in town obviously. So we did. Later.

After a quick change into warmer clothes we bravely headed down to the bus stop to head into town. There was a walking tour leaving and we wanted to be on it. We'd stopped off at the Hilton hotel to buy bus passes and we were ready We got on a bus and were feeling pretty smug as we coasted along like locals. The hotel receptionist had given us a list of possible buses and seemed to say that they all terminated at the same station in town.

Nothing could go wrong.

We went through a bus station but were looking out for where the bus terminated so we stayed on. And ended up in the middle of nowhere. And then the driver said he was having his coffee break and we'd have to wait off the bus and he disappeared into a hut. And then we sheepishly got back on his bus and went back to the same station we should have got off at previously and disembarked. I can only put the receptionist's words down to her meaning all the buses stopped at that station rather than terminated. But we missed the walking tour.

So we did some walking of our own and decided to head to Hallgrimskirkja which is a victim of the Icelandic way of naming things. To name streets, place names and tourist places there are seven bearded men in thick woollen jumpers who sit round a table next to a roaring fire. Each one takes it in turns with a bag of Scrabble letters that has had half the vowels removed and pulls 27 letters out and lays them out in the order they are pulled. Someone else writes that down, everybody cheers, sups some heinous alcoholic brew and they have another name; hurrah!

Hence no-one else has a chance of finding their way around as just when you think you're heading in the right direction you have failed to notice that the 26th letter is different and you're heading in completely the wrong direction. Good job they speak such good English here!

So yes, this big tall church thingy with the 27 letter name. We went up it and it cost nearly a fiver but the view was great from the top. And the open gaps were blustery to say the least. I saw people have to hold others up at the windiest side as they would be blown backwards if not.

The church itself was pretty special with a spectacular ceiling and organ. Not bad for a modern church. Outside was a statue of Iclandic explorer Leifur Eriksson who apparently reached America before old Columbus.

We then decided to wander down to the harbour area and were both feeling a little peckish. I'd read about an award winning hot dog stand that is apparently where all the Icelanders go as well as tourists and judges of hot dog stand competitions. It's been there since 1937 so we were soon heading in the wrong direction as I sought this special delicacy.

Just as we were about to give up, there it was, Beejarin's Beztu Pylsur. I'd heard the queues were long. They weren't. And I'd read that I should order one with everything. So I did. They come with crispy onions, cooked onions, tomato ketchup, mustard and some brown sauce that isn't what we know as brown sauce. The hot dogs are put together in seconds and they plonk it down, take your 400 krona (about £2) and you look at it and think oh, is that it?

The sausages are out of packets and are of the old cinema style i.e. boiled and are longer than the cheap looking roll they are dumped in. They taste okay, but only okay and certainly not as good as the reviews on Tripadvisor suggest-some of those have to be read to be believed! One had a vegetarian friend with them who went 'off the wagon' to try the hot dogs and hasn't shut up about them since. How does a vegetarian go 'off the wagon'?? Anyway, they are a cheap eat for Reykjavik but I won't be rushing back and Claire hasn't been convinced to go 'off the wagon' to try one.

Off to the harbour next to have a look round and see about boat trips to Videy island-although the d in the middle there is supposed to be an Icelandic letter that looks like the map symbol for a church and is probably just there in the Scrabble bag to confuse people. Like me.

It was incredibly windy down by the sea front and only whaling trip offices seemed to be open despite all their trips having been cancelled due to the wind. We saw a cinema which was showing short films and the one starting in 20 minutes was called Chasing the Northern Lights which seemed quite apt so we went in.

The 'cinema' was a large upstairs room but nothing like a cinema per se. There were two armchairs which we sat in, a sofa and then some dining chairs around the screen which was only about as big as screen 9 at the Odeon on Festival Park.

We bought some snacks and decided to try cheesy popcorn, shhh, don't knock it till you've tried it! It was actually pretty good and my 'not a popcorn fan' wife managed to get her hand into the packet quite a few times....

We were the only cinema patrons and were treated to two short films, one about volcano eruptions in Iceland including that one with the unpronouceable name that stopped many flights back in 2010 and then the aforementioned title feature. They were both okay but I'm not sure about 20 minutes of film played through a computer warrants us paying £5 each.

After soon abandoning the search for the island trip we decided to find Grotta Lighthouse which had been sent far away from the city centre for not having enough letters in its name. The story goes that the naming committee had had too much heinous alcohol one night and started munching on the letters to see who could poo one out whole. When Eigotjorghhhanssson Blajjotfonstadd turned up a bit late and stopped them all, only the letters G R O T T and A remained and hence the lighthouse was named and thus banished.

We'd read that this was the only place to get a good view of the northern lights in Reykjavik and started walking towards it. After about half an hour we followed the directions on Tripadvisor and were soon up a hill without a lighthouse in sight.

Claire switched on her data roaming and, after initially conforming we were close, it suddenly changed its mind and said we had a thirty minute walk to go. As we'd been up since 4.30am, had already done a fair amount of walking and it was cold and extremely windy we set off on the 30 minute walk. Now come on, who thought we were actually going to do the sensible thing??

We left the streetlights behind and had to get out torches as it was pitch black at the end of life as we know it. There were no northern lights to be seen but we did find a whale carcass with part of its skeleton intact to photograph. We were about 100ft shy of the actual lighthouse but, as making it all the way would have involved swimming, we actually did do the sensible thing and both had a wee instead. With the wind coming from behind this was probably the furthest I have ever urinated and I should probably apologise for getting some on the lighthouse. Maybe.

The walk back to a bus stop was like being in a horror movie according to Claire where you're trying to run away but not getting very far. I'm not sure what the monsters were that were chasing us but they would have had to contend with gale force winds too I suppose. They didn't catch us and we did make it to a bus stop.

The bus took us back to the same station we'd got off at at the second attempt earlier; we stopped off at a supermarket for supplies and then caught another bus back to near our hotel. Not as near as we should have been as I got us off the bus a stop too early but at least I gave us more chance to try and slip over on the precarious ice patches.

And then it was time for the usual ritual of writing our blogs while millions of people wait anxiously to read them. I'm sure there'll be some opinions of Iceland and its capital appearing over the next few days but its now 23.30, I've been on the go since 4.30 and I still have to read this through, upload it, add pictures, publish it, share it and then plan tomorrrow's activities. And I'll still be up and out before daylight...

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