Iceland! I’m back!
I was in Iceland two years ago with the lovely Karen and was able to see Akureryi, Isafjiord and Reykjavik. Today we were stopping just in Reykjavik and with plans to do another lap of the Golden Circle. So all the beautiful waterfalls and geysirs and waterfalls. We arrived bright and early to a lovely clear day – brisk and fresh. Such an enjoyable change from the hot and disgusting week of high 30s heat we unexpectedly got stuck with in London, ‘City of Zero Effective Air Conditioning’.
The Nookies and ourselves all piled into our minivan with our driver, Anna, and our guide, Bella, and took off into the beautiful southern Icelandic countryside. All of ten minutes out of Reykjavik and the landscape is overtaken by gorgeous scenery, green mountains, blue skies, lovely cloud formations and the craggy lava fields.
Our first stop was to an information bureau which was built right over the top of the continental fissure between the Northern American and European tectonic plates. The visitor centre had a glass floor which allowed people to look down and see the ‘crack’ between the continents.
After leaving the visitors centre we went to a smaller, lesser known stop called Faxi Waterfalls. The Faxi waterfalls are known obstacle for the salmon who have to traverse up the falls to get to their breeding grounds – the locals have literally built the salmon a special water ‘ladder’ that they can jump up more easily which allows more of them to make it to breed and keeps the population numbers up for fishing. 
Then it was on to Gullfoss falls. Our guide didn’t give us much info or history really. Not compared to my last trip here which was full of history and good stuff – can read it here if you want.
Such a gorgeous day.
From here we went to see the geysirs – our guide didn’t tell us much about the geysirs (there is plenty of info in the other blog post). This one is called ‘Strokkur’ and she seemed surprised when I mentioned it by name… in fact we haven’t had a lot of local history, culture or politics at all. Not a single mention of fermented shark or Iceland in the 2008 GFC or even a single mention of Leif Erickson. Bit disappointing really.
We stopped at the geysirs for a while, had a bite to eat and then headed off to Þingvellir (Thingvellir) where the guide did tell us a bit about the AlÞing and stuff but not a lot. I think if I came back here (even if it was just for a day off a cruise ship) I would hire a car and do these places independently.
The fissure between the tectonic plates again. 
After that we were set to be returned to our ship but Mr K and I decided to be dropped into Reykjavik to explore on our own. Having ditched our guide, we started off at the Hallgrimskirkja church.
The Hallgrimskirkja was designed by Guðjón Samúelsson 1937 and is said to have designed it to resemble the trap rocks, mountains, basalt columns and glaciers of Iceland’s landscape. The church took about 40 years to build and the tower is an observatory where visitors can go out and look out over the city. It is one of the city’s (and therefore Iceland’s) tallest buildings.
This impressive statue is of the viking explorer, Leif Erikson (c.970-1020) which has stood here since before the church was built. Apparently it was a gift from the US in 1930 to honour of the 1000th anniversary of Iceland’s first parliament at Þingvellir in 1030.
The Kiki Queer Bar… love the colour scheme 🙂 
Downtown Reykjavik. Everything here and I mean EVERYTHING is crazy expensive. A meal out is about three times the cost of home, a block of cheese; same. A bottle of Brennavin – AU$106 and that is if you could actually get the xe.com rate for your currency exchange! The only thing that seemed about on par was the cost of a can of Carlsberg. Beer. Of course. 🙂 
Reykjavik Concert Hall very prettily situated out over the water.
The Inuit people in Alaska built road markers like these and for some reason, people (probably tourists) have built them all over this ‘beach’ near the concert hall. 
Now – two days and sea and then Greenland! Continue reading
Along with other memorials to the Titanic and also a monument of Annie Moore and her little brothers who were the first people admitted to the United States at the new immigration centre that had recently been built at Ellis Island in New York on January 1, 1892. Cobb was the departure point for 2.5 million of the 6 million Irish who emigrated to the US during the late 19thC to early 20thC. Cobh was also a major exit point for men, women and children who were being deported to the penal colonies of Australia. 
We were meeting up with an old friend, Gav, who used to live in Brisbane but who is has been living in Ireland for the last decade or so and we couldn’t wait to see him, check out his adopted part of the world and have a few pints. Gav met us near the ship and showed us around Cobh, starting with the St Colman’s Cathedral. 
After lunch we made our way out to Blarney Castle, which of course is what all tourists do in this area. I had been in back in 1995 and it was pretty much as I remember. Poor Gav has probably been here with ever single one of his visiting relatives and couldn’t tell me how many times he had climbed it’s narrow stairways. For Mr K however, this was his first visit so he was determined to kiss the Blarney Stone. 🙂 
The castle also has extensive gardens which are probably a delight to visit, but seeing as how it had decided to pour down rain as we approached, we climbed the castle, Mr K kissed the stone and we made our way back down again. So now, I’ve climbed the twisty difficult stairways of Blarney Castle twice and still not kissed the stone! 
The museum is located in an old Victorian flower market right beside Covent Garden, it’s a lovely out building, but being a large open steel framed empty space it must be one of the noisiest museums I’ve ever visited. And while I understood why we were there – transport, duh – I had no idea why there were so many young families with children checking out the history of buses, trams, trains and subways in London!
The most interesting things here were a few old photos with accompanying text – like this one below depicting an old London bus with its destination ‘blind’ which rolled out so the driver could change the visible sign on the outside of the bus to indicate where it was headed.
But mostly the Museum seems to have let the interactive entertainment nonsense overtake the dissemination of historical information bit. 
This guy was amusing – the original transport entrepreneur overtaken by Uber imitators perhaps? Fell flat on his arse… wonder why.
By now it was about 3:00pm and we were hoping to head over to the Globe Theatre for a tour at 4pm tour with LukenManda. So, having taken all the buses, trains and other forms of transport available, we thought we’d try out the cross river ferry service which went from just down near the Strand across to the Globe… or so we thought. What should have been a 4:05pm ferry with two stops to the Globe (which we arrived 20 mins early for) turned into a 35 min wait for a ferry that never came and then being shepherded onto a ferry service that was going NORTH BOUND which then loops about and heads back to the Globe with four stops on the way. FFS… we didn’t actually get there until 4:40pm. Crazy. If anyone reading this has ever been on a Brisbane CityCat, you won’t understand this, but the Thames Clippers ‘river bus’ services are these huge old barges that take forever to manoeuvre to and from the pontoons and by the time we got there we were completely over it. The staff make the transport SNAFU extra special by not telling us what happened to the service we were actually waiting for and as we were getting onto the ferry and I was confirming that it was indeed going to the Bankside stop for the Globe, responding with an indifferent, ‘Yeah, I think so.’ Oh we have so much confidence at this point..
Oddly, it feels very much like bing in the Pop Up Globe in Auckland and gives you an appreciation of just how well the designers of that venue have done to replicate this incredible theatre in it’s temporary format. The dimensions are the same, the intimacy of the space is the same… I highly recommend any Aussies who didn’t manage to see it in Melbourne, try to get along to see it in Sydney when it opens soon.
After our (rather short) Globe tour it was time to skip through the gift shop and then jump a black cab and head back to Covent Garden to catch up with Joey Jo Jo over a jug of sangria. 🙂 Popped into a little Mexican restaurant I found here on my last trip called, (what was it called, again?) – Cafe Pacifico. Great little cheap and cheerful place with lovely food, but rather busy and very noisy. Sorry Angus, Dad had the chimichangas without you! 
After breakfast though we had planned to go back to try again to get into Westminster Abbey without the huge queue – and we failed dismally. We arrived there at 9:15ish and already there was about an hour long wait, though thankfully it was mostly still in the shadow of the cathedral so not standing around in the direct sun as it would have been on Saturday. The queue was steadily moving but wound itself in around considerably – at one point I had to go find a step to sit on leaving Keith to hold our spaces as my back simply won’t let me stand up for that long, but eventually we got into the Abbey, whereupon we were greeted. By a cash register.
Anyway we go on in and are offered no map or guide booklet, but only an audioguide. Sometimes I think audioguides are okay – they are great for some museums or art galleries and they can be awesome if you are travelling by yourself. However, when you have several hundred people crammed into a medieval church all walking around with their heads stuck up their arses with headphones on listening to an audioguide in umpteen different languages – every single one of them will immediately lose whatever limited situational awareness they previously possessed and turn into bimbling idiots. You have people bumping into each other, stepping back to look up at something and standing on each others feet and almost knocking each other over, swinging around to see something and bumping their stupid back packs into other visitors – or worse into ancient funereal monuments! They’re cheek to jowl shuffling along only half listening, with a slack jawed unengaged and bored expression on their face. Audioguides seriously suck in these tight, crowded environments. Not only do they make for extremely inconsiderate visitors but they actually slow down the progression of the people moving through the spaces. People will slow down to listen to the audioguide at a designated point and not move through until they get told to do so – even if none of what they are listening to is relevant or interesting to them, as audioguides inherently cause people to worry that they may miss something ‘important’.
Another lovely newer inclusion was Stephen Hawkings memorial marker… and a very helpful Abbey volunteer who was saying repeatedly, “Here, underfoot is Charles Darwin to your left is Stephen Hawking”.
After seeing all the tombs and monuments – Elizabeth I, Mary I, Mary Queen of Scots, the Poet’s corner (wonder if a memorial to J K Rowling will end up in there one day right next to Anthony Trollope or Shakespeare? #showerthoughts) we went out through the Cloisters and the obligatory gift shop.
After our lovely meal, we went for a wander down past the Aldwych Theatre which is currently showing ‘Tina – The Tina Turner Musical’ (which is neither here nor there but we were just contemplating who on earth they could have found to belt out Tina Turner tunes all night, every night in a musical version of her life/career), when we saw a fox cross The Strand heading towards Drury Lane or possibly heading to the Waldorf Hilton. A fox. We saw an actual (presumably wild) fox crossing the street in central London – and all I could think was, ‘I bet she’s not impressed with this heat either’.
We had a great day wandering about – saw all the things, experienced all the exhibitions and even took a dray ride around the park (it’s quite hot for London – and London does not deal with heat; air conditioning in these old buildings would be impossible).
Tudor Kitchens
Kitchen herb gardens
Formal fountain courtyard added during the William and Mary extension to the Palace.
Astronomical clock… no cuckoos much to Mr K’s dismay.
Entrance to William’s appartments – whereupon, my camera battery went dead. I felt like ever such an unaccomplished tourist to suffer such a rookie mistake. AND to add insult to injury I didn’t have a micro-USB to charge it up on the go either. Urgh.
Great Hall ceiling. 
Tapestry / portrait galleries
Magical gardens and the famous Hampton Court Palace hedge maze.
After this we went for a well earned pint and a snack. We were going to stop at the Mute Swan, but unfortunately (or fortunately, not sure) they were packed to capacity and we ended up at the Riverview Terrace over looking the Thames enjoying a lovely breeze and a few pints of cider. Fanfuckingtastic.
Established in 1946 and still going strong.
All these recommendations on the back of the menu were well deserved. The food was amazing. 
Definitely want to avoid that then! 😉 
On Paul’s recommendation I tried the prawn puri and Keith, the onion pakoras, because well, who needs a reason? Both entrees were fabulous. We then shared a dish called, Anari Gosht (a deliciously fragrant lamb and pomegranate dish) that isn’t actually on the menu but which the waiter was only too happy to arrange for us. Good call on the Anari Gosht, Paul – it was beautiful. Unusual blend of flavours and well worth the effort to negotiate from our waiter. 🙂 
After dinner we stumbled back to the hotel where Mr K promptly went back to work and I promptly fell asleep on the couch! I was ostensibly supposed to be blogging – but so much for that! 🙂