Tuesday, November 20, 2012

Life as an assistant

I've been here in Dax for just about two months now - doesn't seem like it's been that long! Two months and I've only written one blog post, yikes.

My life for the past two months has mostly consisted of eating more Friotellas (that I talked about in my last post), having a pretty lax schedule and trying to settle in. Oh and getting a two-week vacation after only teaching for three weeks. For most people in the U.S., that is the amount of vacation they get during an entire year. In France, you get a minimum of five weeks (paid) vacation, but usually it's six. I remember a teacher I had while studying abroad told us that by the time December rolls around, if you haven't taken your full five weeks of vacation for the year, some places will tell you just not to come in at all until the new year. Sounds awesome, although I don't know how entirely true it is throughout the entire country.

unfortunately not what my local
boulangerie actually looks like
And it's not just in vacations that the French really know the joie de vivre: most people work 35 hour work weeks (they think Americans are crazy for our 40+ ones, but let's be realistic it's more like 60, sometimes 80); France has its own version of the Spanish siesta, where shops close anywhere between 1130 am & 130 pm; French schoolchildren only go to school 4 days a week; everything is closed Sunday, maybe the boulangerie will open for an hour or two so we can get our beloved baguettes; and most places here in the south(west) are closed Monday too. At first the siesta thing and being closed Sunday/Monday was annoying since I'm used to the convenience of 24-hour grocery stores to get my cookie dough fill (by the way they DO sell it here!), but when you think about it, it's a pretty awesome lifestyle. And it makes me feel less like a bum if I do absolutely nothing all day Sunday knowing nothing is open anyway.

Anyway, going back to where I left off in my last post, when I was bored out of my mind being the first assistant to arrive in Dax, I took a little day trip to Biarritz- a resort-town renowned for surfing. Even though it was late September, there was still a huge number of surfers there (the waves are apparently at their peak in early fall), although the day I went the waves were pretty huge and almost no one was surfing. Biarritz is cool, but the main attraction is definitely the beach. There's not a whole lot of other touristy things to do, although I did see the Roche de la Vierge (Rock of the Virgin) and go to the Maison du Chocolat, which the guidebook falsely described as if you were stepping into a real-life Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.


La Grande Plage in Biarritz
By the last week of September, we had all arrived. In total we are 8 assistants: 2 Americans girls (Emily & I), 2 English girls (Rosalyn & Natasha), 2 Canadian girls (Emma & Sherry), 1 Spanish girl (Elena) and 1 Honduran girl (Keidy). Five of us teach in primary schools and the other 3 are with middle and high schools. I teach at 2 primary schools with Keidy- one just 5 minutes walking from where we live and the other about 15 min by bike. Although our contracts said October 1, we actually didn't teach the first week. We mostly observed classes and had our orientation meeting to get all of our paper work sorted out. By this point I was finally feeling my nerves cooling and that I was getting the hang of life here - I finally had internet, I got my mobile phone set up as well as my bank account. Although, apparently I signed up with the snobby bank --BNP Paribas, which is a partner bank of Bank of America-- and it took forever to get my debit card. 

Like I said earlier, I have a pretty relaxed schedule: I only work 12 hours a week. French kids don't go to school on Wednesdays, so my 12 hours are spread out between Mon, Tues, Thurs & Fri. The school kids also get 2 hours for lunch and at least two breaks for recess, not to mention separate time for gym where they'll go across the street to the park, go to the pool for swimming or just play in the schoolyard. My nine year-old self would have been super jealous of these kids.

A typical day consists of me having one or two classes in the morning, coming back for a 2 or more hour break at lunch and then having two to four classes in the afternoon. My class load varies though, for example on Mondays I have four and on Tuesdays I only have two. I have no Thursday morning classes, but then have six classes on Fridays that I wish were a bit more spread out throughout the week. But still, I can't complain.
Friotellas nom

Besides classes, I have a nice little bundle of extracurriculars going on the side: Monday evenings I'll be co-leading a conversation class with Natasha for teachers interested in learning English; Tuesday nights I take a French class with a couple of the other assistants, usually followed by sushi; Wednesday we have off so during the day Emma and I take Spanish (which is interesting since it's taught for French people, so we're learning to speak Spanish through French), usually followed or preceded by going to French Coffee for a Friotella; Thursdays I go to a philosophy discussion group, which I initially started going to purely with the intention of improving my French language but I've actually quite started to enjoy the philosophy aspect of it; and Fridays I hate my life with six classes to struggle through.

We also end up going to LeClerc (the local supermarket) several times a week to pick up things here and there, but also to stop by the cafe to creep on/talk to a guy that works there that is, like, totally mignon (cute). 

Some Saturdays there are also rugby games, which are a lot of fun to go to. In Dax, Rugby takes more precedence than football (aka soccer for you non-cultured folk), so people get really excited about going to the games. There's one this Saturday but we planned on having our Thanksgiving dinner that day since we all work Thursday, so we're going to have to figure out what to do about that - drama!

Cheers!

Monday, October 15, 2012

Petit Intro to Dax (D'Aqcs)


The train ride down from Paris to Dax went by much faster than anticipated.

I chatted with the man next to me almost the whole way down to Bordeaux, which is where he was getting off for a business trip. We talked about various things, but of course the topic of politics came up and he asked who I was voting for (which reminds me I need to get my absentee ballot). He was nice, but it got a bit weird when he gave me his email address and phone number since he was at least twice my age (and married). I think he may have just been excited to meet an American, since he was excitedly talking about having a native to show him around DC if he goes there on business. I am not sorry to say I misplaced his info.

After he got off at Bordeaux, a guy my age sitting near me who I had chatted with in the lunch car (and by the way, food on SNCF trains are absolute rubbish), sat down across from me and we talked the rest of the way to Dax. Politics came up again. I felt like an ignorant American in speaking with both the Bordeaux businessman and my new seatmate since it was pretty obvious they knew much more about American politics than I did about French politics. I couldn’t even remember at first the name of their new president (it’s Hollande) but I really have no idea what his political platform is. But, I hope to change that (& just knowing more about French culture in general) during my time here. They both boosted my confidence though since they told me I speak pretty good French.

Dax and the river Adour
Stepping off the train in Dax from Paris was like entering another world. I left behind the cold, grey unwelcoming and impersonal city of Paris to a sunny, small, quintessential friendly southern French town. Not that I don't love Paris to visit, but I would never want to live there. People are just flat out more friendly in the south. Even the kid I spoke with on the train (who is from Paris) agreed that Parisians are not a very welcoming group of people. In Paris if you don't speak perfectly fluent French or "Parisian" French or you have an accent, people become exasperated with you and make fun of your French. I've experienced this even with people in the tourism industry who you would think would be sucking up to you.

In Dax, I noticed a considerable difference in people's attitudes towards those who were clearly tourists even in the first half hour I was there- from people on the train platform to the cab driver to the woman who welcomed me at my hotel. Although tourists in this part of France are typically quite different from tourists in Paris. A cool thing about Paris is it's diversity and the number of tourists from all over the world who come to visit the City of Lights (and Love?). In Dax, if you are a tourist you are more likely to be French. An upside to this is that people don't automatically speak to you in English. The first few days I was here I was quite nervous about how bad my French was going to be after not having spoken it all summer, but I just had to keep reminding myself that my French is most likely a lot better than their English.

I spent the first  two nights in Dax at a hotel right next to the river, the Adour. The Adour actually splits Dax in two. Just north of Dax is a town called St. Paul les Dax, and they are both quite small. Together, I think the population makes about 30,000.

Before getting here, I had debated about potentially living in nearby Bayonne (about a 45 minute commute) since I wasn’t sure if I was going to like how small Dax was. A couple different French people told me that Bayonne isn’t much bigger though – maybe 40,000 -- so only 10,000 more people and there isn’t much more to do there. After being here for almost a month now I am liking Dax quite a bit.

Dax, or D'Aqcs (how it is spelled in the regional dialect of Gascon) is in the region of Aquitaine. There are 27 regions in France, each of which are broken up into smaller départements. Aquitaine consists of 5 départements: Gironde (where Bordeaux is located), Dordogne (where the prehistoric Caves Lascaux were found), Lot et Garonne (lots o farms there I think), Pryénnées Atlantiques (where Biarritz is located) and Landes (where Dax is!) The image is a bit pixelated, but you can kind of see where it indicates Bordeaux in the north, Dax in the south west ish and Bayonne/Hendaye below Dax:


Dax is cute and small. It’s also a premier spa town in Europe. There are thermal baths on just about every street. I have yet to go to one (surprising for me). Although, most of them seem like they are tailored towards people with medical problems such as fibromyalgia (I’ve seen that in a lot of the descriptions). There is a culture of “curistes,” people who will travel to Dax to go to the baths everyday for three or four weeks to help with their medical issues. There are also med students here who study only thermal treatments.

One of the more famous spas, Les Bains St. Pierre
(I actually don't think you're allowed here unless you do have a medical issue)

This was not my hotel, I just like the pic
Anyway, I spent my first two days here in a hotel by the river and then moved into the residence on Friday. I was the first assistant to arrive by a good five days, so I spent a lot of time by myself when I first got here. It got lonely at times but I kept myself occupied by walking around and trying to get to know the town or skyping with my parents. Settling in seemed to take a bit since getting internet/bank/phone stuff set up was a bit complicated. I couldn't get internet in my room until I had a French phone number to send the access code to, but I couldn't get a French phone number until I had my bank card from the bank (I later found out this wasn't true) but I had to wait for my bank account to get approved first. By the way it's been 3 (almost 4) weeks since I first opened my bank account and I have yet to be approved by snooty BNP (it's the "rich people" bank according to some people but I chose it because they're a partner bank with Bank of America. That was a mistake), but I have internet and my phone.

The gardien at the residence, Monsieur Martin found me a bike the next week which made life so much easier. From the residence it takes about 30 minutes to walk into centreville, which is fine for a nice stroll from time-to-time but when you're going in multiple times a week it's much easier to go on bike, which only takes about 10 minutes.

La Fontaine Chaude built in the 1800s under Louis XVIII
A symbole of thermalisme in Dax
The main part of centreville consists of typical narrow French streets that twist and bend their way down to the Fontaine Chaude (above). There are a lot of cool shops and restaurants tucked and hidden away that I've started to discover since being here. At first glance, the whole center area seemed very touristy, but I found that the touristy restaurants are really only the ones facing the river.


One of my favorite places here is one that I actually stumbled upon my first day: a coffeeshop called French Coffee Shop. Feeling a bit overwhemled my first day from walking around and not knowing where I was, I decided to stop in the coffee shop to get a bite to eat and just study the map. I went in and started chatting with the shop owners and turns out they knew the assistants from last year! They at first had assumed me a tourist, as do most people in this town. The shop itself is warmly decorated in natural, earthy tones with tons of comfortable furniture, free wifi and even a computer to use the internet on. Their drinks are on a whole other level. It's like Starbucks on crack. They have all the normal lattes, capuccinos, etc drinks that you would imagine but also have smoothies and these crazy milkshake combinations that are obviously my favorite.They make the specialty drinks both hot and cold, with Oreo, KinderBueno, choc chip cookies, etc... basically a chocolate fiend's haven (aka me). My favorite so far is the FrioTella, a cold chocolate milkshake made with Nutella. I can't think of anything more delicious.

One of their Oreo creations. Nom.


That's all for now! Ciao!

Thursday, October 4, 2012

Ze City of Lights


It was a weird feeling landing in France. Iceland felt more like a vacation than a pre-moving journey, and I was kind of sad to not be landing back and home and see my parents and friends. It was hard to stay sad though since we were all pretty excited about being in France: the land of wine, crêpes and kebabs (yes, kebabs)!

Getting from the airport to our hostel was quite a journey. After collecting our bags, Olivia and I said adieu to Nick who was headed straight to Chambéry. We headed off towards the currency exchange. Guess what? They didn’t take Iceland Krona, but they did take the Thai Baht… (???!). The guy told me I could probably find somewhere in the center of Paris to exchange my krona (although I forgot, of course).

Ahh La Tour Eiffel
Afterwards, we boarded the shuttle to a different terminal to catch the RER train. For those who have not flown to Paris before, the airports are all located a bit outside the city and Charles De Gaulle is about 45 minutes outside Paris. When we got to the terminal to catch the RER, we realized all the machines only took coins or cards, so we waited about 20 minutes in line at the ticket counter to pay with cash :/  Once on the RER, we got off at Gare du Nord to catch the metro. After lugging our suitcases to and fro across the train station in search of a machine to buy metro tickets, we finally asked a worker who told us we didn’t need one since we came on the RER (cool). However, there were no elevators or escalators, so we had to drag our suitcases down about 3 flights of stairs.

Luckily, though and much to our surprise, various passerby helped us carry our suitcases up/down the stairs at the metro stations since they clearly felt bad for us. I don’t remember experiencing such hospitality in the past. At our destination station, a fellow traveler asked if we were by chance heading to the St. Christopher’s hostel, which we were! He was Australian (the second one we met that day- we met one in line at the RER station) and also participating in the TAPIF program in Marseille. We dragged our suitcases up the metro stairs one last time (with more help, thankfully) and headed off down the street to the hostel. We were getting some weird looks from some of the other hostel-goers due to the excessive amount of bags we had. We ended up seeing the other Australian from the RER there and he commented on this, so I felt compelled to explain we were moving for 8 months and we NEEDED ALL 10 PAIRS OF SHOES (just kidding, I didn't bring that many...maybe).

I had heard really great things about the St. Christopher’s chain – they have hostels in Amsterdam, London etc and are rated highly on hostelworld. This one at least definitely tried to get all the money out of you they could, which is annoying because people staying in hostels are usually broke college-aged kids. They wanted something like 20 euro to store your luggage for 24 hours which is absolutely ridiculous we just left our bags near our bed and put the important stuff in the lockers provided underneath the beds. There was also wifi, but it was super crappy, so they also tried to charge you to use the internet on their computers in the lobby. It was fine though for two nights and we were just happy to not be dragging our suitcases around the city.

Although the hostel was in an arrondissement (city district) further towards the edge of town, it was close to a couple different metro stops, which was convenient. Olivia and I were just starving since we hadn’t eaten since the croissants on the plane and found the closest café to get a late lunch/early dinner. We got a funny look from the waiter when we ordered our food since it was only about 530 pm and unlike in Iceland, the French (and the rest of Europe) eat later and don’t close their restaurants by 9 pm! I ordered the carbonara, which I did pretty much every single time it was on the menu when I studied abroad last time. This was just alright though. Certainly doesn’t beat the carbonara I had in Montpellier.

We suddenly realized how tired we were since we barely got any sleep the night before and went back to the hostel to take a nap. We had set our alarms for 930 p.m. so we could get to the Eiffel Tower before the elevators closed at 11 pm. Well, we didn’t end up getting out of bed til 1015 or so, but still headed off to the Eiffel Tower to see it even if we couldn’t go up. You don’t immediately see it once getting off the metro at the Trocadero, so I felt the suspense turning the corner waiting for it to come into sight. It’s so magical to see at night. I was super excited to see it again, so I couldn’t imagine how Olivia felt seeing it for the first time. Even though it was past 11, there were still a lot of people (and annoying people trying to sell you souvenirs and those stupid glowy balls that they fling into the air). We got a bit lost on the way back – I knew the Champs Elysées wasn’t far and we were hoping to see it lit up at night, but we forgot to cross the river and just ended up taking the metro at Place de la Concorde. When we went to switch trains, we found the connecting one had already shut down since it was past 1 am, so we just hopped in a cab for the remainder of the way back since there was no way in hell we were walking through Paris towards the suburbs at 1 am.


Every so often the Eiffel Tower will erupt in an explosion of dancing lights that cover the tower from top to bottom. It's really quite magical to see. The lights would only show up well if I took it out of focus. Still looks cool though, eh?

Tuesday we had plans to meet one of my friends from abroad Emily, who is also doing the TAPIF program in Paris. We met her in the 4th arrondissement and were supposed to go to a falafel place for lunch that she said was really good. What we didn’t realize, though was that it was the Jewish holiday and the place was actually closed. That explained all of the nicely-dressed women and boys in yamachas that we saw the night before near our hostel. There was a falafel place across the street that we went to instead, although Emily said it meant they probably weren’t authentic since they were open on the Jewish holiday (even though the signed said in huge red letters, AUTHENTIC). We ate in a park nearby and then all three headed off to the train station to get our cartes 12-25.

One of the great things about France is their train system – you can take a train to pretty much any corner of the country. I wish we had such good infrastructure. Another good thing about France is if you’re under 25, you get discounts on a lot of things. La carte 12-25 is a discount card for trains that you can buy if you’re between the ages of 12 and 25 to get between 25 up to 75 percent off train tickets. So Olivia and I got our cartes 12-25 as well as our train tickets to head off to our respective areas the next day (me, Dax and her, Le Mans – about an hour from Paris).

After saying bye to Emily, Olivia and I headed off to see Notre Dame on the Île de France. We took the requisite tourist pics in front of the cathedral, although due to construction half of the square was blocked off by scaffolding, and then headed inside. One thing I hadn’t noticed before was that inside they have the crown of thorns (well, a replica) that Jesus wore. Then we waited about 30 minutes in the cold to get up to the towers – the real reason for visiting Notre Dame. When I went to buy my ticket, I was expecting to pay the 6 or whatever euro for the under 25 group, but the guy saw my OFII (basically, the immigration office) stamp from when I studied abroad last time and since that meant I was a “resident” of France I got in for free! There’s no expiration date on the OFII, so he had no way of knowing it was two years old and I had since been living back in the U.S.



Even though it was easily my third or fourth time up in the towers, the view is always spectacular. The grey buildings and slat roofs of Paris seem to extend for miles, interrupted by the Eiffel Tower to one side, a cluster of business buildings further out and of course Sacre Coeur towering off over Montmartre in the distance. We got to go up a level even further, which I don’t think I had been up before. We then headed back to the right bank towards Le Louvre and Les Jardins des Tuileries. It was past 5 so the Louvre was closed – not that we had time to try to tackle it anyway.

We didn’t feel bad about not trying to visit everything in this trip since Olivia is only an hour from Paris and will have plenty of opportunity to go back and I’ve already done the touristy stuff before. We continued past the Louvre into the Tuileries, although half of it was blocked off for more construction. It felt like I was back on campus in Blacksburg with the never-ending construction. We walked about halfway up the Champs Elysées and then decided we were cold and hungry and went to a café/restaurant for steak-frites (nom). Of course once the waiter realized we were American (which probably didn’t take long) he kept speaking to us in English, even though we were only speaking to him in French. That’s one thing that’s frustrating about big cities like Paris – they’ll just keep speaking to you in English. I had that happen to me in Montpellier. But I don’t think as many people speak English in Dax so I won’t have to worry about it there.

The next morning, we decided there was no way in hell we were dragging our suitcases through metro stations again. Olivia and I hailed a cab from our hostel and although he looked at us with some doubt and told us we were “chargée comme des mules” (loaded with bags like donkeys), all of our stuff fit into the taxi. Once at the gare (train station), Olivia and I said adieu at the end of my platform as I headed off to find my car and she had some time to kill before her train to Le Mans.

Sunday, September 30, 2012

Ísland


Back when we first found out about being accepting into TAPIF, my friend Nick, with whom I had a couple French classes with, said he was interested in going to Iceland on the way over. IcelandAir has a great deal where if you are flying to/from the US/Canada/Europe you can have a free stopover in Iceland.

Our tickets were super duper cheap, too. Granted, we were only flying on a one-way ticket, but still $450 for a flight to Iceland AND Paris is pretty awesome. We didn’t count the ticket as a cost since we had to buy tickets over to France anyway, so we only paid $300 each for 5 nights accommodation AND a rental car for 6 days (roughly $60 per day per person.. not bad!). That was the only part of Iceland that was relatively cheap, though.

On Tuesday Sept 11 (not the best day to fly) Nick, our friend Olivia and I headed off to Iceland. It was sad to say bye to my parents at the airport, but I was also really excited for the trip ahead of us. The flight went by really quickly (5 hours) and I watched This Means War (only worth the watch for the eye candy that is Chris Hemsworth and Tom Hardy, otherwise it is not recommended), and then the Titanic, which I slept through most of.

We arrived early Wednesday morning around 6 am and were picked up by a rep. from our rental car company, SAD Cars. The guy was kinda punk rock, with his jeans hanging really low, a crazy 80s jacket and slicked back hair (like most Icelandic men wore their hair, I found). He had to show us ‘hood tricks’ to open the trunk, since we were having issues with it. Though we weren’t able to replicate these ‘hood tricks’ on our own later and we had to load/unload luggage via the backseat. We somehow crammed all of our luggage into the tiny 90s-something Yaris. All of the cars at SAD were old, and sad indeed, but the car was fine for our 6-day journey.

Although our boarding passes said our destination was Reykjavik, we didn’t realize until we landed that the airport is actually located in Keflavik, a town about 40 minutes from Reykjavik. Once arriving at the apartment we rented from Airbnb, we immediately crashed for about three hours, since none of us slept properly on the plane. Later we walked around Reykjavik in search of an ATM and food. Our first meal was at a kebab place conveniently located next to the ATM. We quickly noted just how pricey everything was. The kebabs were fine, but not the quality we paid for- about $10, especially considering in France you can get them for 5 euro.

Once fed and with cash in hand, we continued walking around the city. It’s more of a large town really. There are only 320,000 people that inhabit the entire island, and residents in Reykjavik make up probably 50% (or more) of that. Iceland is pretty famous for its wool and we saw lots of it pouring out of shop windows along the streets. We walked down to a building called the Harpa, which is the opera house. It’s located right on the bay and had pretty views of the surrounding area. The architecture of the building was really interesting: it was almost shaped like a parallelogram and made mostly out of wavy glass rectangles that were pieced together. From the inside, all of the glass seemed tinted blue, but once on the outside you could see some of the glass panels were actually yellow or purple.


The Harpa

Arctic fox hoodie
On the way back to our apartment, which was located adjacent to the big church and very close to the city centre, we stopped in one of the wool stores. I bought wool scarf with an attached hood, which I proceeded to call my arctic fox hoodie since arctic foxes are supposed to be populous on the island, although we didn’t see any. We chilled at the apartment for a little bit and then ventured back out (arctic fox hoodie included) to find some dinner. We were quite surprised to find that unlike France and the rest of Europe in general, all the restaurants in Iceland close early. We had difficulty finding a place that was still open even though it was only 9 pm (even restaurants back home are open later than that!) and finally found a bar that was still serving bread bowls even though their kitchen was closed. The bread bowls, along with a Gull beer, hit the spot. The soup was a delicious ginger & coriander and was just what we needed to warm us up (Iceland is COLD).

Fun fact: over half the nation believes in elves. They actually have an elf museum in Reykjavik, but unfortunately we didn’t go. I think it's great that over 80 percent of Iceland's total energy supply derives from domestically produced renewable energy sources, such as geothermal energy, hydropower, etc. I'd heard this before, but it isn't really promoted as much as you might think.

Thursday morning we headed out to the famed Blue Lagoon (Bláa lónið), about 30 or so minutes from Reykjavik. Apparently the water is recycled water from the nearby power plant (a fact I kind of wish I remained ignorant of) and then heated thermally by the earth beneath. The water is a crazy blue/green combination and it felt like we were stepping into a fairytale. The entrance fee was 5000 krona, or about $40, but it was definitely worth it.





Although the turquoise water stretched for miles around the lagoon, the actual swimming area was probably no bigger than a football field long. The water wasn’t very deep – I could stand everywhere – and was filled with sand (and in some spots hairballs, yuck). The water is apparently naturally cycled out every 48 hours or so, but we were questioning how clean it actually was. It was super relaxing though. It was probably 40 degrees out but the water was at least mid 90s. There were pots of silica (a mud extract from the lagoon that is supposed to be good for your skin) scattered along the edges of the lagoon for swimmers to rub on their faces/body as a natural exfoliant. We put it on probably three times. There was an area where you could get an in-water massage, a bar in the lagoon, a natural-massaging waterfall and steam rooms. We sat under the waterfall and went in the steam room once until we thought our faces were going to melt off (which was really only 5 minutes).

silica

After getting cleaned up, we drove a bit further down the road to a town called Grindavik to see if there was anything cool to see there (there wasn’t). We had lunch at a deserted pizza place there and then headed back to Reykjavik to talk to the tourist office about our trip the next day out to Skaftafell. There is a HUGE glacier (the biggest in Europe, I believe) in Skaftafell, called Vatnajökull and mountain guide companies will take you out on glacier walks. Not wanting to pay for one of these glacier walks, we asked if we could rent out crampons and ice picks and do it ourselves. Apparently it’s dangerous to do without a guide =P but the woman at the tourism office assured us there were loads of trails that led right up to the glacier. We then drove on to the Perlan, an observation spot on a hill above the city. The views were pretty awesome – you could see all of Reykjavik just from one side, but then view the ocean out to the left and the mountains to the right.
view from the Perlan

I drove the rental car that day – my first time driving in another country! And now I’m a pro. For dinner that night we drove down to the harbor, although it would have been an easy walk but it was freezing, to eat at the place voted the best restaurant in Iceland: a hot dog stand. It has also been voted the best hot dogs in Europe by some foodies. The stand was called Bæjarins Beztu Pylsur, or Town’s Best Hot Dog. The stand is so small and unassuming that we actually drove past it twice without realizing it.

It’s clearly a local favorite. It was easily 1030 at night and we walked up to a line of at least 10 people (mostly locals). The line moves quickly, though, the people at the stand are very deft at cranking out these hot dogs. We parked across the street, but noticed that most people drove right up on the curb and left their cars running while waiting in line. I think this is true of most of Europe, but I definitely noticed that especially in Iceland people will park anywhere, even to the point where they were blocking traffic. The great part was though that the other cars trying to get around didn’t seem to mind (no honking) and I don’t think they even know what ‘parking violation’ means – it would seem parking tickets aren’t popular there. I wish that was true in the U.S.

Each hot dog, if you get it with all the fixins, is made out of pork, beef and lamb and is stuffed with both fried and regular onions, mustard, ketchup and remoulade sauce. We shelled out about 640 krona (about $5) each for two hot dogs each (we were hungry). It was definitely our cheapest meal by far. We ate them at the little picnic table right next to the stand that had vertical slats to conveniently place your hot dog. They were amazing. I would definitely say best hot dog I’ve ever had, but that’s insinuating that bratwursts are in a different category.


Friday morning we got up early and drove out to Skaftafell. On the way out we passed Eyjafjallajökull, the volcano that erupted over two years ago and caused airports to close for weeks. You wouldn’t really know just by looking at it that it’s a volcano. We also passed the Seljalandsfoss waterfall, some caves out on the coastline and a couple of the other glaciers on the way out to Skaftafell. Once arriving, we ate the lunch we packed next to a French couple (there were quite a few Frenchies vacationing in Iceland). Afterwards, we hiked about 30 minutes out to the glacier that we were told we were going to be able to walk right up to.

Seljalandsfoss

Eyjafjallajokull - doesn't look like much, huh?



Well, that was a lie. We came over a small hill and all of a sudden saw a sizeable stream/river gushing down from the glacier. It was probably at least 10-15 yards across making it impossible to cross unless we wanted to dash across the freezing cold water in freezing cold weather and get hypothermia. We were all a bit sad because we were hoping to see something like this:



But only saw this:



Another view of Vatnajökull
Keep in mind this is a very small portion of the glacier

It was cool though to see the biggest glacier in Europe. We drove about 15 minutes further down the road to Jokulsárlón, a glacial lagoon that has been in existence since the 1930s when icebergs formed from the melting glacier. It was literally breathtaking and our sadness from not reaching the glacier was soon forgotten. We giddily hopped out of the car and ran around the dune down to the shore and just stood in amazement. It reminds me of the art term, the natural sublime that is associated with Turner, implying the overpowering magnificence of nature.







Some icebergs were white, and others were a piercing blue color, which Nick explained meant they were oxygen-deprived and had been there longer? We just sat there for a while looking out across the lagoon. There were two seals there swimming and playing around. Not wanting to leave, we climbed back in the car for the 5 + hour drive we had ahead of us. We stopped in a town called Vik (that the map made seem was a decent sized town, but really only had like 5 shops) for dinner. I had fish n’ chips (yum), Nick had soup and Olivia had a traditional Icelandic stew that would be fun to try to recreate sometime. We finally made it back home (after driving through a downpour and really intense fog – Nick did this part though, not me :D ) after a 16 hour day driving across the country. Needless to say, we slept in the next morning.

We decided just to hang out around Reykjavik on Saturday and explore. We wandered down to the flea market that’s held on the weekends down by the harbor. I think we were all a bit disappointed by the assortment of things sold there since one of Nick’s friends made it seem like there were tons of neat finds. I did get another wool scarf though, and for pretty cheap. We walked around the stores in the area to do more souvenir shopping before heading back to the apartment to watch the VT game against Pitt. On the way, we stopped at the big church, Hallgrímska, near our apartment to go up the tower for views of the city. The views from here were more spectacular than the Perlan since the church is right in the city. It’s easily the tallest building – Reykjavik is a very tiny and low city. It was cool to tower over all the other buildings and interesting to see all the different colored houses and architecture scattered throughout.

After watching the Hokies lose to Pitt (wahh), we decided to check out a restaurant that had puffin, reindeer (although when we got there, they had substituted the reindeer with lobster) & whale sliders as an appetizer on their menu. The restaurant was ridiculously expensive, even by Reykjavik standards, so we decided just to go to try the appetizer and get a beer and then go find cheaper food somewhere else. The waitress looked at us like we were crazy when we told her the three of us just wanted to split the sliders. We’re on a budget, okay! Also we weren’t sure if we were going to like the meat or not so we didn’t want to get more than one. It was actually really good, which I wasn’t expecting. I felt kind of guilty eating the meat from the cute little puffins we had read about, but I figure I had to try it once. They were all really yummy. We didn’t plan well, though because by the time we went to find cheaper food, all the restaurants were already closed! What is it with Iceland? We finally found a place called Noodle Station that was still open and each got bowls of soup that was really similar to pho.


That night, Olivia and I set out northeast of the city in search of the Northern Lights.  We got turned around a bit trying to find our way out and had to stop at a gas station to ask for directions. The woman who helped us was really nice but took about 10 minutes to explain where to go and we were in a bit of a hurry (we read that the viewing time for September is between 10 pm – 1 am and it was already 1130 at this point). Finally we found the road out – we were driving up towards Thingvellir National Park, which is where we were planning on visiting the next day. We just wanted to get far enough away from the city lights to have a shot of seeing the lights. Once we got off the lit roads, we both started getting really nervous, but we also started to see a faint red glow in sky to the right. Once we saw signs for Thingvellir, we pulled over. And then almost immediately turned the car back on and left. It was pitch black out and after midnight and there were absolutely no lights anywhere. Olivia and I were pretty freaked out and didn’t even get out of the car. We weren’t sure if the red glow we were seeing were the lights since all of the pictures we’d seen showed green/yellow hues. But we didn’t know what else it could be. When we got back, Olivia looked it up and turns out that the lights will sometimes glow red, which is more rare. It was very faint, but at least we saw them!

Sunday morning we got up and drove back out to Thingvellir – it was only about a 45-minute drive. I felt silly for being so scared the night before, because there were just rolling green hills and farm animals around. Thingvellir is where the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates are separating. There’s a viewing point in front of the lake there and you can see the tectonic plates slope off into the water. We actually were able to walk and hike in between the plates. We hiked off down a trail with the intention of hiking down to the lake, but then we couldn’t tell how far the trail went and we were hungry so we stopped and ate lunch in the meadow in between the plates. So we can now say we ate lunch (and also peed) in between the tectonic plates!




From Thingvellir, we continued up onto Geysir, an area with about 5 mini and big geysers. One is called geysir (weird, right?) and is apparently what all other geysers are named after. We didn’t see that one go off, since I’m not sure how often it erupts, but we did see one of the other big ones go off about 3 times.



We then continued a bit further north onto Gullfoss, which is a waterfall. When we came around the bend and the waterfall came into view, we saw it was much smaller than we were all expecting. In the postcards that litter every souvenir shop, the pictures make it seem like Gullfoss is this huge, towering, gushing force of water. Even though it wasn’t as big as we thought, it was still cool to see. There were rainbows bouncing off in just about every direction and it was mesmerizing just to sit and watch the water bouncing off the rocks and down into the ravine below.




We then headed home and made pasta at the apartment (with sauce that tasted like it was a bit stale) and packed and got ready for our flight in the morning. We got up at the ungodly hour of 4 am and left the apartment by 5 am to make sure we had the rental car turned in and caught our shuttle at a quarter to six. We spent the hour until our flight waiting in line at the tax-refund booth – that’s the great thing about Iceland is it offers tax refunds for items bought while on vacation there for anything that is over 4000 krona or something (roughly $30 some bucks), meaning I could get $25 back on my arctic fox hoodie. We dashed off, picked up a bite to eat and then ran to make our flight - everyone else had boarded, although we still had five or ten minutes to spare. And we were on our way to France!