Kiitos - Thanks!

Syksy on tuonut pimeät illat ja putoavat lehdet, mutta muistot Islannista ovat vielä tuoreina mielessämme (etenkin, kun lämpötila alkaa Suomessa nyt muistuttaa Islannin kesää). Haluamme vielä kerran kiittää kaikkia, jotka auttoivat meitä toteuttamaan tämän elämysten matkan!

The fall is here, with dark nights and falling leaves, but the memories from Iceland are still fresh in our minds (the temperature in Finland is also starting to resemble the Icelandic summer). Once more, we'd like to thank everyone who helped make this trip of a lifetime possible!

This is what Iceland looks like

One of Kaisa's all time favorite records is Blur's self-titled album from 1997. If we remeber correctly it was at least partially recorded on Iceland, and who knows, maybe this back cover photo was shot there. In Kaisa's eyes this beautifully foggy image perfectly sums up our cycling experience. Iceland, we'll be back!

Reunited at last

We had left our bike bags at the campsite/hostel at Keflavik, who have a storage room where you can leave your stuff if you stay with them the first and last night you're in Iceland. The only catch is that it's an open room and in theory anyone could enter it at any time and steal the bag if they dared. But when we arrived in the afternoon we could once again see that bike travelers are honest people: our bags were right where we had left them.

The cold pot

The Nautholsvik beach in Reyjkjavik is an articifial warm spot in the otherwise chilly Atlantic. Or so we're told. We visited early in the morning when the cafe still was closed, the hot pots empty and the sea definitely far from warm. Maybe it would have been warmer later in the day, or earlier in the summer. The beach was nonetheless super nice!

The ultimate hot pot

On the weekend we finally embraced our inner tourists and hopped on the bus to Blue Lagoon. And yes, it's pretty expensive and filled with tourists, but oh so nice! We splashed our faces with the famous silica mud, enjoyed the steam room and waterfall and just basked in the sun. The only question is how long it'll take to get the minerals off Kaisa's hair... after two washed it still feels weird.

Places Kaisa still wants to visit

The Kolaportid flea market, Tryggvagata 19 - A huge indoor flea market.

Rekjavik Art Museum, Tryggvagata 17 - Contemporary art.

Nautshólvík Geothermal Beach - It's a beach by the sea! But the water's warm(ish)!

Gardurinn, Klapparstigur 37 - Another veggie restaurant. We already tried to find it once, but couldn't. Let's see if we'll have better luck next time.

Some of Kaisa's favorite RVK shops and restaurants

Nikita, Laugavegur 56 - Quirky, colorful, surprising boardgirl clothing. The -40% sale doesn't hurt!

Eymundsson, Austurstræti 18 - A great selection of books in English, also by Icelandic authors. After Halldór Laxness you can dive into Arnaldur Indridason's fresh detective novels about murder in Reyjavik.

66 North, Bankastræti 5 - Super nice but super expensive outdoor gear. Will keep you dry and warm in the crazy Icleandic weather.

Cintamani, Laugavegur 11 - More cool outdoor gear. Maybe not quite as expensive as 66 North. Cintamani also sells gas for cooks who like to camp.

Farmers market, Eyjarslod 9 - Wonderful knitwear in a small shop hidden away in the old harbor. On the way there you'll se genuine smelly fishing boats.

Frída Frænka, Vesturgata 3 - An explosion of cool, kitschy antiques and junk. Kaisa bought a retro Donald Duch toothbrush holder. Need we say more?

A Næstu Grösum, Laugavegur 20b - The first vegetarian restaurant we bumoed into on our way out on the bike trip. And still Kaisa's favorite.

Grænn Kostur, Skolavördustigur 8b - Leka thought the food here was even nicer than at A Næstu Grösum. But the location could be a bit better: if you choose to eat outside you're basically sitting at a parking lot.

In the news

Given many Icelanders' infatuation with ridiculously big cars it is headline news when someone proposes that the country is travellable by other means.

The evidence? Almost a full page in the leading newspaper Morgunbla∂i∂ about our trek around the ring road with our bikes, and a nice mention of our book too. Not bad for two scrawny designers!

Full circle

And here we are, in Reykjavik, a day earlier than planned, or actually several days earlier than our original plan of doing 60 kilometer days and just making it to our flight home. Now we have a few days off before cycling back to Keflavik, and I dare predict that the bikes will mostly rest untouched the rest of the week...

There were so many interesting places we could've visited if we had had more time, or dared trust the good forecasts for this week. The enormous West Fjords would've been a whole another trip, but a couple of days spent on going to Husavik wouldn't have ruined us. However, one thing we learned on this trip is that sometimes bad weather is just too bad to ignore. But this has certainly been a unique experience, really different than our previous trips.

Lentils and lemon

Tonight we had lentil soup with coconut milk, but had forgotten to buy a lemon when we would've had a chance to get one (the day before yesterday). So Kaisa (it always seems to be Kaisa who gets sent of these missions...) had to go to the reception to ask if she could buy a lemon from our hosts. It wasn't as absurd a question as it sounds as they also have a restaurant here. And what do you know - without even batting an eyelash the friendly hostess handed over a lemon and saved our dinner. That's what we call good service!

The other road

Stay on the Ring Road, everyone has told us. And today we saw an alternative to it and understood that this had been a very good piece of advice. The bridge you can see in the photo, connecting two narrow sand paths almost disappeared due to erosion, used to be a part of the main road from Reykjavik to Akureyri. We saw an old photo of brave souls traveling on this road by car, even though it looked to us like it was too narrow even for horses. We plan to stay on the Ring Road.

Bathing by the fjord

Out of all the hot pots we've soaked ourselves in this wasn't the hottest, but definitely had the nicest view. And hostel guests could use it free of charge! Joy!

The birthday boy

We hereby announce to our readers that today is Leka's 38th birthday. There was no present hidden in the bike bag, but he's been promised one once we get back home. The festive dinner consisted of pasta with kidney bean sauce, cooked by the birthday boy himself. (This may sound a bit unfair, but even though Kaisa bakes very nice cakes, when it comes to cooking pasta sauca her skills are very limited.)

Giddyup!

In the beginning of our journey in Hella we heard that we were passing through an important horse-breeding area. So we were expecting that after leaving the area we'd only see a couple of horses here and there. But to Kaisa's great joy there have been plenty of horses to look at almost every day, with the exception of the monotonous passages after Vik and Egilsstadir. And here we once again have a beautiful flock on a pasture next to the road.

Of course Kaisa has already gone through all the horseback riding brochures she's gotten her hands on, and chosen the tour that she'd like to do after we reach Reykjavik. But there are so many things that could go wrong: problems with the bikes, problems with the weather, problems with Kaisa's feet, problems with the availability of the tours at the end of the tourist season... We can only pedal forward and see what happens!

The hi carb diet

I've always been puzzled about my mother's habit of eating bread with porridge, as they seem to me to be the same food in two different forms. But as we get older we start to resemple our parents, and so I've also found myself happily eating granola with bread for breakfast here. What can I say - cycling around Iceland makes you hungry!

Of sheep and men and women

The Lonely Planet book has been Kaisa's closest friend these last two weeks, but after reading about all the places we'd visit, and all the places we might visit, and all the places we wouldn't possibly have the time to visit, she needed a change. It presented itself to her at the bookstore in Akureyri in the form of Halldór Laxness' classic epic Independent People.

Kaisa generally prefers books written by living women to those authored by dead men, but she decided to make an exception because of the highly interesting theme of the book: life on the Icelandic countryside about 100 years ago.

We've been cycling through endless valleys and moors, always seeing sheep by the side of the road, in the most difficult terrain and far higher than we ever would've imagined any sheep would care to climb. And now Kaisa's thrown herself into the world of a literary character for whom sheep are all there is to life. What a perfect travel book for the ring road!

The infamous wind

We've met cyclists telling us their war stories about the Icelandic wind: "That day I could only do 30 kilometers all day." "My average speed was 3,5 km/h." "I met a couple who had done 20 kilometers in a whole day." We had experienced some pretty strong head wind, but in the afternoon, getting down from a mountain, we also got a taste of the real deal.

We had had tail wind amost all day, but it suddenly turned, and the head wind started hitting us in gushes, sometimes making it a real struggle to keep the bike moving even downhill. Later it came from the side, so strong that if we accidentally lifted one hand from the handlebar the bike lurched dangerously to the side. We only had 25 kilometers left so we didn't have to abandon all hope and camp by the road, but our understanding of strong wind certainly is on a whole new level after this experience...

I'd like a hot chocolate and a chai latte, please!

We repeatedly found ourselves hanging out at Eymundsson, a large bookstore that had gorgeous coffee-table photobooks as well as paperbacks in English. And foreign magazines. And Eames furniture. And artists' supplies. And a cafe.

All this is making us feel pretty nervous about tomorrow morning, when we'll once again find ourselves on the road, soaked with freezing rain (according to the forecast) and fighting against the wind. But that's what makes this a bike trip.

A Spaniard way up North

We met this Spanish cyclist (whose name we forgot to ask) for the first time in front of the supermarket in Hella, on our second day of cycling. What a weird coincidence (once again) to bump into him today at the gas station/supermarket/cafe in Laugar! We left him there with his lunch, but had some stops of our own and met him again in the last kilometers before Akureyri. Tomorrow we'll stay here and take the day off (finally!) so we probably won't meet again, but we wish him good luck!

The dark castles

We stopped after biking only 6 kilometers (this felt very odd and somehow decadent) to look at Dimmuborgir (the dark castles), a group of beautiful and strange lava formations that were apparently created about 2000 years ago. We took a short walk among the impressive pillars, managed to resist all the woollen sweaters the giftshop had to offer, and biked the 1,2 kilometers back to the Ring Road. Definitely worth the detour!

And special greetings to Nici & Susi back home in Porvoo! :)