Greetings everybody,
When one of your friends asks you if you want to visit them in Iceland, how can you say no? I went as a guest of Mica and Ingi, both of whom I know from Khao Lak. Unfortunate things seem to happen to Mica whenever I’m around, like the time Dean almost lit her on fire with gasoline, or the time we kept getting washed up into the reef when we were snorkeling, or the time the longtail boat we were on almost capsized. This time it went much more smoothly… she just passed out in the bathroom after we spent too long in the hot tub at Ingi’s parents’ house.
Here are a few of my immediate observations shortly after landing in Iceland: Iceland is cold. Iceland is windy. There are a lot of blond people. Iceland is also windy. Yes, I know... piercing. Geographically, Iceland is unlike anyplace I have ever visited... it's volcanic rock and mountains and ice and grass. It looks like the kind of place where they could stage a fake landing on Mars and you would believe it. It's hard to picture somebody 1000 years ago saying "You know what? Norway is just too temperate for me. This place is perfect!" And yet they did.
Here are some other random facts you may or may not know about Iceland:
-Icelandic women only dress in four colors: black, light black, dark black, and dark purple. Sometimes gray. If you see a woman wearing a floral pattern... tourist. Or it’s Mica.
-Iceland is almost completely green, with its ample power coming from geothermal and hydroelectric plants. This is why everyone has their heat turned up to 90 degrees 24/7 and one of the top Icelandic pastimes is hanging out in your hot tub.
-Iceland lies on both the European and the North American land masses and is quickly expanding by an inch per year.
-Liquor stores are owned by the government and close by 6 pm.
-You can visit the President of Iceland's house, and by visit I mean drive right up to it and walk around. Not big on formality over there.
-Christmas is a huge deal in Iceland. Everybody covers their house up with lights and decorations. There are 13 Santa Clauses, each known by a different character trait. Personal favorites include "The Sausage Snatcher" and "The Window Peeper." Apparently, what passes for “Santa Claus” in Iceland is known as “homeless guy” in the U.S.
-It rains horizontally. Only tourists try to use umbrellas.
-Viking Beer
If you're ever in Iceland, I highly recommend making a stop at the Blue Lagoon spa. Nothing quite like hanging out in an outdoor mineral pool for three hours in the sun/rain/sun/rain/hail/rain/sun/rain/sun. It’s a strange feeling being in a hot pool while you’re being pelted with freakin’ ice missiles. On the plus side, you can enjoy a silica face mask which makes your skin feel soft and supple afterward.
From Iceland it was on to Italy, where I had volunteered to act as tour guide for Lee, Anna, Rich and Mark who were coming down from England for a few days. Il Bresci (my dad) managed to fight through the disappointment he felt when he found out that three of my friends are vegetarians in order to unleash one of his typical gastro-intestinal assaults. After the pre-dinner cocktail and the three different bottles of regional wines with dinner and the Vin Santo with dessert, he unleashed his pride and joy, his homemade liqueurs, like Limoncello, Nocino, Lemon Milk (don't ask), and a bunch of other herbal and/or fruity stuff. Lee made the mistake of saying that he'd never tried grappa. Il Bresci left the room for about thirty seconds and showed up with ten different bottles in hand, each a different type of grappa. For those of you that don't know what grappa is, it's made from the distilled remains of grape skins that are left over after you've made wine. It tastes about as good as it sounds. To the surprise of absolutely no one who’s ever hung out with English people, we then went out for a couple of pints.
One of the great things about having an engineer as your dad is that you can tell him you'd like to drive around Italy for a few days and he'll lay out an itinerary for you with detailed routes cross-referenced with specific pages in your guidebook for each destination. We decided to skip the usual major cities and head for less-traveled locations like Arezzo, Perugia, Orvieto and Massa Marittima, just to name a few.
The next five days consisted of the five of us traveling in a Passat station wagon through various towns in Tuscany and Umbria watching Lee eat anything that resembled any sort of pizza-like substance and hearing Rich complain about something or other. I don't know why we even needed the guide books… every Italian city's major attraction is a church. Mark would be reading the lonely planet and we'd ask him where we should go in, say, Todi, and he'd reply "The cathedral is meant to be quite nice." Oh, you don't say? What a surprise! That being said, I have to admit that all the cathedrals were quite striking. The ones that stand out the most to me are the one in Todi for the mural of the day of judgment and the one in Orvieto for the intricate etchings on the outer walls. Oh, and the one in Massa Marittima because we got kicked out for walking in during a baptism.
We weren't shy about trying different types of regional foods whenever we could lay our hands on them, from porchetta in Assisi, to pastries in Perugia, to primi piatti in Foligno. Porchetta is basically a whole pig that’s been de-boned, filled with garlic, rosemary and salt, and roasted over a spit for a day. Even the vegetarians were drooling at that one. Lee required a pizza fix by 10 AM every day, and I bought at least two loaves of bread daily. Unfortunately, we were traveling during the vendemmia (grape harvest) so we couldn't find a vineyard that was open for wine tasting. It worked out though, because we decided to undertake our own extensive independent wine tasting through the various box and/or screw top wines of Italy. Taste the magic!
I also recommend driving around Italy if you ever get a chance. Once you get into the country there are some wicked windy roads running through the hills and through vineyards and olive groves, which is nice as long as no one gets carsick and as long as you don't have some ungrateful bastards in the back seat pointing out when you happen to take a wrong turn or go through a roundabout a couple of times.
After that it was off to London for a few days to stay with Stefano. Those of you that are friends of Stefano will be happy to know that he recently bought a house, which means he'll no longer be bathing with a garden hose. Also, I managed to be in town for London's yearly sunny day, which I of course spent working inside a data center. P.S. If you ever have to drive in London, DO NOT USE GARMIN. You're better off asking people for directions rather than taking the "fastest route" through central freakin London. Hey... 12 miles in two hours... but I got to drive by Trafalgar square! Woo hoo!
It’s always tough coming home after getting into travel mode, so after an 11 hour flight into SFO I'm waiting in line at passport control wondering how many times I'm going to get searched, because apparently I look like a recent Al Qaeda recruit. I get up to the front and hand the guy my passport and watch as he looks at my passport picture, then looks at me, then at my picture again, then at me, and I'm thinking this is the time they take me to the back for a cavity search. Finally he says "You look like a before and after from one of those hair replacement ads, except backwards. What happened? Do you work on wall street or something?" Ha ha ha!!! Welcome to the United States mothafucka!
On the plus side, I came back to work to find this in my cubicle:
http://gallery.me.com/the.white.house#100216
And, without further ado, you can find the pictures from the trip:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/WPTgwiq8e93WHfnSA
Take 'er easy,
Dave
When one of your friends asks you if you want to visit them in Iceland, how can you say no? I went as a guest of Mica and Ingi, both of whom I know from Khao Lak. Unfortunate things seem to happen to Mica whenever I’m around, like the time Dean almost lit her on fire with gasoline, or the time we kept getting washed up into the reef when we were snorkeling, or the time the longtail boat we were on almost capsized. This time it went much more smoothly… she just passed out in the bathroom after we spent too long in the hot tub at Ingi’s parents’ house.
Here are a few of my immediate observations shortly after landing in Iceland: Iceland is cold. Iceland is windy. There are a lot of blond people. Iceland is also windy. Yes, I know... piercing. Geographically, Iceland is unlike anyplace I have ever visited... it's volcanic rock and mountains and ice and grass. It looks like the kind of place where they could stage a fake landing on Mars and you would believe it. It's hard to picture somebody 1000 years ago saying "You know what? Norway is just too temperate for me. This place is perfect!" And yet they did.
Here are some other random facts you may or may not know about Iceland:
-Icelandic women only dress in four colors: black, light black, dark black, and dark purple. Sometimes gray. If you see a woman wearing a floral pattern... tourist. Or it’s Mica.
-Iceland is almost completely green, with its ample power coming from geothermal and hydroelectric plants. This is why everyone has their heat turned up to 90 degrees 24/7 and one of the top Icelandic pastimes is hanging out in your hot tub.
-Iceland lies on both the European and the North American land masses and is quickly expanding by an inch per year.
-Liquor stores are owned by the government and close by 6 pm.
-You can visit the President of Iceland's house, and by visit I mean drive right up to it and walk around. Not big on formality over there.
-Christmas is a huge deal in Iceland. Everybody covers their house up with lights and decorations. There are 13 Santa Clauses, each known by a different character trait. Personal favorites include "The Sausage Snatcher" and "The Window Peeper." Apparently, what passes for “Santa Claus” in Iceland is known as “homeless guy” in the U.S.
-It rains horizontally. Only tourists try to use umbrellas.
-Viking Beer
If you're ever in Iceland, I highly recommend making a stop at the Blue Lagoon spa. Nothing quite like hanging out in an outdoor mineral pool for three hours in the sun/rain/sun/rain/hail/rain/sun/rain/sun. It’s a strange feeling being in a hot pool while you’re being pelted with freakin’ ice missiles. On the plus side, you can enjoy a silica face mask which makes your skin feel soft and supple afterward.
From Iceland it was on to Italy, where I had volunteered to act as tour guide for Lee, Anna, Rich and Mark who were coming down from England for a few days. Il Bresci (my dad) managed to fight through the disappointment he felt when he found out that three of my friends are vegetarians in order to unleash one of his typical gastro-intestinal assaults. After the pre-dinner cocktail and the three different bottles of regional wines with dinner and the Vin Santo with dessert, he unleashed his pride and joy, his homemade liqueurs, like Limoncello, Nocino, Lemon Milk (don't ask), and a bunch of other herbal and/or fruity stuff. Lee made the mistake of saying that he'd never tried grappa. Il Bresci left the room for about thirty seconds and showed up with ten different bottles in hand, each a different type of grappa. For those of you that don't know what grappa is, it's made from the distilled remains of grape skins that are left over after you've made wine. It tastes about as good as it sounds. To the surprise of absolutely no one who’s ever hung out with English people, we then went out for a couple of pints.
One of the great things about having an engineer as your dad is that you can tell him you'd like to drive around Italy for a few days and he'll lay out an itinerary for you with detailed routes cross-referenced with specific pages in your guidebook for each destination. We decided to skip the usual major cities and head for less-traveled locations like Arezzo, Perugia, Orvieto and Massa Marittima, just to name a few.
The next five days consisted of the five of us traveling in a Passat station wagon through various towns in Tuscany and Umbria watching Lee eat anything that resembled any sort of pizza-like substance and hearing Rich complain about something or other. I don't know why we even needed the guide books… every Italian city's major attraction is a church. Mark would be reading the lonely planet and we'd ask him where we should go in, say, Todi, and he'd reply "The cathedral is meant to be quite nice." Oh, you don't say? What a surprise! That being said, I have to admit that all the cathedrals were quite striking. The ones that stand out the most to me are the one in Todi for the mural of the day of judgment and the one in Orvieto for the intricate etchings on the outer walls. Oh, and the one in Massa Marittima because we got kicked out for walking in during a baptism.
 |
| Oh no, I think I left the oven on |
We weren't shy about trying different types of regional foods whenever we could lay our hands on them, from porchetta in Assisi, to pastries in Perugia, to primi piatti in Foligno. Porchetta is basically a whole pig that’s been de-boned, filled with garlic, rosemary and salt, and roasted over a spit for a day. Even the vegetarians were drooling at that one. Lee required a pizza fix by 10 AM every day, and I bought at least two loaves of bread daily. Unfortunately, we were traveling during the vendemmia (grape harvest) so we couldn't find a vineyard that was open for wine tasting. It worked out though, because we decided to undertake our own extensive independent wine tasting through the various box and/or screw top wines of Italy. Taste the magic!
I also recommend driving around Italy if you ever get a chance. Once you get into the country there are some wicked windy roads running through the hills and through vineyards and olive groves, which is nice as long as no one gets carsick and as long as you don't have some ungrateful bastards in the back seat pointing out when you happen to take a wrong turn or go through a roundabout a couple of times.
After that it was off to London for a few days to stay with Stefano. Those of you that are friends of Stefano will be happy to know that he recently bought a house, which means he'll no longer be bathing with a garden hose. Also, I managed to be in town for London's yearly sunny day, which I of course spent working inside a data center. P.S. If you ever have to drive in London, DO NOT USE GARMIN. You're better off asking people for directions rather than taking the "fastest route" through central freakin London. Hey... 12 miles in two hours... but I got to drive by Trafalgar square! Woo hoo!
It’s always tough coming home after getting into travel mode, so after an 11 hour flight into SFO I'm waiting in line at passport control wondering how many times I'm going to get searched, because apparently I look like a recent Al Qaeda recruit. I get up to the front and hand the guy my passport and watch as he looks at my passport picture, then looks at me, then at my picture again, then at me, and I'm thinking this is the time they take me to the back for a cavity search. Finally he says "You look like a before and after from one of those hair replacement ads, except backwards. What happened? Do you work on wall street or something?" Ha ha ha!!! Welcome to the United States mothafucka!
On the plus side, I came back to work to find this in my cubicle:
http://gallery.me.com/the.white.house#100216
And, without further ado, you can find the pictures from the trip:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/WPTgwiq8e93WHfnSA
Take 'er easy,
Dave
