Ice Ice Kitty

Here are photos of three kitties that I met in Reykjavík.

This kitty suddenly appeared from a corner

It’s a fashionista! Notice the scarf or necktie around its neck?

Trendy kitty is frisky and couldn’t keep still

Where are you leading me, Lady Kitty?

This one then appeared to join frisky kitty

Ice Ice Baby: Money Matters

Now, I don’t really like to talk about money because some may deem it vulgar but in this post, I’m going to share the costs involved in my Iceland trip in answer to some of those who have asked me. Besides, I always love a good bargain and would want to know of any myself.

While planning for my Iceland trip, I was looking at a few dates: end-December 2011, end-January 2012 (this was before I planned my Padang/Bukittinggi trip) and early-February 2012. I was looking at travelling alone at first and as a first step, checked out the Iceland Air website. Now, Iceland Air has a few package deals (include return flight from your starting point, hotel stay (extendable should you so wish at extra cost) and a tour. You can also add on other tours to your selected deal. The search yielded that end-December would cost me the most (not surprisingly since it’s peak period).

Having looked at that, I next searched the flight fares only for those dates. I reckoned I could perhaps book my own accommodation and arrange my own trips. In fact, I had found a website that could help me do the latter. And it turned out that it’d actually cost me less if I make my own arrangements.

I procrastinated on buying my air ticket and arranging my tours in Iceland but I proceeded to book some guest houses. I had by then discarded going in end-December 2011 or end-January 2012 (I said some guest houses as I would make a booking only to cancel it before making another). Then my friend informed that she’d be interested in going so I had to cancel my single room booking and make double room bookings. (Then a third friend also wanted to join in so I had to make a triple room booking and then cancel it when she changed her plans). And subsequently, I changed hotels when I found Hotel Fron right smack at Laugavegur, Reykjavík's main shopping street.

It was a good thing I procrastinated for I finally managed to enter Iceland Express website (it didn’t work earlier) and browsed the flight schedule and air fares.

The LHR-KEF-LHR airfare on Iceland Air had increased slightly when I checked again in early December from £248.8 inclusive of taxes to £253.20, while the return airfare on Iceland Express was slightly lower at £206 but I didn’t like the return schedule as we’d arrive at LGW only at 1950 hours. Then I got an idea to check the fares for one-way journeys to compare between the two airlines and this was what I found:

1/2/2012 LGW-KEF Carrier: Iceland Express 1250-1550 Cost: £32+25+38 = £95
5/2/2012 KEF-LHR Carrier: Iceland Air 0830-1130 Cost: £97.78

In addition, I found that interestingly the fare from KEF-LHR is lower one way on Iceland Air at £97.98 than if it would be if we had bought it as part of the return ticket (it would cost us £111.30 for that leg if we had bought a return Iceland Air LHR-KEF-LHR ticket. Yes, strange isn’t it!).

So total airfare LGW-KEF and KEF-LHR are £95 + 97.78 = £192.78

The easyBus fare to LGW eventually cost us each £8.99 (the fare starts from £2 one way but my friend booked it late) while coach from Victoria Station costs £8.

While browsing Iceland Express website in December, I found that it has a tie-up with a tour provider and when I checked, the tours cost less than those provided by Trip or if we had bought them via the Iceland Air website so of course we bought our tours through the Iceland Express website.

Our tours:
KEF pick-up to city with Blue Lagoon en route ISK3515
Viking Horse & Golden Circle Afternoon ISK15865
South Coast & Waterfalls ISK14250
Northern Lights Mystery ISK4655
Whale watching ISK7125
Hotel-KEF ISK1900

Total tour and pick-up = ISK47310 or ~ £245.974. This excludes hotel cost of £94.02 per person (total for room is £188.04), meals, souvenirs etc. Now, Iceland is not a cheap destination although prices are a lot lower than they were pre-2008. I packed some food along (read: instant noodles) and we had that every night... for lunch, I packed along bananas from the breakfast buffet and some cereal bars (strangely, I didn’t feel as easily hungry over there). The shops were having their winter sale when we were there but opened too late and closed too early so we only managed to visit the few souvenir and stationery shops while we were there.

We formed the Sisterhood of the Instant Noodles in Reykjavík. Heh

And of course, I had to buy a flight ticket to London. I browsed various airlines before finally deciding on Etihad. I bought the ticket in early October (I told my mate I bought it in August but that was actually another ticket. Sorry) and I must say, I am very glad that I flew Etihad. The service was good, the meals more than adequate (they serve you the main meal – salad, main meal and bun - with water and/or juice then they collect your trays before offering you hot beverage and dessert. And the hot beverage includes Milo and I think cappuccino too. I didn’t bother because I don’t drink coffee. And from Abu Dhabi to London and Abu Dhabi to KL, because these are early morning departures, they first serve you a meal bag as they don’t want to wake you up. The meal bag contains a sandwich, a small bottle of water, a small bottle of juice and a small bag of snacks. You don’t have to eat them if you’re sleepy, just put them away and eat them when you wake up. They will serve breakfast proper about 100 minutes before landing), and the multinational cabin crew pleasant enough. I don’t even mind the transit at Abu Dhabi as my flights for Abu Dhabi from KL and London were both delayed so I had shorter transit time there. And I land in KL in the afternoon instead of early morning; I find that I can cope with jetlag better when I arrive in the afternoon.

So yes, that’s my rather lengthy explanation of the costs and processes incurred in arranging for my trip. Hopefully it will help anyone planning a trip there! I had as much fun planning for my trip as I did on my actual trip, no kidding.

The end

Ice Ice Baby: Third Skate

Saturday, 4 February 2012

We didn’t book any tour this morning, having agreed to explore the city on our own instead of going on the half-day city tour. After a considerably late breakfast, we set off for Hallgrímskirkja, a Lutheran (Church of Iceland) parish church. At 74.5 metre, it is the largest church in Iceland. In front is a statue Leifur Eiríksson, the Norse explorer who sailed to North America in the 10th century, a gift from Uncle Sam in 1930, in honour of the 1,000th anniversary of the Alþingi, the Iceland parliament. Unfortunately, there is an admission to the church tower so we left after only a short while.

We returned to Laugavegur and joined the early Saturday morning shoppers. We hadn’t had much time to shop before so this was a good time for it. We moved from one store to another before walking to a white building behind a car park near Grayline office. A weekly flea market is held there and we thought we’d check it out. Alas, nothing caught my fancy so I left after a while, having agreed with my travel partner to meet again at the Grayline office. We had told the people at Grayline that we would not require hotel pick-up.

I walked to another area and found more shops and hotels. Really, Reykjavík is such a hip and funky compact city! If only I had more time to explore it fully...

We met at the Grayline office for our 12 noon pick-up and 1 pm departure for our whale watching tour. I didn’t understand why the pick-up was that early as we ended up waiting for our bus to take us to the harbour some 15-minute drive away.

Once aboard our boat, I joined a few others at the bar, requesting for anti-seasickness pills. Then I donned a special suit provided to all passengers. Blankets were also made available and I first wondered, ‘Why blankets? Might as well provide pillows too!’ but took one anyway. It was only when I got onto the deck that I understood the significance of the blanket because my, it was cold up there! Not freezing cold, but cold from the sea wind and I could feel my hands getting numb. (If I’m not mistaken, our guide told us the sea temperature in winter averages 6C, pretty mild for a Nordic country but then again, Iceland enjoys the warm North Atlantic current.) We were lucky to sight a humpback whale, some porpoises and a couple of seals in the distance.

We returned back to mainland at half-past three and boarded the bus back to the city. I browsed quickly through some stores before telling my friend that I wanted to hurry back to our room. I rushed back as fast as my achy breaky hurting legs could carry me... to find out the score at the Emirates. I had thought the match was still in progress but it had actually ended and we won! 7-up!!! I decided to rest for a bit – thighs and legs were still hurting (who knew horse riding would hurt so much??) – before venturing out again to buy last-minute souvenirs.

Our last tour for the day was the Northern Lights Mystery. (Actually, we had planned to go on this tour on Thursday evening but the tour was cancelled as it was very cloudy. No such luck on Friday evening either as the clouds were out again (in fact the weather on Friday evening was worse than Thursday evening). They really do have excellent meteorologists in Iceland.) I was feeling quite sleepy for some reason and dozed off on the bus.

We drove off finally and stopped at two places. One was by the beach I think as there were lighthouses. I got down and peered hard, squinting my eyes this way and that, but hard as I tried, I couldn’t sight anything and neither did the others. We next stopped at a road in the middle of nowhere. Again, I dutifully went down the bus and gazed upwards. I stared hard, blinked, rubbed my eyes, squinted again, but no such luck ;’( suffice to say, the Northern Lights Mystery will remain a mystery to me for now. I’m gutted, especially as it’s one of the main reasons why I wanted to go to Iceland so badly in winter. Oh, aurora is present all the time but you have better chances when the night is darkest and longest (i.e. winter months), away from light pollution. You can’t see it if the sky is overcast or too bright like in those short summer polar nights.

Gutted. No sign of aurora nor of the puffin, Iceland’s beloved bird

We finally decided to call it a day, or rather, night and drove back to Reykjavík. We reched our hotel after 2 am (!) and tomorrow, we had an early start...

Sunday, 5 February 2012

Woke up at a quarter to 5 and after a quick shower, zipped up my bag and left the room. We waited for the pick-up and it was at 5.40 am when the hotel staff told us (after looking at our vouchers) that our pick-up was actually at 5 am and not 5.30 am. (I had repeatedly asked my friend if the pick-up was at 5 or 5.30 and she told me it was 5.30 am). The lady told us to walk down to Grayline office to meet a pick-up who would take us to the meeting point so we quickly walked down. I was surprised to see quite a lot of people still on the streets, staggering around in their drunken stupor and weaving through the traffic in their inebriated state. We also had to be careful with the occasional broken glasses, the usual casualty in this example of hedonistic revelry.

Our pick-up promptly delivered us to the meeting place where we boarded another bus to the airport. We reached the airport at 6.40 am and joined the long check-in queue. I was assigned a seat in the very last row by the window. Blinking heck!

I dozed off on the plane and when I woke up an hour later, decided to finish my novel. We started descending about an hour later and we could see the white snow carpeting the ground below. I had feared that my flight the next day might be affected and was praying hard that it would not be the case.

We landed just after 11 at Terminal 1 of LHR. This time, the immigration process was swift. Unfortunately, it took a while for my bag to appear. Indeed, some of the bags came out coated with ice! I wondered what happened...

I bade farewell to my friend and set off for the tube. It being a Sunday, and a snowy one at that, there were reduced trains but I was happy that the trains were running at all. I rode the train to Hammersmith where I got down and walked to my hotel. There was ice and snow on the pavements and it was so difficult to not only walk but also drag my bag on the pavement (I had to be careful not to slip myself and had to be extra careful with my heavy bag) so much so after a while, I abandoned the pavement and walked on the road. Good thing it was a snowy Sunday which meant less vehicles on the road.

After checking in and having a light meal, I left and made my way to the tube station and took a train heading east. Yes, I’m visiting the Emirates again! From Arsenal station all the way to the stadium, I walked gingerly on the snow.

I walked across the Ken Friar Bridge and walked around the stadium, meeting Tony, Titi and Herbert along the way. I also detoured and visited The Armoury where there was still a clearance sale. I spent a happy half-hour there browsing through the merchandise.

Keep calm, I’m a shopaholic Gooner. The Armoury, Emirates Stadium, February 2012

I left just before 5 and took the tube to Knightsbridge (since I was on the Piccadilly line anyway) and went to Harrods. My, Harrods was just too hot; if you enter in from the cold like I did, that’s how global warming would feel like. No more sales so I left for Harvey Nichols. Harvey Nichols was warm too but not as sweltering. No more sale items either so I left. Dithered on whether I should head for Oxford Street but it was nearing six pm and most shops would be closed anyway by the time I reached there so I headed back to the hotel instead where I had dinner and read my novel.

Monday, 6 February 2012

It was time to head home today. After breakfast, I set off for nearby Kings Mall (of course I just realised I was still short of souvenirs...). I came back at 10.30 am, checked out and headed for the tube station.

I was so happy that there was no queue at all at the Etihad counter (unlike MAS with its ‘snake’ queue). After checking in, I went in (to avoid the long queue at the security check). Alas, the flight to Abu Dhabi was delayed. In the end, we took off well after 3 pm (schedule was 1.50 pm), which meant we only reached Abu Dhabi at 0130. Again, I only had an hour to make the connecting flight.

Tuesday, 7 February 2012
We landed at KLIA at 1.40 pm. I got my bag at 2.16 pm and sprinted to catch the 2.20 pm train back to KL Sentral. I reached home at 3.30 pm and was finished with unpacking and cleaning the kitchen by 5. Having arrived from long-haul flights in the afternoon for the second time now, I now prefer it to arriving in the morning as I don’t suffer from jetlag as bad as a morning arrival. Alhamdulillah.

~~~~~~~~

I love Iceland. There’s no traffic jam, hence no pollution. You’re always surrounded by a mountain or a river or a glacier which means the air is so pure. You can even drink water straight off the tap; in fact, one of our guides said the tap water is purer than bottled water! I would love to return again, yes, I highly recommend this destination. Go, before everyone else descends on it, before it’s spoiled, before it’s ruined.

Ice Ice Baby: Second Skate

Friday, 3 February 2012

I woke up this morning feeling pain all over, especially from my thighs. My shoulders hurt too, from trying to rein Madonna the day before but my thighs and hips and legs? What did I do apart from trying hard to stay on the horse and not be thrown over? Strange but I would feel pain for the next few days.

After making sure that today we would indeed depart at 0830 with pick-up half an hour earlier, we left for breakfast at Scandinavia Café next door. Our pick-up arrived on time and again, we were driven to the Grayline office to ‘check-in’ and exchange our vouchers for tickets. Same procedure for all tours booked through Grayline.

We left at 0837 (had to wait for four other passengers). Today, we would go to the south coast and visit some waterfalls in between. We stopped for a brief while to view the mighty Atlantic Ocean before continuing on. We passed the town of Selfoss, the centre of Iceland’s dairy industry, and continued on before stopping again near Eyjafjallajökull, yes, the very volcano which eruption of ash cloud paralysed most of Europe’s air traffic for days back in May 2010. We even packed some of the ash conveniently placed in a container.

We drove on to Skógafoss, one of the biggest waterfalls in the country with a width of 25 metres and a drop of 60 metres. Due to the amount of spray the waterfall consistently produces, a single or double rainbow is normally visible on sunny days. Indeed, when we arrived, there was a rainbow; it didn’t last long though and disappeared when the day clouded over just minutes later. (There’s a local joke that if you don’t like the weather in Iceland, wait 15 minutes as that’s how long the weather takes to change). According to legend, the first Viking settler in the area, Þrasi Þórólfsson, buried a treasure in a cave behind the waterfall. A local boy found the chest years later, but was only able to grasp the ring on the side of the chest before it disappeared again. We spent some Kodak moments here before moving on.

Our next stop was Mýrdalsjökull (in Iceland, it means mire dale glacier). From the main road, we had to travel on gravel for about ten bumpy minutes before parking the bus and continuing by foot for another ten minutes on the rocky lava terrain to the glacier. As we neared the glacier, I could see someone ice climbing, watched by half a dozen other climbers. I went with some of the German tourists to check out a tunnel first before making my way down another way to a small glacier cave. Who knew glaciers are such beautiful creations? We spent about half an hour there before turning back and returning to our bus.

We continued with our drive, this time to Reynishverfi beach with its black volcanic beach sand. From here, we could see the beautiful columnar basalt formations (Halsanefshellir Cavern), Reynisdrangar sea stacks (Troll Rocks) just offshore and Dyrhólaey, formerly known as Cape Portland by English seamen, a small peninsular or promontory in the distance. We were informed that an Australian woman was swept away by the strong sea waves just a couple of years earlier and indeed the crashing Atlantic waves reminded us not to go close to the sea. We stayed for about fifteen minutes before continuing on to Vík (or Vík í Mýrdal in full), a pleasant small coastal village which is the southernmost village and wettest coastal area in Iceland. We stopped here lunch – I was quite famished after all that walking.

After lunch, we retraced our journey and drove back to Skógar, stopping at Skógar Museum (quite near Skógafoss), a museum established in 1949 by Þórður Tómasson. The museum is divided into a couple of parts filled with interesting items related to Iceland's history. There are tools and instruments used for fishing, farming and cooking; old textiles and papers/books; footwear; children’s toys; music equipments... Outside and behind the museum are some turf houses which help visitors visualise a typical rural Icelandic life which still exists in some parts of Iceland today.

We left just before 4 pm and less than half an hour later, stopped at Seljalandsfoss. It is possible to walk up some stairs and walk on the path behind the curtain of waterfall but even the spray was enough to soak us so I didn’t. Besides, my thighs were steadily beginning to hurt and throb so I had to make do with just capturing shoots of the waterfall before making my way back to the bus. And in any way, we were only given about twenty minutes here and I’d definitely need more time if I wanted to climb up and walk behind the waterfall.

We left and headed back to Reykjavík.

We reached our hotel two hours later and decided to walk around, seeing it was only about 7.30 pm. Most shops were already closed so we walked along with the partying Friday evening crowd. We did manage to find some bookshops still opened and browsed the postcards, magnets and bookmarks stocked.

It started snowing for a while and when it became such an effort for us to walk in the snow and strong winds, we decided to call it a day and return to our room.

I so needed this then. I still do need a good massage now

To be continued

Ice Ice Baby: First Skate

I had been planning to visit this country since 2008 but couldn’t find a flight that could accommodate me when I was in Europe that year. So the destination was put on hold until I finally decided to resuscitate my long-shelved plan last June after researching the best time for me to go (yes, I was already researching for public holidays 2012 then). A senior at school who’s based in London wanted to join in so we exchanged emails (I even called her twice!), held discussions, and did further research before I finally bought my air ticket to London. I cancelled my earlier booking for a single room and booked a double room (I also booked a triple room as another friend wanted to join but she rescheduled her visit so I had to cancel the triple room booking). Then after further research and cost-benefit analysis, I found another hotel right smack in the city (and along the city’s shopping street!) at better value so another cancellation was made.

And finally, I was good to go.

Tuesday, 31 January 2012

I arrived at KLIA at 6 pm and only found out that my Etihad flight scheduled for 2030 hours was re-timed to 2200 by the people over at the UAE. There were a lot of Middle Eastern flying that night (most were parents of small children) so the flight was quite full. I watched Moneyball before trying to sleep (I always try to sleep on flights but sleep always manages to elude me).

Wednesday, 1 February 2012

We landed at Terminal 3 of Abu Dhabi International Airport at 0140 hours and I had just about 50 minutes to make it to my connecting flight. In my haste, I left behind my spectacle case (with my contact lens case inside). Boo hoo. I told a ground officer and a stewardess about it but I don’t think I’ll be reunited with them. Oh well... good thing I packed an extra pair of contact lens.

I was not happy to find that I was assigned seat 45H for the flight bound for Heathrow and true enough, when we landed at 0630, I had to hurry out of the plane and even then, queued for close to an hour before I cleared immigration. Strewth!

After freshening up, I made my way to the tube station, topped up my Oyster card and took the tube to Earl’s Court station where I was to rendezvous with my senior. Europe was (and still is) in the grip of a freezing cold spell and I felt it while walking to our rendezvous.

We met up before 10.30 am and walked to Hotel Ibis at Lillie Road for our easyBus to Gatwick. We made it in good time and sat in the hotel lobby while waiting for the bus (it didn’t make sense to expose ourselves unnecessarily to the cold). Our 11 am bus arrived promptly on time and we left within minutes. We reached Gatwick about an hour later and checked in.

Our flight took off before 1.30 pm and less than three hours later, we landed at Keflavík International Airport. We had earlier arranged (among others) for a pick-up to our hotel that will stop en route at the Blue Lagoon. Blue Lagoon is a geothermal spa and the lagoon is a pool of seawater naturally heated by the geothermal activity beneath the surface. A nearby power plant pumps up mineral-laden water from up to two km beneath the surface at a temperature of 240C; this water passes through a dual process (to generate electricity and heat fresh water) and by the time the water emerges at Blue Lagoon, it has cooled down to 38C. It was not a cheap experience but hey, when in Rome and all that. We brought our own towels (you can rent at €5).

We left Blue Lagoon and the bus was ready to bring us to the city, about 39 km away. I had finally booked Hotel Fron on Laugavegur, Reykjavík’s main shopping street. We settled in for the night. Ahh, finally time to lie down!

Thursday, 2 February 2012

We woke up early today as we thought our tour today would start at 8 – when pick-up was only at 9, duh! – so we continued breakfast when we discovered this. We were picked up at 9 and sent to Grayline office nearby to ‘check-in’ and exchange our vouchers for tickets. We departed at 9.30 and arrived at the Laxnes horse farm after a 25-minute drive. Then the lady set about kitting us up in the proper gear for horse-riding. Yes, we were going riding today and not just any horse but the Icelandic horse, a breed that has remained virtually unchanged since the Vikings brought it to Iceland in the ninth century.

After we were ready, we were assigned our horses (my mare is named Madonna). We were given basic instructions on how to control our horses before we set off. At first, we set off on a leisurely stroll and I enjoyed the surrounding landscape. I even managed to snap some pictures while riding. Then we moved to different terrains: we crossed rivers (when Madonna decided to take her time drinking), then we ascended the ground, descended and next thing I knew, the horses were all trotting. It was quite scary as I felt Madonna was going too fast. I tried to rein her in but she either disobeyed me or breathed out noisily (in displeasure?) so after a while, I decided to just trust her. All the while, I entertained thoughts of falling off the horse while trying to maintain my balance on the horse. Indeed, there were a few times when I felt like I was losing my balance and it was all I could do to stay on the horse.

Then the horses started flying. I mean, they were flying. So not only did I have to try even harder not to be thrown off or fall off the horse, but it was beginning to snow so I also had to control my helmet and my muffler which were both slipping off. I also had snot running. Yes, I know. Too much information but do you now know what we were up against? That it wasn’t just a joy ride?

Just as I thought my hands could no longer hold on to the rein, we neared the farm. Thank God. I got down on shaky legs and only moved after a couple of minutes. Did the others feel the same too?

We staggered inside and struggled out of our gear. We then rested and had a light lunch – some soup and bread and tea.

Not me. I was only too happy to get down

Our next pick-up arrived just before 1.30 pm and we struggled out of comfort of the cosy indoors to the slippery snow and ice outside.

We drove to the National Park Þingvellir with its remarkable geological features, passing Þingvallavatn, the largest natural lake of Iceland. The Icelandic Parliament - Alþingi - was founded on the site in 930 AD. We stopped for a brief while to have a look at the area; here you can see the constantly shifting North American and Eurasian plates. Then we drove further to Gullfoss (Golden Falls), two waterfalls located in the canyon of Hvítá river. It was such a bitterly cold day today, and the strong winds made it worse. We walked slowly, not wanting to risk a fall (and because I had fallen twice in Turkey) and then hopped back on the bus to the top to view the other waterfall. Oh my God, the wind was so much stronger, I felt blown this way and that. I’m serious. If I was alone, I think I could easily move without walking, propelled by the gale.

We made our way to the gift store-cum-café and browsed the store until it was time to leave.

Next up, was the geysers. In fact, geyser comes from the Icelandic word geysir. We stopped here for 45 minutes, observing and marvelling at the geysers and the antics of Strokkur (the Churn) which fires off a thirty-metre-high spout every few minutes.

We left just before 6 pm and drove back to Reykjavík.

To be continued