What I did for my Thanksgiving Vacation
By
Karl Kowallis
For Thanksgiving 2001 I wanted do something new. I had never been to Iceland. I decided to go when I was invited. Aimee Schick asked me if I would come. I said yes. We had lots of fun. Then we came home.
Ah, to be back in 4th grade.
Way back sometime Aimee Schick asked if I would be interested in going to Iceland with a group of friends from the Langley Ward. Some of their original group had fallen through and I was on the list of people to try as an alternate. Whatever the reason for being invited it was great, and I'm glad for the chance. Our itinerary for the trip involved a Thursday evening flight to Iceland with an early Friday morning arrival. We would spend a few days and fly back home on Sunday evening. Thus begins the planned trip to Iceland.
I guess Thanksgiving vacation must begin at the beginning, so I watched West Wing and Law & Order on Wednesday night. I finally got to watch them live rather than on tape since institute for the evening had been canceled for the holiday. I originally planned to go to bed early and then wake up early in preparation for the time change. I abandoned those plans for practical reasons and didn't get out of bed until nearly 10 am on turkey day. After pancakes for breakfast and some hose cleaning I began my packing, none too early I must say.
I had just finished my bag when I realized I had not packed any of the warm clothes that would be needed for Iceland. Although Iceland is beautiful, and not nearly as icy as it sounds, it was winter and temperatures were predicted near freezing. I didn't have room for the fleece and such, so I had to get a larger suitcase and transfer everything over, plus the few extra items. I transported my suitcase to the car and unloaded some things from the trunk to make way for luggage. I grabbed my satchel bag, filled it with some books and my passport and jumped in the car to head to the Beal House.
Ah, Turkey day. Puzzles were the first order of the day while Sister Beal finished up the holiday meal. The 4 Iceland travelers were in attendance, Marni, Aimee, Jason, Karl, as well as Holly, Marni's sister, and Sarah, a Beal cousin, and a Beal Family Neighbor. Once the food was ready we began the stomach stuffing with willful abandon. On the chance that some of you are not in a position to eat while reading this and to be polite I will try not to make you too hungry, or jealous. The turkey was well carved by Jason and the Cranberry and Apple mixture for the stuffing and general sauciness was divine. We finished it all up with a round of pumpkin or pecan pie, whip cream included.
After a doorstep photo to begin the trip we had an uneventful drive to Baltimore's BWI airport. Calling the Thursday evening crowd sparse would have been generous. The check in counter had not a single person in line when we arrived and the gate areas were nearly empty. We played cards and sat as we waited. There was only a single general
boarding call for our flight and the plane was less that a third full. After take off many of
us spread out, I myself finding an empty row of seats. I put in my earplugs, leftover from
last years trip to London, and put on my sleeping blinders. Lie down; close eyes; wake up
when it's time to land. Tada! Welcome to Iceland's KEF airport just outside of the
capital of Reykjzik. (I will avoid spelling the name of the capital as much as possible in
this travelogue.) We made it through customs, stopped at an ATM to get some cash and
jumped on the Fly Bus to go to our Hotel in the city. About an hour later we were in our
rooms taking a short nap. We arrived at the hotels about 8 and decided to sleep until 9:30
so it would seem like a new day for those that hadn't slept much on the plane. Even I
was grateful, yet still sleepy. 
Friday was shopping and wandering the city day. The weather was London-like with temperatures near 4 C i.e. just above freezing. We stopped at the National Art Museum and I took a nap on a very nice bench for about 45 minutes. My weary companions were at the children's coloring table and exercised their artistic skills to sketch my log like sleep. In keeping with the artistic motifs they included me in a rowboat, or with funny cows matching the themes in the gallery. Aside from the orientation they are very good. It so happened that they were all sitting with crotch shots, so I won't be framing them, but then again, this is art.
At one store the staff was super friendly and helped us find things. They even
recommended another store that would have what Jason was looking for. As we were
leaving we had them recommend a place to eat and they even called to help make
reservations. It was a Viking Restaurant and we made a 6:30 reservation. We hopped on
the bus to head to the other side of town. We did get off at the wrong stop once, but we
made it on time for our reservation. When we arrived we were the only ones there. They
hadn't told us they didn't open until 7:30 or so; they had someone serve us any way.
Since we weren't in need of the "Viking Meal" which included lots of alcohol we ordered
a la carte. I had the lamb along with a turkey chowder appetizer and a delicious desert.
Jason ordered Auk, a sea bird, which he hated because it tasted like liver. Periodically we
would have Vikings come by, in full attire, with swords and threaten to kill those who
complained of the food. We had a singer that had a great voice, though we didn't
understand the Icelandic words, come by and serenade us. One person explained the
source of Scandinavian beauty; the pillaging of women. The blond haired blue eyed
models are in Scandinavia and the English looking women were in England; his words,
not mine. We climbed into a cab for the ride back to our hotel and all turned in early,
around 9:30 so we could get a good nights rest. 
A note on the language barrier. Iceland's official language is Icelandic, which is very Scandinavian, with similarities to Danish, and some German, and probably Swedish, though none of us knew any Swedish to compare it to. Because of the small size of the country most Icelanders also speak good English and many speak Danish. Their English is like a book language, such that they learned in school but don't practice extensively, but they are pretty good at it, so we were able to speak to most anyone, at least well enough to get our point across. The bookstores usually have large English sections, especially with novels and non-fiction. Most storeowners could converse in English and the only people we had a hard time with were some of the taxi drivers. Some things are universal. The taxi drivers were mostly older white males that seemed native Icelanders, but they could do directions. They were even good drivers!
Saturday was our excursion day. After breakfast in the hotel of fish and bread, cheese,
quiche, and yogurt we waited in the lobby. Oh, they also had pancakes and cereal with
thin runny juice. We rode in a van to Ishestar's stables. We put on thick winter weight
jumpsuits to ride the horses and I was grateful for the extra layer. The horses in Iceland
have been isolated from other horse strains and are free of many diseases and hence not
vaccinated so they are careful that people don't use their own riding equipment. There
was light snow falling and the moisture in the air decreased. It was a beautiful scene with
the snow and vegetation covered volcanic rock. The horses are sturdy looking and stocky
kind of like a full grown Shetland. They were well trained and not just "trail horses"
although the guides didn't like us to get out of line. The ride lasted about 1:40 minutes
and we stopped once to let the horses rest. My horse thought it was fun to lick my
gloves, but he was super nice and friendly. He was a dark brown with a thick winter
coat. I regret not finding his name, though I probably would not have been able to
pronounce it.
After the ride we said good by to our horses and headed in for lunch. We were surprised that it was a mostly cold lunch with various pastas and vegetables, but it was good and the bread delicious. Following lunch we once again hopped into a van to head to the Blue Lagoon.
A note about money. Iceland uses Kroner as it's currency and one Kroner is worth just more than 1 penny, hence 100 Kroner is about 1 dollar. It makes the prices pretty easy to figure, we just slid the decimal point around. There are coins for denominations up to 100 and paper money comes in 500, 1000, 5000 bills. There may have been larger, but I didn't see them.
The Blue Lagoon is a tourist trap made of a natural mineral spring about 30 miles outside
of Reykjzik. The geothermal heat that is used all over Iceland for heat naturally heats the
mineral pools that have a light blue color. The black volcanic sand is pretty and the gray
silt that covers part of the floor is very squishy and fun in the toes. The expected sulpher
smell was noticeably absent from the air, though it could be smelled in the silt from the
floor. The main part of the pool was several hundred feet across with many inlets and
coves, many of which had formed concrete benches in them overlaying the rocky edges.
There was also a natural cave near the exit of the building and an enclosed cave that had
been made into a large steam/ sauna room. The water varied in temperature from 98 to
104 F and was wonderful. It was especially nice in the lightly falling snow with the
steam rising from the pools. The steam and haze made it impossible to see the entire pool
and made it seem very ethereal and otherworldly. The 90 minutes we spent there was
very relaxing. Rather than walk to the building in the cold air we went back in through
the indoor pool. The indoor pool had a glass door that opened to the outer pools so one
could get in the water and swim outside without the sting of the cold winter air.
Occasionally getting out of the water was refreshing though.
After the relaxing warm water and a clean shower it seemed sad to get back into warm clothes for the trip outside and back to the van. Aimee and Jason missed the van back, so it was just Marni and I. We were dropped off at the hotel and unloaded our wet things in the hotel. We called a taxi to got to the flea market. It closed at 5 and we were hoping to get a look around since it was only open 9 to 5 on weekends. We made it there about 4:40 and headed in. It didn't have as mush as we were looking. Rumors had been that they would have inexpensive craft like things. I did buy a leatherman style utility knife and pliers set that were pretty cheap. We didn't see much else though. After the flea market we walked back into town and looked at more stores.
While in the city a random parade walked by. There was a high school looking band with Santa hats playing Christmas music followed by the fire trucks and hundred of people walking behind, many holding large burning torches. It seemed to pass as quickly as it had begun.
We decided a movie sounded fun so we looked for a cinema and found one not too far away. When we found it we discovered that Legally Blond was playing in about 30 minutes in English with Icelandic subtitles. We bought tickets and headed through town looking for food since. We stopped at a corner shopping store and picked up sandwiches and juice and headed back to the theater. I'd never seen the movie and I thoroughly enjoyed it. The only unusual thing was that exactly 1 hour into the move the words garbled and the picture stopped. The lights came on and everyone got up. Intermission. Random. About 10 minutes later the move garbled back to full speed and went on without further incident.
The taxi back to the hotel was pretty typical. It was good to get out of the stiff winds. On a side note, the previous day while walking to the Viking Restaurant the wind and pellet like snow had nearly sand blasted us. Walking straight worked fine but trying to cross the street had been hard since we couldn't look up without getting our eyes poked out by the flying snow pellets. At least by the time we were heading home from the movie the show had become softer. Marni grabbed a key to her room and when I went into Jason and my room we found a note from Jason and Aimee. They had waited a while and then left for dinner without us. It was just after 8 pm and was too early to hang out in the hotel, what a waste, and too early to call it a night.
After fighting sleep for a few minutes Marni talked me into going to get some food. Up on a hill near our hotel was a giant water tower for the city, which we'd discovered had a revolving Restaurant on top. When the taxi dropped us off and we went in there were very dressy coats on racks and a doorman asked if we had reservations. By the way he looked at us we could tell that we were under dressed, and probably not going to get in. Fortunately our Taxi was still outside. So we jumped back in and asked our driver to make a suggestion. He was only moderately helpful since he asked what we wanted. High price, medium, low, etc. The question would have been fine except we had no idea how expensive the various categories would be. He finally suggested a "not so expensive" place and drove us there. In was a nice Caf�/ Restaurant place with both European food and American. Neither of us were too hungry so we settled on a sandwich for Marni and a BBQ burger for me. We wanted to see what the Icelanders did with good old American food. We finally finished and taxied back to the Hotel. It was now Saturday night and we had eaten at several places; a Viking restaurant, an American style caf� a Chinese buffet, a corner store, a cafeteria near the horse stables and the buffet at the hotel. Jason and Aimee were in the guys' room when we arrived back and we went over the afternoon. They had just missed the van from the Blue Lagoon but had taken the bus back. They too had a good time and been to a snazzy restaurant.
One of my assignments had been church plans. Thanks to my mom I had an address for
the church in Reykjzik and the phone number for the branch president. I had tried calling
the previous night but only gotten an answering machine. We assumed that church
would be at 9am like everywhere else, so we got up and took a taxi to the address. Black
as night inside with not a sign. The taxi driver called around and it was the only address
any one knew of for a Mormon church. We headed back to the hotel, which we had
already checked out of, and called the branch president. He indicated that the church had
moved to a new building and that it met at 11 am. He offered to come pick us up and
drop us off. We arrived at the building about an hour early and President Mathiesen
headed home to help his wife and kids get ready.
While waiting we had a lot of fun speaking to the Mission President who was visiting for the weekend. Iceland is part of the Copenhagen Denmark mission so the mission president spoke English to everyone and had a translator to speak Icelandic to those that didn't understand. Before church we also got to meet the missionaries in the area. One of them is from an area in Orem, UT near my parents and his parents and mine are acquainted. Small world; especially in the church. The branch president, Kristjan Mathiesen had gone to BYU so there was that other similarity as well.
Following church we got a ride back to our hotel from one of the couple missionaries.
We picked up our bags from the hotel storage room and hoped on the Fly Bus to head to
the airport. After the overcast skies of the previous days Sunday afternoon was
beautiful. The sun came out and shone from the white ground.
The
small airport behind the hotel provided a great backdrop to the clear skies as
we prepared for the drive to the international airport south of the city. All that was left of the trip was to get our Iceland Tax refunds at the airport and get on the
plane. After a delay in taking off and a 6-hour flight we were back at BWI. Traffic was
heavy in Maryland but surprisingly light on the 495 beltway. We all made it home safe
and when I got home around 10 pm Eastern time I was very sleepy. I crawled into bed
and fell asleep. It was a good trip.
I'm looking forward to next year's annual international travel weekend.
