self-similarity…

there were plenty of great examples of self-similarity in nature in Iceland.

The landscape in Thingvellir was excellent for it – where the North American and European tectonic plates are moving apart at a rate of about 2cm a year. This movement has created a rift valley a couple of miles wide which has filled with water but it’s not one big lake so much as millions of little ones. The solid lava rock is moving all the time and so even small rocks have split creating small rifts. It’s impossible to tell how big a pool or a rock is – the shapes are repeated on different scales. We have put a few photos on flickr as a demonstration.

Is Iceland expensive?

or is it just that the British are cheap?

It is true that most of what you see to buy, and need to buy in Iceland is expensive if you compare it to what a pound buys in the UK. At a rough estimate things “cost” twice to three times as much in Iceland as they do here. Alcohol is an “impressive” example – a half of lager costs a fiver in an Icelandic bar.

For Icelanders prices don’t seem as high – their incomes are proportionately higher, so Icelanders only work the about same number of hours to have roughly the same standard of living as Brits do.

There are lots of reasons why costs appear so high to us - Iceland’s tax system falls heavy on purchases and less heavily on income, energy is very cheap (hydro and thermal energy in abundance), but most food, cars, domestic goods etc have to be imported as Iceland has little manufacturing, Iceland also is highly reliant upon exports of fish for foreign exchange – all these factors (and more) mean that the Icelandic economy is very different from other European economies.

The questions you have to ask yourself are  – is it worth it? and is it worth moaning about?

From my point of view the answers are a resounding yes, and a heartfelt no. Iceland is unique – it has stuff that is so different and exciting that paying a bit extra is worth it - and moaning about it doesn’t help – you’re not being ripped off, and whinging is only going to ruin your holiday. Eating out costs around twice as much as in the UK – but the quality of restaurant food is consistently better than in the UK.

The British (amongst others) have it cheap when travelling to so many places in the world – eg India, North Africa, SE Asia (where people are often paid a pittance and live in appalling conditions) – we need to be more realistic when travelling to countries where the vast majority of residents have the same standard of living as the tourists.

where do you start?

… when you’ve got about 700 pictures* and you need to select some good ones to go on the web?

Of course the task of selection is made easier (every cloud has a silver lining), because around half the images are crap.  Artless, pointless, technically incompetent, often all three – these are the pictures a five-year-old with their first disposable camera would be disappointed in. No doubt they’ll moulder on the hard disk, just because we have a vague feeling “they might come in” with a tweak in Photoshop, or if you squint and look at them a bit sideways. But the truth is they are crap and should be consigned to digital dust.

  Then there are the brilliant shots – obvious prizewinners (if only you could get around to entering them in a competition), but usually too quirky to appeal to anybody else. I often have a specific commitment to images – because of the thought that has gone into taking them, or they trigger something very specific in me – but that doesn’t mean they will appeal to other people, or conform to the current view of what is a good photograph.

Fortunately, somewhere in the middle are shots that have wider appeal, and perhaps a little artistry – technically acceptable, interesting and composed pleasingly. And there are quite a lot of these, I know there are, it’s just working out which are which….

Decide for yourself whether we made the right choices, here….

* We know this sounds like a lot, but on average it’s about fifty each a day, which isn’t too obsessive.

…and coming up soon on ‘Channel atypical’…

musings on the ubiquity of the English language, a gentle rant about tour guides, embarrassing revelations about having a bath with strangers, a thoroughly sensible discourse on the immediacy of Icelandic history, and in a piece of fearless investigative reporting we find out if a half of lager really can cost £5 in today’s Iceland…

we’re back…

we will be writing some stuff here very soon – but pictures are now appearing on our main photo-site – www.atypical.me.uk

but it’s cold…

we have said below how much sun there is – it is very clear – and a lot of the time the light feels a bit like late afternoon in May – golden and looks warm – but it isn’t. Most of the time it is cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey – colder than I have ever experienced. The night we went aurora watching we stood on top of a small mountain called Ulferfell -  and it was so cold I couldn’t stay outside the jeep for more than a few minutes. Today at the pool, walking between the the various pools of hot water, it was bitingly cold – but deliciously warm in the water.

Light…

another thing that we expected (and some people said to us before we left) was that the daylength would be short – nothing could be further from the truth – we are getting more daylight here than in the UK! – The sun comes up at about 8:15am but doesn’t set ’til gone seven – and twilight extends to beyond 9. By the end of May it will be light 24 hours a day (although the sun goes below the horizon for a couple of hours). Apperently Iceland gets significantly more daylight hours in a year than Florida.

This is an amazing country – I often think when I’m on holiday – “I could live here” – but then realise I couldn’t really – but here I think I really could – and I understand why so many Icelanders, are not so much patriotic but, love their country. Which is probably how I feel about Britain – specifically Britain, not just England…

Thorsday

in Reykjavik. We have bought tourist cards which entitle us to free bus travel, 12 mins free internet use, free entry to lots of galleries and museums and thermal pools. So we have just spent a delightful morning in Laugurdlur (?) pool in the sun with an air temperature of about -4 degrees C. The sky is clear blue. It was fantastic – extreme relaxation. There is a 50m pool for swimming, 2 hot tubs and 4 jacuzzis of increasing heat from 100 degrees F upwards and a steam room.

Last night we met Joi and Sonja in Cafe Victor and chatted for at least 3 hours easily. Not suprisingly they speak fluent English and are well travelled themselves. we are so pleased to have taken the risk of getting in touch with them.

We went to the Iceland museum and the National Art Gallery yesterday afternoon and we really like Snorri somebody or other’s paintings.

We are in Iceland

and we have done loads of things already.

We saw the best show of Northern Lights Reykjavik has seen since December 2005 at least, last night! tone managed to get photos and we are trying to put them on the web for you to see…… so go to Atypical at Flickr as we hope to have pics there later today.

It was minus 6 on top of the hill where we saw the aurora last night and the wind was blowing at about 20 miles an hour making us feel much colder! (We went off-road in a 4WD jeep to get up said hill – it was hilarious).

Tone has lost Joe’s number so we are waiting for him to contact us – we hope to meet him later.