Two weeks in another world
The rules are different everywhere — wait to be seated? find your own table? order all at once? What IS that on the menu in a foreign language you probably don’t speak well? Do you pay at the register? Do you tip? Is it normal to be left alone until you summon a waiter?
Read MoreCheck any travel guide, or campervan rental site, and you’ll very likely see some sort of notice that you can “camp anywhere” in Iceland, that there is a law that says you can camp wherever you want for one night. It’s free! It’s beautiful!
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One of the reasons that Iceland even came up as a possible destination this spring was my love of the movie The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. The recent one, with Ben Stiller, not the original with Danny Kaye (although, Danny Kaye is a god and anything he did was transcendent, don’t get me wrong).
Read MoreI think it’s just polite to try to learn a few words in the language of the country you’re visiting. You don’t need to speak fluently, and you’ll probably mangle the few words you know, but learning just a few — please, thank you, hello — is nice. I hate seeing people just start talking […]
Read MoreI’ll be the first one to tell you that I hate yogurt. I loathe the stuff. It’s right up there with oatmeal and raisins and lutefisk. I don’t even like frozen yogurt, which purports to be sweet and ice-cream like. I cannot remember the last time I voluntarily ate the stuff.
Read MoreEvery country has some food, some ‘national dish’ that defies all good taste. Haggis, balut, lutefisk, casu marzu…it’s a point of pride to eat it, and great fun dare to visiting tourists to try
Read MoreEyafjallajokull. Apparently Icelanders all over laughed themselves silly over everyone’s failed attempts to actually pronounce this. I think most local newscasters gave up and simply said, “the icelandic volcano”
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Yes, whale is sometimes on the menu. Icelanders aren’t the target consumers.
Read MoreSo, beer was illegal in iceland from 1915 until 1933 — and it wasn’t until 1989 that beer with more than 2.25% alcohol was allowed in the country. Seriously? A country that was founded by Vikings banned beer?
Read MoreAlas, there has been no McDonalds in Iceland since 2009. No Starbucks, either.
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