Greetings, humans! Well, as I explained yesterday, today was meant to only be a day of travelling but we forgot to factor in that this is Iceland in December! We left the hostel (in the dark of course) and although it was still a bit windy it was surprisingly warm and we made it back to BSÍ on time.
We boarded the Flybus (which still doesn’t fly) and reached the airport with no problems. We made it through security quickly, although we did have a bag search, I think because our bag was still so wet from yesterday’s rain they thought we were trying to smuggle some liquid back to the UK. Our gate was announced soon after and we arrived in the right area, only to discover our gate number had disappeared. With no more information, we decided to have some breakfast and then find out what was going on. After that we found an information person (suggestions for a better name would be appreciated) who told us they were probably just changing the gate number and it would return soon. But that didn’t happen and as our time for departure arrived, still with no new information, we realised there were a lot of delayed flights, at least three had been cancelled. As this was all rather worrying information, we headed to customer services to find out what was going on. We soon learnt all flights had been grounded since this morning due to bad weather (50mph winds) which meant the planes’ doors couldn’t even be opened let alone have them take off safely. Although we at least now knew why everything was delayed, the terminal was incredibly crowded and there was a suspicious lack of airport staff, we didn’t know how long it might be until we could get on our flight. So, while we’re waiting, time for a bit of history. Let me tell you about the trolls and the Yule lads and the Christmas Cat whom I expect you remember from Day 1. If you don’t, I’m severely disappointed in you, how dare you forget a cat! I’ll also tell you about the four guardians of Iceland, so sit back and enjoy some history while we wait for the wind to calm down. 

​Iceland’s www.iceland.is website provides a fantastically concise version of the Yule lads' tale. Icelandic Christmas traditions combine folklore and religion, and this tradition lasts from the 23rd December to 6th January. Icelandic children don’t have a Santa Claus as such, instead they have Grýla (an ogre or a troll, accounts vary, and seem to be interchangeable, this isn't good for consistency in my relation of this tale!), her 13 children (the Yule lads) and a black cat (my favourite Christmas Cat).
For no explained reason, at Christmas Grýla comes down from the mountain where she lives (there’s a lot of mountains in Iceland, I’m afraid the website wasn’t specific) in search of naughty children whom she boils in her cauldron. This particularly horrifying Christmas tale is used to encourage good behaviour in children, which I for one find rather disturbing but as far as I’m aware, Icelanders don’t grow up emotionally scarred by the story so I’m sure it’s fine… 

Anyway, Grýla’s cauldron-boiling is counter-balanced by the Yule lads who visit Icelandic children, one each night for thirteen nights, placing either a gift or a rotten potato (very specific) in shoes the children leave out for them. The rotting potato is for the naughty children, which I’m sure would be enough to dissuade children from bad behaviour without having to resort to the threat of being boiled in a cauldron? Each Yule lad has a particular mischievous trait, which is explained very well in the cartoons to the right. ​

Now, as if Icelandic children haven’t been traumatised enough, here comes the Christmas Cat!! In Iceland, folklore dictates everyone must receive new clothes for Christmas (although why this is so imperative remains unclear). Anyone who doesn’t receive new clothes will be found by the Christmas Cat who prowls the entire country in one night. My friend (because all cats are my friends, whatever their personality), the Christmas, Cat will eat anyone who doesn’t get new clothes.

​Now you’ve had a rather disturbing Icelandic tradition, let me tell you the much nicer story of the Guardian Spirits of Iceland. The four spirits are landvættir (land-wights), which according to the Icelandic sagas, specifically that of King Olaf Tryggvason in the Heimskringla, a Danish king by the name of Harald Bluetooth (that sounds look a bad case of rotting teeth), tried to invade Iceland, and because he was a king (I presume), he had a wizard whom he asked to send his spirit in whale-form to Iceland to check for weak points where invasion would be easier. In the East, the wizard-whale-spirit was met by a dragon (Dreki), in the North, the eagle Gammur, in the West, the bull Griđunger and in the West the giant Bergrisi. Sensibly, at this point, the wizard decided there was nowhere suitable to invade Iceland from and these four landvættir became the country’s spirit guardians who are depicted on Iceland’s coat of arms and on the backs of coins. Charlie has a leftover krone which has the giant Bergrisi on one side (and a fish on the other if you're interested), and also bought a fancy souvenir coin which came out of circulation in 1980. 

​Well, that about sums up the history, back to waiting in the airport, where we at least got to enjoy the statues of the Yule lads, Grýla and the Christmas Cat in the duty free section. Anyway, our flight was due to leave at 11:40 but by 12:00 the wind had dropped enough that flights could resume. There were still flights from 7:00 this morning which weren’t expected to arrive until 2:00 (I’m assuming they hadn’t been able to depart from wherever they were flying from) which made us worry about the backlog of planes we’d have to sit through before we’d be able to leave. Our flight was rescheduled to 12:00, then 12:45, at which time we actually began boarding. Onto a bus which sat outside the terminal for much too long before it took us to our plane. Finally we were on, but then we had to wait for another bus load of people. Finally, at 1:40, two hours after we were scheduled to leave, our flight took off. We landed at 4:30 (Iceland doesn’t have the clocks going back so this time of year, we were in the same time zone). We were out of the airport, onto the bus to Long Term parking, found Charlie’s car and were on the road by 5:10. After getting stuck in the M25 rush hour traffic, we finally got home at 7:30, just enough time for Charlie to eat dinner before going to work. I don’t understand humans… I’ve tried, but your world eludes me. 

​Phew! That ended up quite a stressful day. Worth it to experience Iceland in winter though! Unfortunately due to the weather, time and money restrictions and again the weather, there was so much we didn’t get to do. Which can only mean one thing – we’ll have to come back! I vote for that being in summer when hopefully there will be less ice!
Well, until the next adventure, folks! Chesh.

​Greetings, humans! Welcome back, we’re still in Reykjavík and for once that’s where we’re staying! The day started off early again at 6:30. We left the hostel to find it had snowed overnight and was still coming down. I’m not a fan of this. It’s like rain but colder. Temperature fluctuations don’t really affect me, but I’ve heard they are a bad thing. We walked through the snowy streets of Reykjavík to catch the #1 bus to Vellir, getting off at Akurvellir. The double L is pronounced ‘tl’ as in ‘little’ and as I explained yesterday vellir means field and a lot of places in this area end with it. It was also close to Hafnarfjörđur, the Viking heartland I explained about yesterday.
So, we got off at Akurvellir and although it was now 8:30, it was still pitch black. Well, I exaggerate, the city streetlights were bright enough.
We knew the volcano Thrihnukagigur lay to our east, but in the dark, we couldn’t see it, so we got the compass out and headed where it told us.
Quickly, it became clear we were just walking through a nature reserve in the dark, but the paths were clearly defined and the streetlights just about reached us. After a lot of walking, we found a sign explaining about Ástjörn (a lake) and Ásfjall, it was a nature reserve for some of the rarest birds and plants in Iceland. We saw a few birds, though only from a distance and so it was hard to tell if they were rare or not – a lot of them were brown (at least those we saw when it got light enough to determine colours). You’ll notice pictures of birds are largely absent from this entry, mostly because Charlie’s useless at photographing anything that moves, as we’ve learnt in previous editions. Anyway, we were walking through the park in the dark. The paths led us around a hill and after we found the lovely sign, we discovered one of the paths (or perhaps more accurately a track) was lit by streetlights. This seemed a bit odd but as good a bet as any and so we followed this one for a bit, winding our way around a slightly larger hill (much too small to be called a mountain) and, after reverting to a non-streetlight lit path, we reached the top of Ásfjall, with stands at a mere 127m tall! It has a very distinctive square cairn and a stone circle on top, it was behind this beautifully made cairn that we sheltered as we attempted to take some pictures that focused on the surrounding mountains and not just falling snow. The wind was getting up as we walked down the other side of the mountain (ok, hill, it has to be at least 600m to count as a mountain).

​We wandered over this second smaller hill and the day started to show the first signs of lightening (about time too!) at 10am as we rounded the hill and continued eastwards towards the next line of hills to cross on our way to the volcano. We crossed our next hill with no problems, as we descended we could see a giant lake (oh horrors!) in front of the next hill. At least we could see our mountain/ volcano in the distance now. We passed the lake on a real life road that cars used (civilisation!) although we didn’t see any on it. However, there was a digger digging by the side of the road. I thought we were leaving the lake behind, but no, Charlie wanted to have a look at it and there we discovered a picnic bench had been flipped over by the force of the wind. Oh, did I mention? It was getting quite windy now. We then started to climb our final hill, but the wind kept getting stronger and stronger. When Charlie could no longer walk in a straight line and was in danger of getting blown off the path, we decided with great regret it would be too dangerous to climb the mountain/ volcano in such strong winds and poor visibility from the snow blowing in Charlie’s face.
We took a final picture of the mountains as proof of how far we got, then turned around and were practically blown down the hill. I was bouncing around like a bouncy thing in Charlie’s bag and we were both very relieved when we reached comparative shelter. According to the weather app on Charlie’s iPod, 30mph winds were happening in the city but out here on an exposed hillside, it might have been even stronger. We re-traced our steps back to the square cairn to take in the sights in the daylight and they were spectacular. Literally breath-taking because the wind was up again and breathing wasn’t as easy as it should have been. Mountains, covered in a white dusting of snow ringed us on three sides. As long as I didn’t look west (the dreaded Atlantic Ocean) I was happy. There are no words to describe this beautiful wasteland so for once I won’t try and will just show you all the pictures instead. Well, not all, my selected best ones as usual.

​After lunch on the sheltered side of the square cairn (to my disappointment, this was the one facing the Atlantic), we headed back down to almost sea level where we’d started. Unbeknownst to us in the dark, we’d walked quite close to one side of Ástjörn, so this time we went the other way around it. As you can imagine, I was not a fan, but Charlie enjoyed it, especially because part of it was frozen (I don’t understand the appeal). I was soon made happy though as between us and the lake arose jagged moss-covered rocks, perhaps the result of an earthquake.

There was also what might have been solidified pyroclastic flow which was nice and interesting. Having thoroughly explored this, we decided it was time to get the bus back. We walked back to the hostel via the ocean (why?) but at least we could see some of the mountains north of Reykjavík, Viđey and Lundey (Puffin Island). We returned to the hostel to warm up where we (well, Charlie) spent a few hours chatting to our roommates, we’re sharing with three (!) Americans and one Icelander. Well, we’ll be heading off to dinner soon, then I’ll report back on our evening.
So, we headed back to Kaffi Vínyl for dinner. The wind which had tried to blow us off the hill earlier was even stronger in the city now. As we crossed a road which led directly to the sea, a huge gust of wind sent us staggering first one way, then in completely the opposite direction which made no sense to me, I thought the wind was meant to pick a direction and stick to it! Also, I told you the water is dangerous, would anyone believe me yet? What would happen if the wind blew us into the ocean, huh? Huh? Oh, and not only was it blowing a 30+mph gale, oh no, it was also raining torrentially and we quickly learnt Charlie’s rucksack wasn’t as waterproof as we had been led to believe. It was horrific! Not only was my beautiful pink and stripy tail soaked and dripping, Charlie’s souvenirs got a big soggy and our paperwork (including our itinerary) turned to watery mush. At least our boarding pass and Flybus ticket survived, even if the itinerary didn’t. ​

​So, anyway, we finally arrived at Kaffi Vínyl, both grateful to be out of the storm. After warming up a little, Charlie ordered a Portobello mushroom burger with cheese, gherkins and pickle with salad and fries (which turned out to be crisps – interesting). Strangely enough, these were also the exact same toppings as were on Charlie’s burger last night. An Icelandic speciality perhaps?
Anyway, the main was good and Charlie quickly ordered pudding – chocolate muffin with peanut butter icing and chocolate chips. Because this was so amazing and we had been walking all day (well, ok, Charlie had), we ordered a second pudding, chocolate brownie with cherry mousse (although it could more accurately be described as a hybrid of jam and jelly). This was just as good as pudding 1 and we left Kaffi Vínyl to brave the storm again. Although we looked our hardest on the way back, we were disappointed not to see the Northern Lights (or Aurora Borealis to give them their proper name), although being right in the city isn’t the best place to see them. 

We made it back to the hostel without being blown into the Atlantic or the oncoming cars (I don’t know which would be worse) and discovered we now had a fifth roommate, this one from China so I think in all we quite well represented the Northern Hemisphere in terms of nationality.
Well, bed time now, tomorrow is only our journey home but, as you shall see, it became a bit more eventful than just that!
Until then, folks. Chesh.

​Greetings, humans! Hello again, hope you’re all as excited as I am to be visiting this icy wasteland. The amount of water means I’ve got very mixed feelings about this place. Ok, I correct my statement and hope you are all more excited than I am to visit Iceland. By which I don’t mean a certain frozen supermarket, I do of course mean the country.
So, we woke up at the horribly early time of 4am (before the birds!), bundled into Charlie’s beautiful little car, which my elephant-minded readers may remember made a guest appearance at the end of the European Edition way back when. My first Tail, when I was only just beginning my adventures as a travelling cat!
Anyway, enough reminiscing. We drove in Charlie’s beautiful car to Luton Airport, accompanied by some excellent songs on the radio, passed through the Dartford Tunnel early enough that we didn’t have to pay the Dart Charge, and arrived at Luton a little before 6:00. We got on a bus (it was too dark for me to tell what colour it was, but not pink, I would have been able to sense it!). We were soon at the terminal, breezing through security (no hold luggage) and through the duty free. We were impressed to discover, after my rant about plastic bottles in the (Northern) Ireland Edition that Luton has a drinking water station for refilling bottles. So we did and soon we were heading to our gate. The orange-clad folk from Easy Jet began checking boarding passes almost straight away and after only two short-ish waits, we were released onto the tarmac and to our plane. We were boarded quickly and then we were off. What’s going on? I don’t think I’ve ever been on a flight that was so on time! I’m impressed, Easy Jet – you’d better keep this up for the return flight.
So, our flight lasted two hours and forty minutes, we napped our way through it and in no time at all, we were flying over Iceland. A few gaps in the clouds gave us our first tantalising glimpse of this chilly country. Then, the cloud thinned, we viewed bigger and bigger snatches of rugged snow-clad mountains (are there any people here?) and glowing orange things (I don’t know if they were volcanic activity or random light sources, but I’m sure they were meant to be there…). Then we were below the clouds and horrifically, we’ve overshot Keflavik Airport, we were over the water and in this strange country which seems to defy perspective, it seemed as though we would be landing in the ghastly wet stuff. And worse, it was so cold, there were lumps of ice floating in the sea. Seriously, someone remind me why I’m doing this again?

Our first mission was to trek to Grótta Island Lighthouse on the extreme west of the city. Scarily, beyond this lighthouse, only the Atlantic Ocean in all directions, you could probably see Greenland on a clear day. Ooh, while I’m tangent-ing, let me tell you why Greenland is called Greenland. Many, many years ago, 'round about the 930s, some lovely, friendly, happy (probably) Vikings sailed across the Norwegian Sea and discovered a big, cold piece of land covered in ice. Naturally, and as seemed to be a very Viking custom, they named it Iceland. However, they soon realised this wasn’t a very good strategy for getting more people to settle here so when Eirik the Red et al found another icy piece of land in the Atlantic Ocean (if they even called it such, they probably called it the Cold Sea or the West Sea, using Viking logic), they didn’t think Icier-land or Greater Iceland would sell it. As such, they settled on Greenland, hoping Vikings back home would think there was good growing land to be had here. But when Eirik the Red’s son Leifur Eiriksson found grapes on what we now call American soil, he called it Vinland, so the Viking tendency to name things as they were was clearly strong.
Anyway, I’ve digressed, we were meant to be going to a lighthouse. Charlie decided it would be more fun to take an involved route to see more of the city (which we certainly did). 
First though, we crossed Lake Tjörnin for the first time today (by bridge, we didn’t walk across it, although some people were). We wiggled through streets around the city, found a church loudly ringing its bells for Mass (or something), strayed too close to the water for my liking and eventually made it to the right side of the land. This area is a nature reserve of some description (I noted the word ‘birds’ on the information board) and then we crossed some beach-like squidgy ground to the lighthouse, where, unprotected from the elements by the city, it was very cold and windy. In the shelter of the lighthouse, Charlie had lunch and I continued to hide in my bag. By the end of lunch, Charlie, who had gradually been shedding layers was wrapped up warmly again. It was a toe-tingling 0 degrees with snow promised later (I hope not!) and we needed all the warmth we could get. Charlie’s flapjack was partly frozen, the water which we’d acquired at the airport was chilled as if it had come fresh out the fridge. Needless to say, I was not too happy with this. It’s so cold here, my least favourite element is frozen and we found some chunky, erm, chunks of the stuff as we headed from the lighthouse into the city.

​The walk quickly got Charlie warm again and we started to explore the main city. We walked back passed the noisy Mass church aka Cathedral of Christ the King (quiet now) and on to find another church and the parliament building. We got a bit distracted though by some wonderfully clad buildings, a random sculpture and, while wandering around these buildings, all lit up for Christmas, we accidentally stumbled upon the place we would be having dinner. Well, now we knew where it was! At the other end of a short block was a gift shop called Viking (I approve) where we had a browse. We wandered these streets some more before finally coming to Austurvöllur Square, a scene of many a political protest as it’s opposite AlÞingi, the parliament building, and Dómkirkjan í Reykjavík (the other church we were looking for). It was now quite clear there were many, many churches in Reykjavík, if you haven’t already noticed!

​After investigating these two, it was onto Hallgrimskirkja, a huge monster of architecture (and another church), towering 74m tall over the city and taking 40 years to build. It stands on the Eiriksgata, a name I particularly like because not only is my buddy Eirik back, but gata is the Spanish word for cat! I know, I know, it means road in Icelandic, but that’s not the point! I am a cat and I seek to be educational.
In front of the giant church (which doesn’t count as a cathedral for reasons I don’t know) was a statue of my buddy Eirik’s son Leifur Eiriksson. As I mentioned earlier, Leifur found Vinland and is called a son of Iceland for his part in the AlÞing in the 930s. The AlÞing (that Þ is pronounced as ‘th’) was the start of (allegedly) the longest running parliament in the world (impressive if it’s true). It was set up at Þingvellir which means ‘thing fields’ (I don’t know exactly) and set the path for an independent Iceland. Well, Leifur must be quite well liked here. It is quite a big statue.

​So, let’s get back to the present. After inspecting the giant church-not-cathedral and Leifur Eiriksson’s lovely statue, we wandered back through the old town to Reykjavík Harbour, on the way we met the Christmas Cat (!), a rather sinister Icelandic tradition, on whom more in Day 3, I hope you can stand the suspense. We also passed Lake Tjörnin again, because Charlie likes the lake, I remain unconvinced, where we watched some people walking foolishly on the ice. I’ve no idea how thick it is, but I’m not going to be touching it. The swans, geese and ducks who normally live on the lake had been condensed into a small corner of the lake which was kept liquid as water was pumped in. We made it to the harbour (oh, the Atlantic Ocean is back, excuse me while I try to contain my joy…). Here we looked at some funky boats (I resolutely didn’t look at the water) and realised the sun was now fully set, it was approximately 4pm. No matter, there were plenty of lights to see by. After the harbour, we returned to the old town for some souvenir shopping, then returned to Vegænes for dinner. 

​The atmosphere of Vegænes was great and they played Queen songs the whole time we were there. Charlie ordered a black bean seitan burger with cheese, gherkins and pickle. The chips came with cocktail sauce (I don’t know what that is) and Charlie ate this while reading a book (exemplary behaviour). As Vegænes seemed not to do puddings (I don’t know how this could be!), we headed to Kaffi Vínyl, where we will be having dinner tomorrow, for a slice of some sort of gooey nutty hybrid of cheesecake and sponge. Charlie reports it was very nice, even if we don’t know what it was. Food here is very expensive, but surprisingly for once, vegan food seemed to be comparatively cheaper than meat. Although it isn’t unusual for a meal for one in Iceland to cost £50, Charlie got a main, dessert and drink for approximately £25. How unusual, still mustn’t complain.
We then decided it was time to head to the hostel for the night as it was definitely dark and having been up since 4am we were knackered. On the way though, we were distracted by Höfði, a fancy house where Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev met to begin to end the Cold War. This building has also been used by the British Embassy and reportedly has a ghost. The identity of this ghost varies from a victim of drowning or suicide to a Viking who raids the liquor cabinets. We didn’t notice any signs of extra-sensory activity, but this house did rather fascinate Charlie who kept wanting to walk passed it. 
​The hostel, which we booked through AirBnb, has nice showers (Charlie’s words, not mine) and we’re in a room of six beds, naturally we chose one of the top bunks. We got prepared for tomorrow, investigated the view from the very small window by our bed (the apartment block on the other side of the street and happily not the Atlantic Ocean although it is very close by) and decided it was time for an early night. 

​Greetings humans! Welcome back to what is my fourth edition of Tails this year. I decided to mention this just in case you weren’t keeping track. I don’t know why you wouldn’t be but humans are a mystery.
Now we’ve got that clear, let’s explain what’s happening this time. We’re going to Reykjavík! That’s in Iceland, because there’s a chance you might not have worked that one out from the name of this edition of Tails. Unusually for any trip Charlie and I have ever been on, this time we are only visiting a single place (Reykjavík, as I mentioned earlier). How very unusual! And even more unusual, there are no trains in Iceland. My favourite mode of transport simply doesn’t exist. And we are visiting a country named after the frozen state of my least favourite element. Can someone please remind me why I’m going on this trip?
Because Charlie was going and I refused to be left behind? Yes, that sounds about right…
Well, on with the adventure, I suppose. Just don’t let me get wet, please!