Showing posts with label travel. Show all posts
Wednesday, 15 February 2017
Reykjavik - Iceland
Two part special!! - First and last week of January 2017
Ok, Iceland is small, really small, its quite and rugged. Roughly, its area is nearly twice that of Tasmania - Australia, and its population is half that of Tassie. In recent time tourist satisfaction has been quite low and I think it might be because people could be comparing/expecting a larger well established touristy country, something similar to the rest of Europe, but it is certainly not that, well not at the moment. Also people come and expect attractions like the 'northern lights' to be as amazing as they are in all the photos they see on social media but conditions have to be perfect and its not always the case. For us, Iceland has been the highlight of our trip and its going to be hard to get an experience as well rounded and memorable as it was!
Iceland was on our radar since we left home and we decided that it would be an amazing experience to try and land a Workaway up here to help get a really good cultural experience, as well as maximising our time in a place which is considered to be one of the most expensive countries in the world. After sending out a few unsuccessful Workway requests earlier in the year, we got put onto a Workaway host near the "northern capital" Akureyri by our mates Brett and Brooke, who were in contact with this host but couldn't fit it into their travel itinerary when they were in Europe 6 months earlier. Overall we were spending about 1 month in total in the country and hoping to see the majority of it. Our visit was based around arriving in Reykjavik having a good look around here for a day or so before heading to the Blue Lagoon. Then traveling to the Workaway for three weeks, followed by a road trip from the north Reykjavik via the east and south coast before flying out to Scotland!
What happened.
Finally we had made it!!! A place so many people we've met have wanted to visit, or have visited and always said it was a highlight! For us, a cheeky 3 hour flight from Copenhagen on WOW airlines was very pleasant - seemed to be more leg room then usual...winning.
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| The Sun Voyager - a dream boat and ode to the sun. |
Iceland was on our radar since we left home and we decided that it would be an amazing experience to try and land a Workaway up here to help get a really good cultural experience, as well as maximising our time in a place which is considered to be one of the most expensive countries in the world. After sending out a few unsuccessful Workway requests earlier in the year, we got put onto a Workaway host near the "northern capital" Akureyri by our mates Brett and Brooke, who were in contact with this host but couldn't fit it into their travel itinerary when they were in Europe 6 months earlier. Overall we were spending about 1 month in total in the country and hoping to see the majority of it. Our visit was based around arriving in Reykjavik having a good look around here for a day or so before heading to the Blue Lagoon. Then traveling to the Workaway for three weeks, followed by a road trip from the north Reykjavik via the east and south coast before flying out to Scotland!
Finally we had made it!!! A place so many people we've met have wanted to visit, or have visited and always said it was a highlight! For us, a cheeky 3 hour flight from Copenhagen on WOW airlines was very pleasant - seemed to be more leg room then usual...winning.
First impressions blew all our expectations out of the water. As soon as we walked out of the small airport (behind a couple of the Game of Throne actors), we were greeted with amazing volcanic landscape, snowy mountains in the distance and really soft sunlight. It was around 1pm and full daylight, and thankfully not as cold as we expected!!
Iceland only has one international airport, which happens to be a fair way from its capital Raykjavik (45min). There are a couple of shuttle buses (Flybus and Greyline) directly outside the airport, running frequently to Reykjavik. As we were about to find out, they are reasonably expensive - 30AUDpp, but comfortable with free wifi - we used Flybus and had booked our tickets online a few days prior to our arrival.
Iceland only has one international airport, which happens to be a fair way from its capital Raykjavik (45min). There are a couple of shuttle buses (Flybus and Greyline) directly outside the airport, running frequently to Reykjavik. As we were about to find out, they are reasonably expensive - 30AUDpp, but comfortable with free wifi - we used Flybus and had booked our tickets online a few days prior to our arrival.
We were staying in a self contained AirBnB apartment on the main street, roughly 10minutes walk from downtown Reykjavik. The flybus had us dropped off at their main station just outside of the town centre - about 1.5km from our accommodation which was perfect for walking distance. We didn't know this (didn't need it either), but you can select a Flybus Plus option to get the flybus to drop you off at local hotels if you desire.
Our apartment host was a young local Icelandic girl who was keen for a chat which was great, we had the opportunity to ask some questions and get some information about the area and Iceland in general. She gave us some good tips before leaving us to it.
After settling in we did the usual walk up the street to go grocery shopping and get our bearings, before heading back to the apartment to get a plan of attack for the next few days in the capital - we would start the following day with a cheeky walking tour.
After settling in we did the usual walk up the street to go grocery shopping and get our bearings, before heading back to the apartment to get a plan of attack for the next few days in the capital - we would start the following day with a cheeky walking tour.
At this time of year (winter), the sun was completely up by 11am, and started to set around 4:30pm. It doesn't seem like much daylight but you can still fit quite a lot into a day. The beauty of the short days is it seems to produce the most amazing sunrise and sunset lighting as you'll see from our photos. The temperatures were also a lot warmer then we expected. It sort of hovered around -5 to 0 degrees but was very calm, which made it seem a lot warmer then it suggested.
Quick Icelandic facts:
- 367,000 inhabitants which is basically 97% Icelandic and 3% Polish. In 2009 it was the first year of 400,000 tourists, more then the population of Iceland.
- Last year there was 1.8million, and next year there are predicted to be 2.4million tourist!!!
- Last year there was 1.8million, and next year there are predicted to be 2.4million tourist!!!
- Settled in the 9th century by exiled vikings from Norway/Sweden, the country has managed to really hang onto their Scandinavian heritage.
- Two-thirds of the population live in the south west of Iceland - 100,000 of the 200,000 people live close to/in Reykavik which isn't massive by any stretch. This was great because it defiantly gave the capital city a laid back 'small town' vibe. Considering its the off season, the majority of the people in the streets still seemed like tourists!
Our walking tour was taken by a local bloke who had studied Icelandic history at the local university, so we were truly well informed throughout the tour. We learnt a bit about the tales of how Iceland was settled by exiled Scandinavian Vikings in the 800's, the parliament and how it is represented with 50% female politicians, and the 'pots and pans' revolution where the citizens overthrew the Icelandic Government in the Icelandic financial crisis in 2008. We saw all the main sites in the small city centre and some tips and tricks about traveling throughout the rest of the country. The tour was great at showing examples of how forward thinking Icelandic and Scandinavian people are in general.
When researching Reykjavik I came across a couple of ripper blog posts which really reflect our feelings and the things we enjoyed about the north most capital city in the world.
Why to travel Iceland in Winter
25 cool tings to do in Reykjavik
Reykjavik pt.2
Our return to Reykjavik for a few days before flying out was really just a couple of days to catch up on some sleep, relax at a couple of coffee shops and figure out whether we were going to drop some cash on a Icelandic Wooden Jumper. We decided against the jumper investment hoping that most of the cold weather would be behind us as the days are tending to get longer, and we look to spring (fingers crossed). Also after living in our merino thermals for the last two months, the Icelandic wool felt like wearing a wire brush - and they wanted $370AUD for the suckers and they were so scratchy.. can't beat that fine merino wool!
The last few days of our stay fell over a weekend, which happened to be the Reykjavik Light Festival. We were lucky enough to see a couple of the notable landmarks lit up, an hour of darkness where all the street lights were turned off to give the locals and tourists a chance to see the stars and possibly northern lights if they were visible.
I don't reckon you could fine a sign like this in any other capital city in the world.
Typical Costs.
We cooked all our meals expect for a couple of subway lunches and two meals, one at a backpacker bar and another at Reykjavik Fish and Chips.
A Coffee - 7 to 10AUD
Subway footlong small meal - 20AUD
Fuel - 2.40AUD/litre
Restaurant fish and chips - 60AUD for a couple
Burger and chips and a beer - 80AUD for a couple
Pint of beer - 10 to 12AUD
Concluding.
In our opinion, winter is the best time to visit Iceland, and if you aren't looking to do a workaway or and extended stay like we did with some sort of work etc. you could see the whole island in two weeks. I would recommend hiring a camper (which you can definatly do in winter - just rug up), and you will not regret it!
When traveling to Iceland, you are visiting one of the most under populated and remote places in Europe. Its weather is crazy, it will be raining one minute, then in 15minutes time the sun will be out and it will be calm and sunny. The landscape is constantly changing from traveling through lava fields, along beaches with black sand and massive chunks of glacial ice, over snow capped mountain passes and past glaciers. We took over 2200 photos - which don't do it justice, and basically spent a month picking up jaws up off the ground. The scenery was truly epic!
P.S. - If we had our time again, I would defiantly be taking a ferry from Hirtshals in Denmark, stop of at the Fareo Islands for a few days before arriving in Seyoisfjorour in the far east of Iceland, then fly out of Iceland when leaving.
Our walking tour was taken by a local bloke who had studied Icelandic history at the local university, so we were truly well informed throughout the tour. We learnt a bit about the tales of how Iceland was settled by exiled Scandinavian Vikings in the 800's, the parliament and how it is represented with 50% female politicians, and the 'pots and pans' revolution where the citizens overthrew the Icelandic Government in the Icelandic financial crisis in 2008. We saw all the main sites in the small city centre and some tips and tricks about traveling throughout the rest of the country. The tour was great at showing examples of how forward thinking Icelandic and Scandinavian people are in general.
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| Hallgrimskirkja Church - can not be missed since it sits in a pretty impressive spot near the centre of town, it was complete in 1986 and has a statue of Leifur Eiriksson (c. 970 - 1020) who is considered to be the first European to discover America some 500 years before Columbus! |
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| The sun voyager sculpture has a pretty impressive back drop! |
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| Parliament house, right next to the Cathedral. |
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| Reykjavik cathedral! |
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| Sun coming up on a frozen Lake Tjornin in the centre of town. |
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| Bæjarins Beztu Pylsur - look, I wouldn't have a clue where to start with pronouncing that, but its the name of the most popular restaurant in town, a hotdog stand! A week earlier then our arrival to Iceland the Kardashians had visited the stand, and over the years famous people like Bill Clinton have come down for a cheeky hot dog. Crazy affordable for Icelandic prices at 11AUD for the two dogs with the lot! They tasted pretty good but the hot dog we had in Copenhagen was better! |
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| These two stone monuments are in the centre of Reykjavik are a representation of the two logs shown on the city's coat of arms. |
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| The unknown bureaucrat - a metaphor for how everyday life weighs us down apparently. |
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| Typically most houses are clad in corrugated iron. Because of the damp weather and lack of tree's - basically no trees here, up until the early 1900's when a steady supply of western building materials started to be imported to Iceland, most people lived in turf house. |
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| Example of a turf house - not our photo. |
Why to travel Iceland in Winter
25 cool tings to do in Reykjavik
Reykjavik pt.2
Our return to Reykjavik for a few days before flying out was really just a couple of days to catch up on some sleep, relax at a couple of coffee shops and figure out whether we were going to drop some cash on a Icelandic Wooden Jumper. We decided against the jumper investment hoping that most of the cold weather would be behind us as the days are tending to get longer, and we look to spring (fingers crossed). Also after living in our merino thermals for the last two months, the Icelandic wool felt like wearing a wire brush - and they wanted $370AUD for the suckers and they were so scratchy.. can't beat that fine merino wool!
The last few days of our stay fell over a weekend, which happened to be the Reykjavik Light Festival. We were lucky enough to see a couple of the notable landmarks lit up, an hour of darkness where all the street lights were turned off to give the locals and tourists a chance to see the stars and possibly northern lights if they were visible.
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A volcano light show on the church.
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Typical Costs.
We cooked all our meals expect for a couple of subway lunches and two meals, one at a backpacker bar and another at Reykjavik Fish and Chips.
A Coffee - 7 to 10AUD
Subway footlong small meal - 20AUD
Fuel - 2.40AUD/litre
Restaurant fish and chips - 60AUD for a couple
Burger and chips and a beer - 80AUD for a couple
Pint of beer - 10 to 12AUD
Concluding.
In our opinion, winter is the best time to visit Iceland, and if you aren't looking to do a workaway or and extended stay like we did with some sort of work etc. you could see the whole island in two weeks. I would recommend hiring a camper (which you can definatly do in winter - just rug up), and you will not regret it!
When traveling to Iceland, you are visiting one of the most under populated and remote places in Europe. Its weather is crazy, it will be raining one minute, then in 15minutes time the sun will be out and it will be calm and sunny. The landscape is constantly changing from traveling through lava fields, along beaches with black sand and massive chunks of glacial ice, over snow capped mountain passes and past glaciers. We took over 2200 photos - which don't do it justice, and basically spent a month picking up jaws up off the ground. The scenery was truly epic!
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| You were amazing Iceland! |
Tuesday, 7 February 2017
Ghent & Brussles - Belgium
We were heading to Belgium with very little expectation or idea of what it had to offer, other then chocolate, beer and waffles! It hasn't been a country which people rave about or mention in our experience throughout this trip, or previously. Being a passionate cyclist, I'm aware of the significants of cycling in Belgium. Big races such as the Tour of Flanders and Liege-Bastogne-Liege are two of the five biggest one day races in professional cycling!
Reading our Lonely Planet book, it's recommendation was to go to Bruges - a canal-based city and sometime referred to as The Venice of the North. Bruges was considered a must see. However we read a lot of traveller reviews which described the town as a tourist hot spot and a better option maybe Ghent. At this stage we don't have oodles of time because of an organised Workaway for Christmas... so we rolled the dice and decide that Ghent will be a better option. It is only 30min by train to Brussels (which we want to see), is architecturally comparable to Bruges and supposedly less touristy - TICK.
We arrive at the Brussels train station after a short train ride from Cologne, where we have to get tickets and change to a Belgium connection to get out to Ghent. Usually we try and fumble our way through automated ticket machines at the train stations but in this instance we decided to go to the ticked office for some reason... We were greeted by a nice bloke in French, which was great because I could reply "Bonjourrr, parlez-vous anglais?". He was very helpful and said Ghent was a great town which he preferred to Bruges, and sold us a reasonably priced ticket to Brussels which we planned to visit the next day. This ticket sales fella was one of the nicest people we had came across in a while which peped us up and gave us a great start to the new country.
Belgium is a little bit more expensive than Germany, and to save on accommodation our Airbnb was a bit of a hike from the centre of town. A couple of minutes on the train, 5 minutes on a bus then about a 2km walk. We had a pretty comfortable ensuite apartment with a gay couple as hosts and their two cats. The house smelt a bit catty, and I didn't see it but Amy said there was some cat shit in one of the hallways leading to our room... Otherwise we had our own tea and coffee and a couple of snacks in a reasonably sized room with full access to their kitchen for meals which was perfect.
After dropping off our stuff at the apartment we headed back into the town centre for a good look around as well as getting some groceries. We were able to get onto a bus that took us all the way into the city centre for $8, where we were greeted with plenty of people, plenty of Christmas lights and Christmas markets. The centre of the old town has plenty of grand old buildings which against the back drop of Christmas made for a pretty spectacular scene.
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| Truffle chocolate! looks like rusty steel eh. Pretty impressive. |
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| First things first, we were told in Munich by a couple of American's to try and eat our weight in Belgium Waffles because they were so good. We can agree, they were delish! |
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| Interesting set up. One for the whole family. |
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| Local frothy. Super strong which we found out pretty quickly. We had a couple of these and they run at about 8-10% alcohol content, they sneak up on you! Glad they weren't serving out pints. |
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| Swiss raclette took us straight back to our time in the Swiss chalet! We had one but it wasn't anywhere near as good... |
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| We didn't really know what was going on here... Didn't know Australian ice cream was so sort after? |
Straight out of a reasonably impressive and clean train station we were greeted with plenty of people out and about on the streets and in cafes.
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| The Guilds of Brussels in Palace Square - (a guild is a medieval association of craftsmen and merchants). |
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| Handmade chocolate - Check! |
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| The worlds most disappointing tourist attraction - manneken pis (translating to "little man pee" in dutch) The big fella was dressed up for the occasion, and has been standing here since the 1600's. |
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| Fritland - It didn't disappoint! The best thing about this was that the people behind the counter loaded up the servings± |
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| There was a reasonable military presence in Brussels, walking around the streets and at the train stations. |
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| Back in Ghent and to finish off the cracking day with a cracking sunset. |
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| Some castle... had to pay to visit so we just took a quick snap and continued onward. |
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| Main pedestrian street and where the majority of the Christmas markets and ice skating rink was. Plenty of people out and about in the less than ideal conditions. |
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| Keen to try a Belgium pub, we headed to a Bierhuis mid afternoon to try a couple of the local brews. The beer here is completely different to anything we've had. Full flavoured and strong! |
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| The rigs. |
Is been nearly two months now since we were in Ghent, and we've continued to meet people who rave about Bruges. Maybe we over looked it, either way we enjoyed our couple of days here - we could have fitted more sites into our time but it was pretty cold and miserable. The Christmas markets were pretty impressive but the quality of food and products was sub-par compared to Germany...
Thursday, 2 February 2017
Finally.... a movie!
Monday, 30 January 2017
Cologne - Germany
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| View from the top of the Kolntriangle - The Cologne cathedral was the tallest structure in the world for a few years after it was finally complete in 1880 - some 630 years after its construction had began. We can confirm that it is a monster! |
Famed for its massive Cathedral, the river Rhine, its beer Kölsch, having more bars and pubs per capita then any other German town, the Lindt chocolate museum and of course some more Christmas markets. Cologne was calling out to us. These few attractions were more then enough to make a two night visit worth while as we cross Germany headed for Belgium and the Netherlands.
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| Amy having a crack at some Eggnog - this was my first attempt and I was not impressed! I'll stick to the gluhwein! |
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| Small compared to Munich and Nuremberg, Cologne's Christmas Markets were stunning, and the cathedral background really added to the whole experience. |
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| Apparently, one of Cologne's most charming traditions is for the locals to lock their love onto the Hohenzollern Bridge. Each side of the bridge is almost filled with locks across its entire length. |
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| After smashing 1litre frothies in Munich, it was strange to hold and consume only 200ml of Kölsch.... reasonably expensive at 3 euro's per glass. |
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| Packed lunch! |
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| Woot woot - for a few euro's you can make your own block of chocolate with chosen ingredients. |
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Get yourself a custom on-the-spot handmade belt.
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