Ice? What Ice?

Posted on Saturday, 3rd January, 2009 by ianmacd

It continues to be very mild weather here, some 8°C. Amsterdam, on the other hand, appears to be -7°C at the moment. Brr. I hope our heating hasn’t given up the ghost this time. Providence, Rhode Island, where we spent Christmas before we came here, is somewhat warmer at -1°C, although it’s still the mid-evening there.

One has to conclude that Iceland is the better place to be right now, although that’s debatably true, regardless of the weather conditions.

Another lazy day in Reykjavík. We never do much when we’re in the capital, defaulting instead to the lifestyle we’d probably lead if we lived here. It involves clean air, coffee, cake and probably other things that begin with the letter ‘C’.

66° North have put up their prices to compensate for the nosedive taken by the Kronur. They have jackets there now that would have cost €800 before the crash of the local currency. Today, they cost a mere €400, but there’s no way they were ever twice that.

Most places, however, especially clothes shops, haven’t yet raised prices, because they’re still selling collections purchased before the crash. Prices are bound to rise this year, however, as retailers have to hand over twice as much cash as before for the same imported goods. Inflation is rampant, too, running at some 15 to 20%. It will be interesting to see how Iceland recovers from this. I’m sure they will, though. They’ve braved far worse in the past and it’s not as if they have any choice this time around.

We saw the people from the Hlemmur documentary again today. And on Skólavörðustígur this afternoon, Sarah spotted a couple of violin cases on the pavement. One of them had a strip of masking tape with Sigur Rós written on it. I looked back as we walked past and I’m sure that I recognised Hildur Ársælsdóttir from Amiina, perhaps better known as the string quartet that have performed with Sigur Rós in recent years.

Dinner was at the ever excellent Þrír Frakkar on Baldursgata. The skyr brûlée that I had for dessert was particularly memorable.

And did you know that skyr is now sold at selected Whole Food supermarkets in the US? I saw it in the Providence branch while I was there. What a shame you can’t get it in Amsterdam.

We’re clearing out of Reykjavík a day early tomorrow and heading for the Northern Light Inn, quite close to Keflavík airport. This is to save ourselves some time Sunday morning, when we have a 07:50 flight back to Amsterdam. If we were to stay in Reykjavík, that would mean getting up at 04:30 for a 05:00 hotel bus pick-up. This way, we can get up closer to 06:00, which is a small mercy to be grateful for.

There’s not much on the agenda for tomorrow, except for a visit to Bláa Lónið, better known as the Blue Lagoon. No trip to Iceland is really complete without a few hours spent soaking there.

The next morning, we’ll be back in Amsterdam, which, I hope, will have warmed up a little by then.

Posted in Travel | Leave a comment

Wet, Wet, Wet

Posted on Friday, 2nd January, 2009 by ianmacd

It was very rainy today and the sky was so overcast that I’d hesitate to call even the brightest moment of the day twilight.

We went to Laugardalslaug swimming pool in the afternoon. The last time we were there was without children, so that means it was probably in 2004.

The whole family had a great time. The icy rain fell on our heads, whilst our bodies soaked in the steaming hot tubs. Eloïse loved it, as did Lucas.

The pool was incredibly busy, because it was the only one open today. In fact, it was just about the only place of any description open today. Apart from a few cafés and restaurants (and I do mean a few), the city was lifeless. Most tourists probably headed out on excursions.

Reykjavík is so small that you keep seeing familiar faces. Not only were we recognised in this hotel and my favourite CD shop, but we’ve also spotted people who were on our flight from Boston. To top it all, we passed in the street a couple of the people featured in the Icelandic documentary, Hlemmur, for which Sigur Rós provided the soundtrack. It really is a small world here.

Posted in Travel | Leave a comment

People Are Revolting

Posted on Thursday, 1st January, 2009 by ianmacd

I can reveal that the stories have not been exaggerated. New Year in Iceland is completely mental!

At 23:15, we put Eloïse in the pram, wrapped Lucas in the sling, and headed up to Hallgrímskirkja, the famous church located on a square where many of the side-streets heading up from Laugavegur converge. Many people head there to watch and set off their fireworks, so we thought that would be a good place to go.

People clearly can’t wait for midnight, because the sky was already incandescent a good twenty minutes before the witching hour commenced. The air was acrid with the stench of spent gunpowder. An ambulance crew carted off the night’s first casualty, who had probably fallen victim to beer, rather than an errant firework.

I couldn’t help but be reminded of Amsterdam on New Years Eves long past.

At midnight, all hell broke loose. I struggled without a tripod to take some usable photos of the mayhem exploding all around me. Fireworks are tricky things to photograph well. Eloïse and Lucas remained surprisingly calm as explosions shattered the night sky.

I couldn’t help but spare a thought for the people of Gaza, who, for days now, have also been subjected to loud explosions of a much more sinister nature. One can only hope that continued international pressure on the shameful government of Israel yields fruit sooner, rather than later.

But I digress.

As we headed home, it was close to 01:00, and people were busy piling into the city’s many clubs and bars for one of the all-night parties going on at most of the city’s nightspots.

In other news, protesters stormed our hotel this afternoon and disrupted the traditional annual broadcast that features the prime-minister and other politicians, discussing the country’s future in the year ahead.

People are pretty pissed off here by what has happened to the country’s economy in recent months and tempers are running high. Many are calling for the resignations of the country’s leaders and I can’t say I blame them.

We were walking across Austurvöllur when the shit hit the fan. Fireworks and other projectiles were thrown, the hotel was stormed and occupied, a policeman was hospitalised and a few protesters were arrested. Numerous people were squirted with pepper spray and dragged away by their friends. Video footage is now available at various locations around the Net.

I managed to get to the front of it all and take a few close-up photos of the police staring down the protesters. People were standing right in front of the police, calling them fascists, giving them the finger and spitting at their feet. The police kept their cool, though, and a full riot was averted.

The broadcast was forced off air, though, because the TV company’s cables caught fire and were damaged. The protesters thus achieved a major objective, causing massive disruption to the proceedings.

It was one of the more unusual things I’ve witnessed in Iceland. Like most things Icelandic, it was more low key than it would have been in another country. The police here clearly have less experience of dealing with public disobedience, which is refreshing.

Almost everything was closed today and it will be even deader tomorrow. Most shops don’t actually reopen until Saturday, giving people plenty of time to recover from the hangovers incurred tonight.

What a great day.

Posted in Politics, Travel | Leave a comment

Feels Like Home

Posted on Tuesday, 30th December, 2008 by ianmacd

We’re in Iceland again, Reykjavík, to be precise. We arrived here at about 06:30 this morning after fewer than five hours of flying time and much — I repeat, much — less sleep.

As flight destinations go, Iceland has got to be one of the worst, if you happen to be arriving from the US. It doesn’t matter whether you’re flying from the east or west of America, you leave in the middle of the American evening and arrive in the middle of the American night.

Equally awkward, you arrive at the crack of the Icelandic dawn, which means that if you didn’t sleep on the plane, you’ve got a good twelve to sixteen hours ahead of you before you can go to bed at a time that will put you on local time by the next morning. The first day thus becomes one of determined endurance.

Our hotel this time, as on past occasions, is the ever-pleasant Hótel Borg. Needless to say, our room wasn’t available when we arrived — the previous guests were probably still asleep in it — so we headed out in the darkness to find breakfast.

Eloïse wasn’t amused at not being able to go to bed, but we managed to strike a bargain. When we finally settled down to breakfast at the very lovely Grái Kötturinn (the Grey Cat) on Hverfisgata and Eloïse was rewarded with a cup cake. Ignoble bribery, yes, but judiciously applied, it gets the job done in a crisis.

Fully refuelled, we spent a rewarding day taking photos, doing light shopping and drinking coffee. Most of the shops will only be open between 10:00 and 12:00 tomorrow, so we needed to get our Icelandic shopping out of the way today. Sarah’s bought some wool and I’ve added a handful of new CDs to the collection. We also bought a new Finnish winter hood hat for Eloïse.

Everywhere we go to eat or buy something is somewhere we’ve been before. Reykjavík is so familiar to us now. I was even recognised as a previous customer in a CD shop this afternoon.

In the end, we didn’t get into our hotel room until 16:30, which was good, because we didn’t have enough time to unwind so much that we didn’t want to go out again. We had only a short while to take the weight off our feet before we had to go out for dinner, which was partaken at charming little Hornið, around the corner.

After dinner, I went off to take a few photos with our new EOS 5D Mark II, which performed very well in low light. The shots I obtained this evening are the best night shots I’ve ever taken, which admittedly isn’t saying very much, but these look really quite good.

Bedtime now. We’re really looking forward to New Year’s Eve here and tomorrow is expected to be a long day.

Posted in Travel | 1 Comment

Camera Upgrade

Posted on Saturday, 27th December, 2008 by ianmacd

It all started with the Nikon Coolpix 950, which I purchased shortly after moving to America in what must have been April 2000. Not only was it my first digital camera, it was my first camera of any description. I wanted to record my experiences whilst in Silicon Valley, which, with my European work background, felt like the Wild West.

The 950 provided a good few years of sterling service. For example, it faithfully registered the progress of our honeymoon across Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and Hong Kong in late 2002, even though technology had marched on and much better cameras were available by that time. It had one great advantage, namely that it used standard AA batteries, which was a godsend when overnighting for days at a time without any electricity. The more modern cameras of the day were resorting to proprietary battery packs, which needed to be charged.

My next camera was a Minolta DiMage 7Hi, which I kept for only a year or so, before replacing it with a Minolta A2. I got a good price for the 7Hi on eBay.

The A2 was to provide many years of faithful service. I particularly loved its ability to record a voice caption as each shot was taken. Many of the albums in our gallery wouldn’t be nearly as well captioned if I hadn’t had those five second WAV files to rely on, once we’d arrived home and were sorting through our snaps.

It wasn’t until the A2’s viewfinder gave up the ghost at the end of our trip across the United Arab Emirates and Oman that I made my first foray into the daunting world of the digital SLR. At the recommendation of my friend, Peter, I purchased a Canon EOS 400D.

A couple of one-day courses ensued in order to learn how to get the best from the camera. I wouldn’t say that they turned me into a good photographer, but I at least learned the basics of operating an SLR.

I’ve really enjoyed using the 400D and invested in a trio of good L series lenses for it, but I’ve always lamented the fact that it didn’t possess a full-frame sensor, such as the EOS 5D.

Given my level of skill, there was no justification for the expense of a 5D and, in any case, it was actually lacking some of the handy features that Canon had built into the 400D, such as automatic sensor cleaning to remove dust. The 400D was therefore more than ample for my needs.

A few months ago, in a separate development, I finally decided to succumb to the temptation of a digital video camera, mostly because we wanted to make short films of the children and the camera on my Nokia E90 phone, whilst surprisingly good, wasn’t really good enough.

After the usual thorough research, I’d decided on the Sony HDR-TG3E and was on the verge of buying it when Canon announced the release of the EOS 5D Mark II digital SLR.

The Mark II of the lovely EOS 5D adds a lot of nice new features, not least amongst which the ability to record full HD video. The combination of a full-frame digital SLR and a good video camera in a single body was irresistible, and I quickly vowed to acquire one when they became available.

Well, the EOS 5D Mark II has been slow to trickle into the shops, so it wasn’t until we were leaving for the US that I spotted one in a duty-free shop at Schiphol. Boarding of our plane was about to start, so there wasn’t much time to deliberate. I snapped it up and brought it with us to America.

The new camera has necessitated the purchase of a UDMA compact flash card in order to get the most from the EOS 5D Mark II’s high speed internals. I’ve also had to splurge on a BG-E6 battery grip, because I found its cousin, the BG-E3, to be indispensable on the 400D. Besides, the revised EOS 5D has a new battery management system for its expensive LP-E6 batteries (which are out of stock everywhere at the time of writing).

I’ve only taken a few shots so far, but I can already see the difference the full-frame sensor makes to my EF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM lens. Cool features, such as peripheral illumination correction for each lens owned by the photographer, help one to exact the very best performance from one’s expensive glass.

I haven’t made any HD videos yet, as I’m still reading the manual. Yes, believe it or not, I actually do read manuals before I let myself loose on new hardware. I’m a rare breed, I know.

We head off to Iceland on Monday, where I’ll be able to put the camera through its paces over New Year. I’m intrigued to see how the results compare to those obtained with the 400D on our last trip to Iceland.

Posted in Technology | Leave a comment