The Lost Post on Iceland

Lost. With the click of a button, my latest post vanished fading into nothingness like a spilt pina colada into the digital sands of the e world. It was mostly rubbish anyway. Lacking structure and clarity, a few sparse witticisms drowning in a sea of travelogue dithering. Really it was largely me carrying on about all things Iceland, which are my new favourite subjects, being specifically:

• geology;
• economics; and 
• gastronomy

Allow me to precis myself very succinctly: The geology of  Iceland is very interesting and makes for many beautiful waterfalls and snow capped glacial peaks. The food is very good and the people are proud, helpful and friendly.

I guess I can do better than that, here goes in bullet point form:

• Iceland is at 66 degrees north latitude, also the name of a popular and expensive clothing brand
• The mild climate is a result of the gulf stream currents and air flows which keep the country generally free of ice and snow even during the deep long winter, whereas Greenland, which extends much further south is not blessed with the winds and currents is a large ice covered rock.
• The island is shaped by the parting of the North American and European plates that drift apart at 2cms a year. This may not sound like a lot but it is. Trust me. 
• There are heaps of volcanoes, with my favourites being the 2 rather boisterous ones in the Westman Islands that created the island of Surtsey and replaced a nice meadow on the main island with a 700 foot high mountain in 1970 check it out here 
• There's another volcano which has a glacier, known to the Icelanders as Mýrdalsjökull and tourists as "the M one", on top of it and occasionally erupts, much to the surprise of the locals who apparently awake to find a raging torrent of ice, water and lava where their wool shed used to be. We went snowmobilling on it, because we live dangerously!

Shell living dangerously on the glacier. The glacier was perhaps less dangerous than the snow mobiling which gets exciting when the driver hits the power whilst lurching over bumps on the snow.

• The Northern Lights are amazing. We lay in the snow for hours to get these photos!

• Icelanders are very nice, highly educated people that are pretty much all amateur geologists, capable of accurately explaining plate tectonics while serving you food or explaining igneous rock formation processes whilst checking the dents and scratches on the hire car. And they all speak about 19 languages
• The only fossil fuels they use are pretty much fuel for cars, which is on the way out as they attempt to hydrogenise their cars. The rest of their power comes from geothermal and hydro sources, which is cheap, basically inexhaustible and has the added bonus of meaning there is virtually no air pollution at all. On a clear day you can see more than 100kms!
• The effluent from one of the geothermal power stations (hot water) is used to create the nation's number 1 tourist attraction: the Blue Lagoon. The mineral mud is famed for its curative abilities. If one was able to have a hot bath on the moon then I'd imagine this is what it would be like.

 

• The food was tremendous. We ate sushi, sashimi, monk fish, flounder, dried fish jerky, rot cured shark that tasted like eating a shot glass with pure alcohol in it, horse, minke whale, goose, lamb, duck, langoustines with fois gras and truffles, a ham sandwich, croissants, waffles, some chocolates, yoghurt and these strange lollys called opals which were a bit gross but addictive.
• Reykjavik is a nice city and is dead easy to walk around. This is plus since when the wind picks up a normal human can stand to be outside for approximately 23 seconds before freezing to death and being blown away.
• I imagine that Iceland is nicer now with the effective bankruptcy of their country at the hands of 3 banks. Before October 2008, the Pound to the Kroner was about 1 to 120. To put this into context a bottle of beer was usually about 900 kroner, which works out to the princely sum of £7.50 for a beer, or for those back home, $15 which I think is a lot. In the end we were getting 1 to 200 which was pretty good and put most things on a par with UK prices. By the sound of things the whole Icesave banking debacle has stoked some national pride and brought on a groundswell of political activity in a generally subservient population. Apparently it has also had the benefit of curtailing a rather arrogant streak in the locals, but we didnt see any of it and found everyone friendly and accommodating to a fault. 

That was more or less it, although I think it was less interesting on the first pass with the possible exception of the bit about the Westman Islands which I thought I'd written in a lively and entertaining manner. Getting back to the matter at hand, Iceland was a truly amazing country. The scenery, the people, the emptiness and the chance to eat basically any animal unfortunate enough to come within range of an Icelander make this one of the most enjoyable trips on a very long and illustrious list.

Iceland

Vegas Exposed!

What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, except for where my travel blog is concerned. So it happened that one night around October or November we were out to dinner with Haydn and Zaidee, who were leaving the UK to travel home shortly. The topic of Christmas and New Years came up, with us lamenting the fact we didn't really have anything planned this year. “Come with us to Vegas” they said and that was pretty much that. The seed was planted and the idea germinated into a planned holiday a week later as we booked the flights. Vegas was on and we were pretty excited about it!

26^th December 2009

Vegas is the Strip. From the airport driving into town it rises out of the desert like some computer generated fantasy land superimposed over the barren valley. A 3 mile long, 8 lane “boulevard”, it is ground zero for the adult playground of Las Vegas. Flanked either side by gargantuan casino and hotel complexes it is a sensory shock and awe campaign designed to dull the senses and shake the dollars out of the pockets of unsuspecting tourists. It is amazing, being especially unbelievable at night, with the ridiculous shapes of the pyramid of Luxor, New York, New York with its Chrysler and Empire State Buildings and a 2/3 scale model of the Eiffel tower managing somehow to not seem out of place.

We flew from Heathrow to Minneapolis at about 1:55pm, delayed for ages because some dickhead tried to blow up a Delta flight on Christmas day from Amsterdam to Detroit, meaning the airlines were searching every single passenger and bag going onto the aircraft. As we made our way west, the entire North American landscape was frozen and covered entirely with a blanket of snow. It was pretty. Minneapolis was under about 2 feet of snow and something like -10 degrees when we got there. I can't understand how people live in places like that, possibly it is simply to service the airport, which was huge.

Getting off the plane at 11:30pm we were confronted with our first chance of gambling, with slot machines right there in the middle of the airport. Welcome to Vegas, baby!

27^th December 2009

The sun was very nice and the strip really is something else. There is this sensory cacophony of lights, giant TV screens, blaring music and adverts and these unbelievably massive casino buildings. They are so big they don't seem real, with Ceasers Palace causing my brain the most trouble. Eventually I think I just mentally edited it out until I got used to the size of it. It was a bit like when you are a little kid and you meet an especially tall person for the first time.

We didn't do much on our first day, just got a bite to eat and did a spot of shopping taking in the Vegas vibe which is best described as odd. People tend to wander around a bit aimlessly during the day, which makes the crowd as interesting as the pirate ship casino. Vegas is very egalitarian to judge by the all sorts getting around. Fat guys walk around in shorts wearing Iron Maiden t-shirts (12 degrees Celsius!), alongside flashy and well dressed, who give way to old people wearing sneakers. I guess this is Middle America on display.

Jo and James were arriving at 10pm so we had a few beers in The Venetian and The Palazzo casinos, got Maccas for dinner and saw some of the best old person dancing I've ever seen all to a band made up of old blokes with clearly fake hair.

28^th December 2009

The main feature of eating is Vegas is the Buffet. Everywhere does a buffet, dining somewhere is judged by the size, availability and even sometimes the food quality of the Buffet. We had our first attempt at it, deciding to try out the Wynn for breakfast, which is widely reputed to be the best on the strip. When we finally made it there are around 12:30 the line was unbelievably long. We gave up in frustration and ate at the other salient feature of Vegas food, fast food in the food court.

The main feature of shopping in Vegas is the outlet mall. There's the Fashion Show Mall, the Miracle Mile Mall, the Las Vegas Outlet Mall and a million other variations on the mall theme. The shops are actually pretty good, the staff, as with practically all retail staff in the US were excellent, helpful and attentive and everything is SO CHEAP!!!!! We followed up our brunch some shopping, this time finding a really cool leather jacket for Shell from Lucky and I got some new and badly needed undies.

Haydn and Zaidee had arrived in town about 4pm so Shell and I headed up to the fading flower of the Las Vegas Hilton. This place was not the bees knees. Nor was it the bees feet, hands, head eyes or anything else. It was a bit tired and lacked many of the amenities customary to the better casinos such as staff on the check in desk. What it did have was many strange wind like noises in the room which turned out to be the elevators that it turned out could be heard in every room in the hotel.

Brock's Guide to getting free drinks in Vegas

1. Find a casino
2. Track down the cocktail waitress that is serving the area around the 1 cent slots, and swiftly take a machine she is about to serve
3. Put a dollar in the machine and play 1 line with a 1 cent bet
4. When the girl comes around, and it is always a girl, place your order which can be one of the following: a domestic beer, an imported beer, a mixed drink such as a Gin and Tonic, an extravagant cocktail, a shot, anything else you could think of
5. Continue to play the 1 line for a 1 cent bet until the drink arrives.
6. If you want another drink, tip her. If you don't, don't!
   

Haydn and Zaidee had just arrived from Costa Rica, so we caught up while waiting for check in. We'd decided to have another go at the Buffets, with the Paris buffet being widely regarded as the best value for money. Again we had wildly underestimated the waiting time involved for a buffet with the line this time being about 200 metres long outside the restaurant. We drank instead, getting a few freebies from the 1 cent slots, and went out for dinner at Mon Ami Gabi, a French themed but clearly American run and priced casino restaurant. The cheap steaks, $23 each, disappointed James, Jo and Haydn, being a poor cut of meat beaten flat into submission and covered in a uninspiring bearnaise sauce. The expenso steak, a $39 Rib Eye enjoyed by Myself, was brilliant! We ate, gambled, got some more free drinks and had a good time.

29^th December 2009

Learning to gamble in Vegas is a bit like learning to drive in Bangkok. It may be possible, but there will be more casualties than success stories. It is more of a place for experts at the top of their game. At least in Vegas it is only money that is at risk. But if you can find the right teacher then anything is possible, and so it proved with our team versus the Golden Nugget.

We tried for $1.49 breakfast at the really shit looking Best Western motel down from our hotel but we got there about 5 minutes after they switched to the lunch menu so we left and thought let's head to Downtown, which a bit paradoxically, is actually uptown from the strip. "To the Palms!" declared Michelle to the taxi driver with all the authority of a Melways author. Unfortunately for us the Palms is neither downtown nor at the Strip, being in its own little satellite casino complex west of the strip. We realised we were heading the wrong way as we got over the Interstate and confirmed with the driver that the Palms was not downtown and we in fact wanted to head to the Plaza. It was pretty funny and "To the Palms!" eased into our lexicon, describing the enthusiastic embrace of incorrect information.

Time for the lessons. Popping into the Golden Nugget we finally hit the tables, starting with roulette. We cashed in $20 for chips, everyone picked a number and lo and behold the 29 popped up with Zaidee's $1 chip sitting on it. We won! $35 in the pocket and we thought lets have another go, so everyone picked another number. I got on 12 because I thought that was Chase's birthday and we came up trumps again! Another $35 in the sky rocket and, knowing when enough was enough, cashed out and set about losing our winnings. With no $5 blackjack tables to tempt us, we ended up asking a few craps dealers that were standing around not doing much how to play. With our dealer more or less playing for us, we learnt the basics – roll the dice. 7 is good to begin with and then bad after that. 2, 3 and 11 are bad to begin with and harmless later on. The others are harmless to begin with but make the money. With expert instruction from the dealer - “ok, now give me $5. Put $6 there. Give me another $10” we won a few times, then we lost a few times probably losing half of our newly found roulette winnings, due in no small part to Shell's inability to throw the dice on the table. The pit boss to Michelle - “This table cost us $40,000 and you keep throwing the dice on the shitty floor”.

But cometh the hour, cometh the man. Haydn stepped up to the dice and rolled us to victory and beyond. By the time he lost the throw we had turned our $40 into $329 which was a pretty good, with our half share of the winnings putting my lifetime gambling balance firmly into the black. With our ill gotten gains we headed to the outlet mall and spent up big on sunglasses, watches and high end audio equipment.

Now we had a big night planned with dinner at the Seafood and Sushi Buffet, and tickets to see the Black Eyed Peas at Mandalay Bay. We finished off our shopping extravaganza at about 5 and thought “we'll just get a quick cab”, however the other 400 people that had the same idea at the same time were preventing us from getting on with the night so we ended up running for the bus, which we made and got home in time for a quick shower, which would have been really nice had there been any hot water.

The buffet was as expected, except there was no line which gave us a bit of a shock. There was tons of sushi and sashimi, many cooked delights and some very strange little crème brulee things for desert. There were these giant crab claws that looked good but didn't actually taste that nice and even some non seafood and sushi buffet standards like roast turkey and teriyaki chicken. We ate till we were full and then ate a little more and then had some desert, after which it was time to hit the Black Eyed Peas.

They were awesome. I was surprised just how many of their songs I knew almost by heart, which was pretty much all of them. The stage had a cool light and laser show and there was a sort of catwalk stage which allowed those of us in general admin on the floor to almost get dripped on by the singers sweat. It also afforded a very good view of Fergie's legs, which are pretty sweet. So it would have been a very good gig even if they had of just sang their songs and danced around, but they didn't. Nope, the best bit was when Will-I-Am walked out onto the catwalk bit alone as a mixing deck appeared from the stage. He asked “Do y'all mind if I turn this into a club for a bit” and proceeded to whip the crowd into a frenzy while his DJ deck raised up into the sky. It was pretty cool, iced with some Chilli Peppers and Sweet Child O'mine.

After the gig we had a look around Mandalay Bay and then headed over to Luxor to have a drink. Now Luxor is exceptional, even for Vegas. It is a giant pyramid maybe 35 storeys high lined with black glass, topped with a super powerful spotlight shining from the apex. Most unbelievably, they have managed to make it look like council flats on the inside, all grey concrete. After our beers we were all a bit sleepy so we went outside to grab a cab back to the hotel, where a limo had just dropped some people. The driver came over to us and said “Hey look, you guys don't want 2 taxis, just come with me. I'll take you for $50”. We cunningly negotiated asking for $40, to which he countered with $45. Fine we said, $40 with a $5 tip and it was agreed – and we had our limo ride down the strip! Pretty funny. Unfortunately there was no sun roof for us to hang out of the top of but it was still a perfect way to top off a big day.

30^th December 2009

Outside of pursuits founded on very adult vices, Vegas' location in the middle of a vast desert means there is some amazing scenery very close to hand. Today was all about the car. We had planned to pick up a car, head off to Hoover Dam, drive over and check out Red Rock Canyon and then perhaps take it some sort of magic show that involved tigers. I went down and sorted out the car at 8:15 and we met up with everyone at 9 and drove straight down the strip. We stopped for some photos at the “Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas” sign then got on the freeway heading for the Hoover Dam. I managed to get off the freeway straight away and we had to do the mother of all u turns but we finally got heading the right direction. We stopped off for Maccas breakfast in some far flung Vegas suburb – Shell had a McBiscuit which was a strange scone thing and I had a McGriddle which was a rather disgusting pancake contraption. Sufficiently greased up we headed back onto the freeway and were making great time until we hit the 6 mile traffic jam that apparently constantly surrounds the Hoover Dam. We sat in that for an hour or so until we finally got to see the dam. Unfortunately we didn't see Megatron but we did see a gigantic concrete structure which is pretty impressive.



Surprisingly it isn't vertical; it almost looks like you could skateboard down it albeit very quickly with a pretty sudden stop at the end. We oohed and ahhed it the dam for a while and then got back in the car and drove back to Vegas. We stopped off at In and Out burger for lunch – Double by Double Animal Style – with the half of the Vegas tourists that weren't in the casinos and then decided we better sort out some tickets if we wanted to see a show in the evening.

We had some basic requirements for seeing a Vegas show:

1. It had to be tonight

2. It was relatively cheap

3. It would contain some kind of magic and or illusions

4. It would have some tigers

So we rocked up at the half price ticket booth and lo and behold “The Magic and Tigers of Rick Thomas” was simply screaming at us. We bought our VIP tickets (there weren't any normal ones left) which entitled us to hang around after the show, meet Mr Thomas and pat the tigers, and had it sorted, as well as some half price tickets to dinner at the Planet Hollywood casino. Buzzing with excitement we headed off to get some more desert scenery at Red Rock Canyon, which is a canyon with some very red rocks. Luckily for us it was America so there really wasn't any need to get out of the car to see it, we just drove around the scenic drive. Pressed for time we headed back to the Strip in a rather roundabout fashion, taking in a grand tour of Las Vegas freeways.

So it was time for “The Magic and Tigers of Rick Thomas” at the Sahara. There were dancing girls. There was magic, sort of. There were tigers, briefly. There was way too much of Rick Thomas. It was also total rubbish. His magic consisted of hiding things up some very large sleeves while they 'disappeared' and then magically 'reappeared' which was actually him taking it out of his sleeve. The tigers, which looked really cool, ran across the stage. Apart from one time where a tiger kind of stood up next to him, that was it. Just running from left to right over the stage along a wire. Complete crap, but it was exactly what we were after, although I had did have trouble staying awake. We did not take up the offer of meeting with either Rick Thomas or the tigers. Back down the strip for our dinner which left me with another interesting experience, this time food poisoning.

31^st December 2009

It was Grand Canyon scenic flight day and I woke up feeling sick, thinking 'I really need to spew'. After wandering around for a bit, I managed to get that out of the way and we all rendezvoused at Jo and James's room to sort out a venue for bringing in the new years. After much research including a couple of field trips, we decided on the Rum Jungle bar at Mandalay Bay that was $150 entry with all drinks included, which was about the best deal going for the night. We purchased the tickets and I thought some food will make me feel better, so we had a quick bite at the coffee shop . It did not make me feel any better and was back within less than an hour.

The scenic flight left from Boulder City airport which is down near Hoover Dam so we got picked up at about 1pm for our 3pm flight. I wasn't feeling super but at least I didn't feel like being sick again. At the airport I thought perhaps some sports drink will help me recover so I bought some powerade and sipped on that.

The flight was great. The Grand Canyon is amazing, just this monstrous crack in the earth. We approached from the west over Lake Mead, which is the lake formed behind Hoover Dam, and did a kind of hourglass pattern over the western edge of the Canyon. There's not much point in trying to describe something that your brain can't really comprehend when it sees it, suffice to say it is quite grand. Surprisingly there was quite a bit of snow on the edge of the cliffs and on the higher ground out to the east. My state did not improve during the flight.

As I got off the plane, the cold air hit me and unset the fine balance that had allowed me to remain kind of ok on the plane. I ran away from the plane and set off the biggest vomit in the history of vomits, with many loud man sized “ARRRRRGGGH” bursts there was blue Powerade all over the tarmac. It was gross, however all the other passengers seemed to think it was quite funny.

The bus got us back to to the hotel about 5:30pm, doors at the club were around 8 or so leaving me 2 hours to have a bath and get some sleep/rest/recovery. Had I not paid $150 for the ticket I wouldn't have moved an inch all night however I dragged myself out of bed and we cabbed it down to the other end of the Strip. New Years is a pretty big deal in Vegas. They get something like 300,000 extra people head into town just for the couple of days, close off the strip to all traffic, turn off all the escalators(!) and have all of these dumb rules like no sitting and no glass.

So we hit Rum Jungle at Mandalay Bay like a Mack truck. Everyone was full of ideas about how I should approach things and we settled on a shot of rum for starters and if that sat ok then just crack on. It turned out to be sage advice. My stomach was calmed and we proceeded to work our way through the $150 worth of booze. It was a funny night, improved no end be our pretty embarrassing attempts to copy the black girls dancing which is something else indeed. Haydn came out with the best effort, making a bit of a spectacle of himself as he got down low to the beats. Crowd watching proved especially entertaining as there were all sorts in the club doing all sorts of things. Fat old guys clearly there with some “hired help” who were dirty dancing at 9pm, a couple of white trash bogans in trackie dacks who were cutting it up on the dance floor which unfortunately James did not manage to get on film and some very boisterous african american women with booty who were shaking it for all it was worth. All in all it was very entertaining.

We hit the strip for the fireworks which were good, but we all got distracted by a camera and took many photos of varying quality. As we headed back to the club the girls got waylaid by some flashing lights and turned up about 30mins later all giggling and very excited, which more or less typified the night. We managed to jump the very long taxi queue by getting a limo back up to the hotel and that was it. Well almost, Haydn needed to have a quick spew as we got out of the cab and also tried to souvenir a picture from the wall of the hotel which was fixed a little more effectively than he guessed and ended up ripping the frame apart and smashing the glass. Pretty funny stuff and no one got hurt or in trouble!

1^st January 2010

And finally it was time to go home. Finally, after a week managed to sit down for breakfast with Jo and James. After brekkie we all decided we should gamble what was left of our US dollars so we hit the Roulette table and won again! Maybe it was only $2 but we finished as winners. 17 hours of flying later and we were home in London having greatly enjoyed our time in Vegas. While it wasn't easy – i.e: getting food, getting around, getting a drink at a reasonable price – it was well worth the effort. New Years finally lived up to its billing as the biggest night of the year and we took the house to the cleaners on the tables so we were very happy.

Vegas for New Years

They say what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, but I don't subscribe to that and intend to relate the trip as fully as my memory and the laws of the United States will allow me. Flying from Heathrow we set out to Vegas on Boxing Day, hitting the Mirage casino right off the flight.

..Scene Missing..



..Scene Deleted..




..Scene Removed by casino security..



..Scene confiscated by Department of Homeland Security..

finally flying home on the 2nd, what a trip!