traveling food

i couldn't leave our trip without discussing the great food we had on our trip. for months beforehand i was craving the gyros and gelato we were going to have, while tommy had a good long list of the danish food he was looking forward to after the long hiatus since his mission. so we had many great food plans.

UNFORTUNATELY, the food in both iceland and denmark is terribly, terribly expensive! while we knew this in theory beforehand, it was still shocking to us when we realized we would be paying $30-$40 for every meal while we were there. this stopped us from trying whale and puffin in iceland (both around $50 a plate) but we still ate some very good food. we were glad to go to france where we could buy all our food from the crepe stands that charged the decent price of six euros for a crepe. (normally, i would have felt bad about spending that much on crepes for dessert, but not after being in scandinavia.) luckily for us, we generally had cheap breakfasts--we went to a grocery store in iceland and bought some muffins, while we were in denmark our hotels generally included breakfast (a FANTASTIC breakfast at some places), and we feasted on one-euro baguettes for breakfast every morning in paris.

our first dinner in iceland, we ate at a place called "icelandic fish and chips." it was RIGHT on the harbor--they catch the fish and bring it in and serve it. tommy even liked it, despite his anti-seafood leanings (we try and get along even though we do not have this in common). the second night we were there we ate at a thai restaurant, which was good but didn't really deserve a picture.

this is the aforementioned hut on the side of the cliff where we ate fish soup that we paid an arm and a leg for. it was really good though, and a great food experience. hellllooooo, iceland!

and then we quickly jump to denmark. here we are enjoying smorrabrod, the danish open-faced sandwiches that tommy always talks about.

and of course we had many, many danish pastries. um, so, so SO good!

no, this is not a traditional danish meal. this is a traditional MISSIONARY meal--a seven-eleven hot dog. my dad was so excited to try it. (tommy really wanted it though. this was even an actual seven-eleven he used to frequent while he was serving in this area.)

we introduced austin to the magic of magnum bars, and stopped at least four times to get them. the kind store owner here took our picture for us, without us even asking him to.

we spent our whole time in denmark trying to find a traditional danish restaurant with REAL DANISH FOOD that tommy kept talking about. turns out there aren't very many of those, and the ones that are in existence are very expensive. but our last night in copenhagen we found one and tommy and my dad got to try all the danish food they had been desiring. and i got my frikadeller like i'd wanted all along.

this is an example of us eating some of the amazing breakfasts that we got at our hotels. they put the continental breakfasts of american hotels to SHAME. and did you even KNOW that they sold nutella in tiny butter-pad sized packets? can you believe it???
and then on to france! it's pretty much just crepe,
after crepe,
after gelato,
after crepe.
but we also had many gyros (that i love love LOVE).

and even a giant hot dog sausage thing at a mini swap meet thing right next to the eiffel tower.

oh! i miss those crepes! oh, it was all so good. good thing we have a crepe maker (that we DEFINITELY need to use more) and thank goodness that america sells nutella for us to enjoy to our heart's content.

iceland: cold, wet, and amazing

well, we're still on our trip and not getting home for another five days, but we had some down time in our hotel tonight so i thought i would share some pictures with all you oh so curious readers out there.

the first four days of our trip were in iceland. we checked the weather beforehand and it was supposed to be about 55 degrees the whole time we were there, so we were THIS CLOSE to not bringing any type of rain gear, jeans, or sweatshirts. luckily we did, because it rained/blew/froze on us the whole time we were there. and that was apparently the normal summery weather they have there. we laughed the whole time about how dumb we almost were to almost not bring warm clothes, because we then would have had to spend hundreds of dollars on icelandic sweaters to save us from hypothermia. (and although i did really want an icelandic sweater, i think i'll save that as a souvenir for next time we go there. they were REALLY expensive.)

however, it was SO COOL (in more ways than one, hahaha) to go to iceland and see the land of my ancestors. and i learned some really cool things about it while i was there. mostly i was impressed by the fact that they survived in a place like that. everywhere you drive outside of reykjavik, there are huge swaths of land just covered by volcanic rock, and you can just see where the lava flows were hundreds of years ago. and did you know that even just seventy years ago, iceland was still listed as a third-world country? it's only in the last generation that iceland has actually industrialized/caught up to the rest of us. but don't worry, they're about to shoot past us with their geothermal energy and clean water sources. (we saw a geothermal power plant--coolest thing ever.) their water that they use comes STRAIGHT out of the ground! as in, it doesn't even need to be heated or pressurized. they just bring it up from the hot spots and pipe it right into people's houses, already heated and already clean. it is amazing!

needless to say, ICELAND IS THE BOMB.

and now for a billion pictures:

the first morning we got there (after paying billions of icelandic kronur for two unnecessary taxi rides; we felt so foolish) we went to the blue lagoon, a natural hot spring that has been commercialized and turned into a spa. you pretty much have to go there if you're going to reykjavik though, so we did.

remember how i boasted that we were going to do in-water massages at the blue lagoon? well, turns out you shouldn't boast, because then you'll do something stupid like reserve the massage for the wrong month (like august 26 instead of july 26) and then you won't be able to do it. but we still had a good time at the blue lagoon anyways.

tommy so excited as we walked into the blue lagoon. (he was excited about the in-water massages that never happened. so sad.) look at those volcanic rocks behind him.
they had this mud stuff that comes up naturally from the floor of the lagoon and helps your skin. they let you use it for free at the lagoon and then charge 60 dollars for you to buy some at the end. we just brought an empty container and filled it up at the lagoon for future use. (someone said to on a website we read beforehand!)

this is in front of this nice lake in reykjavik. no caption needed.

in front of the reykjavik bay, right outside of the hostel we were staying at. (first time at a hostel!) we went on a nice walk around it. notice my iceland mittens i'm wearing because it was SO DANG COLD.

icelandic ponies kind of resembled 80s punk rockers.

in front of gullfoss, the biggest waterfall in iceland.

this was at geysir (pronounced gay-seer, as opposed to the american "geysir" or apparently british "geezer" as our tour guide kept pronouncing it). it was pretty much a mini-yellowstone with a geezer and some hot pots and whatnot.

tommy at thingvellir national park, where the first parliament in the world was held. once again, go iceland!

and now, for some icelandic scenery from our day where we rented a car and drove a bit up north to snaefellsnes peninsula to snaefellsnesjokull national park (just try pronouncing THAT why don't you?).

i wanted to catch those sheep (just in a picture!). they were wimps. they ran away everytime i got anywhere near them.

we went on a hike and ended up near this tiny little hut serving fish soup. we wanted to eat the soup. the soup cost more than the car rental. (not. but almost.) but we ate it anyways.

icelanders love leiningers!

THIS is the closest we got to the little island OFF iceland where my ancestors were from. flatey is just in the middle of this bay here, but you can't see it because it's like 100 kms away. there's actually a ferry that will take you to flatey, but we didn't know about it before we scheduled everything and it only goes out and comes back about once a day, so we missed it. but we wanted to drive over and say hi to my ancestors since we were already in the area.

the last thing we did that day of driving around was go to an icelandic shark farm (the home of the people who catch the shark, not that they grow them there) and partake of the icelandic delicacy of harkarl, the aged, rotted shark meat that they've been eating for centuries (or something). when the shark meat is fresh, it's poisonous, so some genius thought of burying the meat for four months and then hanging it up and letting it dry for eight more and then it's edible! who'da thunk? i'd heard many times about this stuff, and had really hoped to get a chance to try it. and we found a place last minute out near flatey and did it.

this is what i thought:

this is what tommy thought:

pretty much icelandic food is all kind of gross, or at least it's just not the type of food you'd regularly choose to eat if you had an option (rotted shark meat, boiled lamb's head, horse, puffin, whale... all those foods you eat when you're a starving nation with nothing else to live off of for centuries). but it was a novelty we had to try.

anyways, that was a massive post. i'll give you a few days to digest until i post about part 2 of our trip.

don't be too jealous

why, yes, we did just schedule an in-water massage at the blue lagoon in iceland.

we may be just getting TOO, TOO excited for this trip!

(thank you, vandenbergs, for, as always, being the ultimate example of how to travel in style.)

have i mentioned?

the next big thing we're thinking about in the leininger household is a trip to visit two of our favorite countries:

can you guess?

why yes. this summer we are planning on traveling to iceland and denmark for a few weeks.

why, you ask?

why not, we ask?

okay, there's more reason behind it than that. lindsay and travis, and mayah, asher, leif, and joel (tommy's sister and fam) are moving to denmark in august for a two-year stay. tommy conveniently speaks the language, lived in copenhagen, and loves the country, so we volunteered to go along and help them out with their four little ones and their international move. and we figured that we couldn't go that close to iceland without actually going there. i might get kicked out of the myres family if we didn't go. (have i mentioned how we love iceland? oh yes. i have.)

we figured that even though we don't really have the money now, we'll never have the money. so we're going to go while we have the time and enjoy ourselves. and we are so excited!

the geography of bliss

read this book. read it now.

the author travels to 10 different countries to try and discover why the people there are happy (or why they're not). he's pretty dang funny and it's an easy and fun read. i'm loving it. it makes me want to travel a LOT.

the best part about this book is that it has A CHAPTER ABOUT ICELAND! because iceland is consistently one of the happiest countries in the world. AND he talks about how icelanders love their books (probably the major reason why i am a book-kleptomaniac. my icelandic heritage). i want to go to iceland so. bad. too bad tommy doesn't have any icelandic heritage that we could find so we're having a hard time applying to the iceland summer program for 2011. we're going to keep trying though. promise.

iceland days.

i am proudly icelandic. i took icelandic 101. my entire extended family loves iceland. and today we proved it by going to ICELAND DAYS in spanish fork, utah, and celebrated our heritage with all the other icelanders in utah. we went with my grandma myres and our cousins, the holladay myres. here is proof of our icelander pride.

we asked megan to take a picture of us with the icelandic flag.

the myres kids really liked the icelandic sheep.

we visited the icelandic memorial in spanish fork.

we ate authentic icelandic food... and it wasn't even that gross.

so yeah, we enjoyed ourselves. we also found out that the icelandic association will send people with icelandic heritage TO ICELAND for six weeks and the icelandic government will pay for it. tommy and i are going to apply. thank you, iceland. we love you.