McDonald's gives Iceland the cold shoulder

The collapse of Iceland's economy from the arguably worse-than-Wall-Street shenanigans of Icelandic fishermen who woke up one day and became "bankers" and who are now likely fishermen again has deprived Iceland of more than just the integrity of its currency and the life savings of its citizenry: the monetary magic tricks and fiscal legerdemain have left the volcanic nation without access to Big Macs.

Citing soaring costs for imported beef patties and the plummeting value of the krona still kicking around in people's pockets, McDonalds closed its three Iceland franchises last month.

That's Adam and Dana, circa 1997, posing in front of the McDonald's in icy downtown Reykyavik. We'd just eaten a meal of burgers and fries because that was the cheapest food I could find in all of Iceland. Food prices -- along with the prices of everything except heat (geothermal energy Iceland's got aplenty -- notice the open McDonald's window, in February) were chokingly expensive.

Breakfast at our hotel was $28.00 per head. (I paid for me and spirited stuff out in my backpack for the kids...) Granted, that breakfast included herring and other luscious seafood, but when the first meal of the day costs $28.00 -- and this was 12 years ago -- you can guess what lunch and dinner ran. And going into a grocery store for provisions helped not a whit, the store being stocked as it was with mundane items that had, despite their boring ordinariness, been imported by plane and ship at great expense, duly reflected in the astronomical retail price.

I am no fan of McDonalds, but I pity the poor Icelanders the loss of a place to get cheap food. I imagine rows of Reykyavikers lining the city piers holding baited poles, pulling up personal halibuts and slogging home through the gray slush to make fishwiches.

Fries with that? A sack of imported potatoes will set you back a day's pay. Ketchup? Forget it. Those good old days are gone.


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Greenland: The mother of all meltdowns

On this Earth Day, I offer a suggestion for those in power who deny or dodge the reality of global warming: Fly over Greenland.

It’s melting, and that thought, coupled with a view from the air of this unutterably vast icemass, will scare the pants off anyone who thinks continuing to mess around with the earth is no big deal.

The kids and I were flying home from Scotland, and our connecting flight out of Reykjavik, Iceland (photo) took us closer to the Arctic than I’d ever flown before in daylight. I saw the North Atlantic in her frigid, February glory, and, while most of what I saw awed me – gray-green swells lit yellow at their tops by a low, intense sun; tankers and trawlers riding the sickening crests of big-jawed waves; legions of slow-moving, near-frozen whitecaps decorating the black water like winter merinque – some of what I saw terrified me.

We were flying into daylight, and the air was cloudless and crystalline, so as we approached Greenland, every topographical detail jumped out in vivid, frightening relief. Chilled by the clarity of the scene, I gathered my fleece tighter around my shoulders.

When I spied snow-covered Greenland in the distance, I saw between it and us a huge expanse of tall, white structures seemingly built on a thin crust of ice in the gun-metal sea. I was surprised to see what I thought was a manmade community of ice-houses and buildings. But as we got closer, I saw they were behemoth blocks calved from icebergs, stuck in place by the sea, which was frozen solid for about a mile off Greenland’s coast. Nearer the coastline, icebergs as big as office buildings towered above and between waves that were frozen and unmoving. Here, the North Atlantic was a massive, unbroken ice sheet.

We crossed the coastline and began our flight over Greenland proper. Inland ran a range of mountains that looked soft and rounded because they were buried beneath years of thick, virgin drifts. Deceptively beautiful drifts whose depth and remoteness would swallow you silently and make you disappear. A cobalt-veined glacier tracked through the rolling snowscape.

After the coastal range, Greenland became a completely flat, white ice world. As far as you could see. Raw and never-ending. The stark, white, unbroken sheet ran hundreds of miles up to the curvature of the earth and, I knew, beyond... and beyond. The power of the place to intimidate was overwhelming. Then, more mountains, everywhere, infinitely, with giant, blue-fingered glaciers crawling through them. The glaciers’ ends were azure-tinged cliffs, hundreds of feet high.

White-ice Greenland went on for what felt like a lifetime, and I was eager to be away from it. While the kids drew Vikings in their notebooks – Adam’s were heavily armed, and Dana’s had names like “Viking Dog,” “Viking Cat” and “Kelly, the Viking Girl” – I began to feel queasy. Greenland was making me sick.

We’d been bumped to first class, so the flight attendants were attentive – and perceptive: “Excuse me. Would you like a cognac?” I’d never tasted cognac, but it sounded like just the thing to take the scary edge off Greenland.

As I sipped, I wrote this in my journal:

“Greenland has been going on forever. At least the last 45 minutes, and all through dinner. And I just looked at the route map. We are crossing but a minuscule speck of the mass that is Greenland. If this place ever melts, we’re all in big trouble.”


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Iceland: A very cool warm place

The U.S. Department of Energy predicts a 25.7% increase in home heating bills this winter. For my family, it’ll be ugly. Our front-gabled New Englander is a beauty, and we love her, but she’s three floors of uninsulated, 110-year-old walls with their attendant 110-year-old chinks, cracks and crevices. Baby, it’s cold inside.

In a normal year, which this isn’t, we see a gas bill or two that hovers around a grand. I gasp when I look at them. This year, I’ll probably go apoplectic before I even open January’s and February’s envelopes. I’ll feel the killer largeness of the numbers right through the paper. I’m already having thirteen-hundred-dollar nightmares. I’m sitting at a desk wrapped in Bob Cratchit stockings and scarves, writing a check by the flicker of light from a candle stub. An evil Scrooge voice laughs, “Yes! Thirteen-hundred dollars for hot air! For something you can’t even see!” I shiver and pass the check to the mean man.

Makes me want to move to Iceland, where it’s warm. There, heat, lots of it, is pumped from the earth. And it’s cheap.

I saw Iceland’s steaming, geothermal bounty before setting foot in the country. On our approach to Keflavik Airport, some 50 minutes from Reykjavik (above), I looked down on the powerful sight of jet black volcanic cliffs rising from the sea and topped in shimmering white ice and snow. Iceland looked like a gargantuan devil’s food cake sitting under layers of vanilla frosting.

Then, just beyond the airport, I saw steam. Massive billows of white-hot steam, gigantic and foamy and eerie, rising from a pool of aquamarine water. Round clouds puffing into blue air. Wispy jets trailing into crystalline air. Rising above and gathering around an industrial-looking building made of stacks and pipes and vents and silver tunnels of metal. This was the Blue Lagoon, Iceland’s premier bathing spot. It was February, in Iceland, but folks at the Blue Lagoon were outside, cavorting in Speedos and bikinis.

The Blue Lagoon is the runoff from the Svartsengi power plant, which pumps geothermally heated water from deep inside the earth. Mineral-rich and superheated to over 100 degrees Fahrenheit, the Blue Lagoon is one of Iceland’s key attractions and a stop on many tour company itineraries. Because it’s near Keflavik, many travelers make a Blue Lagoon pit stop on their way to or from the airport. If you’re flying budget-friendly Icelandair between the U.S. and Europe, you may have a Reykjavik layover long enough to allow for a quick dip in the Lagoon, so pack your swimsuit in your carry-on.

We spent several days in southern Iceland, and beautiful, hot geothermal energy played some role in most of our experiences. Our room at Reykjavik’s Hotel Loftleidir looked out onto an eerily beautiful blue-domed geothermal plant that looked like a futuristic mosque. There was a restaurant, too rich for my budget, atop the dome. We also had views of some of Reykjavik’s houses and apartment buildings. When they got too hot from all that ever-flowing geothermal heat floating around their homes, residents would open their windows to the winter air. A stunning sight to see, in a land of ice and snow, a row of windows open wide to invite the frigid air inside.

The geothermally heated water in the hotel’s indoor pool was too warm for lap swimming, but perfect for relaxing. A hint of sulfur hung in the air as the kids and I lolled in the sultry water with a group of very serious, reserved Nordic bathers (who found nothing amusing about the sight of Dana in swimmies and a Lion King bathing suit, but did crack a smile when the spa’s TV showed a news clip of a Dalmatian riding a bicycle).

We visited Hverageroi, a town that sits atop a geothermal vent. The Hverageroians have harnessed the cheap, abundant energy to create a thriving greenhouse industry that supplies the tomatoes and cucumbers that appear at every meal you eat in Iceland, breakfast included. A banana tree grows in Hverageroi, and it sits in a greenhouse called Eden.

When we came out of Eden, Adam bent down to inspect small plumes of steam coming up through cracks in the sidewalk. I touched the paving stones. You could have fried an egg on them. A billboard near Eden’s parking lot advertised “EARTH COOKING – and Coca Cola.”

In Iceland, the earth moves under your feet and keeps you in constant awe of its power. One morning at breakfast, a small quake shook our chairs for a few seconds, and later that day, as we waited for a bus in downtown Reykjavik, the bench we sat on took us for a tiny ride.

Our hotel was geothermally heated, and the subtle sulfur scent that lived in our room with us was mysteriously soothing. This wondrous heat from the earth wrapped around us like a luxury. We lay in our beds at night and listened to the sweet gurgle of water through pipes above our heads.

In the dark, Dana whispered, “The sound of the heat is like a lullaby.”


Travel lovers on your holiday list?

Iceland's banana tree

The kids thought they’d have a snow day today. I had a feeling they wouldn’t. They’ve had so many already this winter that they’ll be lucky if they’re free by the 4th of July... Some Boston-area towns have held or are threatening to hold classes on Saturdays to meet the state requirement that public school students get a full 185 days a year.

Last night around 10pm, Adam looked out the window at the raging whiteout and said, grinning hugely, “They haven’t even started to plow yet.” I warned against counting unhatched chickens and predicted that town officials would have roads and sidewalks cleared by morning. They did.

The world was a white wonderland at 5:30 this morning when I went outside to start digging out. The air was so cold it cut like a knife as it traveled from my nose and mouth to my lungs. Crisp, icy, like the color blue. The snow crunched and made a satisfying, grinding sound underfoot. The sound iceberg lettuce makes when you break it apart.

I shoveled my way down the walkway and stood in the street. The rising sun was just clearing the peak of the O'Briens' roof, and it threw a glorious orange-magenta blaze onto Reynolds Street. The plows had packed the street snow down to a hard, sparkling, mother-of-pearl surface. My neighbors were still in bed, and I had the white world to myself. Fences and tree limbs, porches and eaves, yards and driveways sat draped in a pure, crystalline coat. It looked like Iceland.

Winter can be harsh and brutal, but days like today and places like Iceland let the season show its other face – clean, fresh, unsullied, intense, brilliant.

A few years ago, on a day like this when cold and light and crispness become animate forces that bite and pierce and penetrate, I joined a day tour that started in Reykjavik, Iceland and traveled through a winter world of staggering beauty. I scrambled up the lip of extinct Kerio Volcano and peered into its ancient, snow-filled crater. I took in the icy massiveness of still active Mt. Hekla, which commanded the horizon for miles. I bought handmade red glass earrings from an artisan in Hverageroi, a geothermal town that’s harnessed the energy it sits on and created a greenhouse industry that supplies Icelanders with tomatoes and cucumbers year round. (A banana tree grows in Iceland, and I have a picture to prove it.) I stood on the wooden walkway overlooking Gulfoss, Europe’s largest waterfall, parts of it thundering and rushing down the canyon, other parts suspended into dreamlike ice sculptures of epic proportions. In the Geysir region, the hot spring Strokkur, Iceland’s Old Faithful, blew its steaming insides far into the cobalt sky.

And between sites, I sat in my front row bus seat and watched Icelandic ponies run free along the road. Their breath formed clouds as they cantered ahead of us.

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