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[stusalgus]

Washington

We arrived in Washington at 7ish PM local time, and we expected to get to our Airport hotel quickly, have a bite to eat, and have an early night. Instead we were stuck in passport control for an hour and a half. Now to be fair I've experienced this misery in other airports (Heathrow and LAX are examples that spring to mind), and fairly or unfairly it always leaves me resenting the country that can't put enough staff on to handle busy times. It was 2am Reykyavik time and we were pretty exhausted, esp poor old Angus. Luckily we had wifi, or we would have started rioting.

Eventually we made it through, and shambled our way out of the airport and then for one stop on the metro. We came out at a creepy business park and checked in to our creepy Hyatt Park and slept in an enormous if slightly tired room.

We then retired for the night.

14 April

Back in America, we had a buffet breakfast where we ate a large quantity of not-quite food (a stark contrast to our fare in Iceland, I can tell you), before jumping on a bus to the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy branch of the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, Situated out the back of Dulles Airport. this hangar boasts several treasures: an Air France concorde, an SR-71 Blackbird reconaissance plane, and the space shuttle Discovery. Also there is the Enola Gay: subject of the OMD song and also the plane that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.

We arrived 20 minutes before opening, and about ten minutes to go the coaches started arriving and disgorging punters. By the time of opening there was a big queue. Luckily we got to be at the front. We were told to expect airport-style security but after passing through a metal detector we were told to keep walking, and so we did, all the way to the concorde. It was maybe another ten minutes before other visitors reached us; so, very briefly, we had the place to ourselves.

The highlight for me was the Discovery. It was lit reverently, like a kind of secular sacred object. Everything about looked super iconic.

After the museum we caught the bus back to our hotel, picked up our bags and caught the metro into DC proper. We checked in to an apartment - essentially a large hotel room with kitchen - a motel room, essentially, except we didn't have a car.

We went on a stroll to a Walgreens supermarket to buy some food for dinner. We went a few blocks south of our hotel into a residential area lined with trees populated by squirrels. The late afternoon sun streamed down and it was a balmy 25 degrees. There were large apartment blocks that seemed well kept. If the architecture felt a bit Thorndon the vibe on the footpath was more Newtown, with a constant trooping of people who didn't seem to be very well off, or at all well. I was a bit confused by this, but I've had similar experiences in London so I'm guessing it's a case of different socio-economic segments living cheek by jowel.

The Walgreens was absolutely fascinating. Everything said about the dreadful state of US food is true. NZ supermarkets (and Iceland, I should add) provide a much better quality of fare. As for our dinner, the best we could find were frozen dumplings and noodles, which we took back to our hotel and cooked.

We then retired for the night.

15 April

Today we went to the National Zoo. The zoo opened at 8:30, so we caught the metro there early to beat the crowds and forecast heat. Unfortunately, this meant some of the animals hadn't bothered to get out of bed yet. What animals did we manage to see? Well:

An Asian Sloth Bear, relaxing in a hammock, arms behind its head

3x Indian elephants

2x 2-toed sloths

A couple of bison

A komodo dragon

A couple of orangutans, brachiating wildly

A lowlands gorilla mother and child (grumpy-looking silverback was around the corner taking a break)

A number of colourful frogs

A number of colourful stingrays

A sea lion or two

A family of spectacled bears (possibly from darkest Peru)

The animals that made the biggest impression on Sally and me were the elephants and the orangutans. Elephants strike me as both very ugly and graceful and charming animals. Orangutans feel like the sort of ape you could get along with, whereas (in my limited experience of animals in captivity only) gorillas seem standoffish and chimpanzees seem positiviely sinister.

The forecast was for 84 degrees, which is 28.9 celsius, and it got as high as 86 (30c) before there was a downpour and temperature was sacrificed for humidity. All this heat is a bit unseasonable, but it had been similar the previous day and I'd found it quite comfortable. Turns out the humidity in Washington (at least in April) is about half that of Wellington. So it was hot but not too uncomfortable, although I regretted wearing jeans. If this seems a bit excessive for mid spring, it is; it shouldn't be this hot until June.

We caught the metro back into town and ate at a Korean restaurant while the heavens opened. We then sauntered and sweltered to the National Archive, home to the three founding documents of the United States: the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. The Archive building is a stunning piece of classical architecture. In fact the whole of Washington seems to be an architectural attempt to resurrect the Roman Republic. The room containing the three sacred documents was awash with punters trying to simultaneously see the documents and and read material explaining them. The docs themselves are practically illegible - the ink on them has faded and the room is kept dark to preserve them. I tried to explain what that the constitution made everyone equal and then satirically whispered "except the slaves", and then became uncomfortably aware of the armed black guard standing right next to me, and wondered if what I'd said had caused any affront. Oh, probably.

After an aeon spent waiting for Sally and Angus to peruse the giftshop, we made our way back to our hotel to cool down in the pool.

We then retired for the night.

16 April

We blitzed an early trail up to the Capitol, for a tour. The building is still infamous for its storming by furious Trump supporters on January 6 2021. Everything was running more smoothly today, however. The sky was clear and the neoclassical marble shone brilliantly. We went quickly through airport-style security (one of these days when I pull my belt off, my pants are gonna fall down) and on into a group ushered about the small number of rooms we were able to visit (ie not the senate or house chambers) by a handle-bar moustachioed fellow named Danny. He had a winning combination of informativeness, irreverance, and a penchant for what my son considers to be "dad jokes", but which I found to be funny and insightful.

The chief treasure of the Capitol is its rotunda, which has a ceiling fresco featuring George Washington being ushered into heaven. It's a scene that's slightly comical. At ground level the rotunda contains statues of former presidents, including that jolly old salesman Ronald Reagan, and… Gerald Ford (why??).

I guess it was a conscious decision, but not only does the Capitol evoke Roman architecure, but it is set up to be a kind of temple. Danny mentioned that the original idea was to bury Washington under the rotunda, with the ceiling fresco implying he was becoming a god. Luckily Washington nixed that idea and was buried on his estate. It's a weird contradiction - the union being set up with a separation of church and state, yet the Capitol's architecture suggests a desire to create a sort of state religion.

I should add that on top of the capitol dome stands a statue of the personification of freedom. There's a copy of the statue in the visitors' centre, which looks pretty goofy: Lady Freedom has a stricken eagle on her head, and there's a circle of stars around her head, like she's suffered a concussion. Her wide-eyed expression doesn't help any.

After the tour it was down a tunnel and into the Library of Congress. More classical columns and whatnot. Apparently the library was Thomas Jefferson's idea to cement learning into the new nation, and the building is a temple to knowledge. Showing a confidence in Western Civilisation sadly lacking today, a ceiling panel in the building has America as the end stage of a march of personifications of different civilisations, starting with Ancient Egypt, through the Greeks and Romans, and eventually leading to America.

Enough of the propoganda! The two most stirring objects we saw were a Gutenberg bible and a very incomplete map of the world from the early 16th century.

Our next port of call was the Whitehouse visitors centre. As non-US citizens we couldn't get within coee of the Whitehouse proper, so we had to make do with a small museum across the road. The chief excitement was Gus being inducted as junior National Park Service ranger by filling out a questionaire and having to recite an oath.

At 3pm we found ourselves at the Washington monument. Apparently the fresco depicting Washington's apotheosis wasn't deemed a sufficient expression of gratitude to the General, and the world's tallest obelisk needed to be erected in addition. We caught a lift up 500 feet and peeped out of windows on each of the four sizes. I haven't mentioned until now, but Washington D.C. is laid out on a very large scale (makes for a lot of trudging), so being up 150m was a good way to take it in. Before going up in the elevator I learned the unsettling fact that the memorial is the world's largest freestanding stone building, with no steel reinforcing. I thought "luckily there's no earthquakes here", only to learn at the top that the monument had indeed been damaged by an earthquake in 2011.

After a bit of debate we decided to finish the day with a tour of the nearby Museum of American history. After professing little interest in the museum, Angus was (lamentably) enthused to discover lots of exhibits of weapons used in various wars. I found the museum a bit piecemeal; it didn't really tell a single coherent story. Perhaps we would have found something more resonant at the Museum of African American History, only we didn't want to be made depressed.

We then retired for the night.

17 April

Nasa's Washington headquarters are across the road from us, and it has a small visitor centre, so first thing we went and had a look. The focus was on earth science observations, one of the least exciting (but most urgent) tasks Nasa performs. There were some nice data visualisations, and a system that projectied our shapes on the wall in psychedelic fashion.

After about 20 minutes of all that we walked up the road to the Natural History Museum. This is perhaps the heart of the Smithsonian Institution and Angus and I were looking forward to it. We enjoyed the various classic skellingtons: mastodon, woolly mammoth, giant ground sloth, T-Rex, diplodicus, stegosaurus, allorsaurus… the usual. There was similar, welcome emphasis on pre-Dinosaur times ('cos of climate change the end-Permian extinction seems to be prominent in these museums). So how did it compare with the Field museum. Well, I enjoyed the Field museum more, but I suspect that's more to do with the hordes of demented school children boiling through the museum than any qualitative difference between the two. I will say though, I'm growing tired of tying evey climatic event in Earth's geophysical history to current climate change. It's a subjective gripe, but: I GET IT; I don't need to hear it again (and again). But I guess a museum needs to view each visit as the punter's first (and perhaps only) time being exposed to these ideas.

We went upstairs to the gem collection and had a gander at the Hope Diamond. I have to say I was expecting something bigger. Elsewhere we looked at shiny rocks and dodged numerous urchins. An autistic kid started screaming; we hurriedly made for the exit. One more detail: there was a life-size megalodon dangling in the cafeteria.

We had lunch at the pavilion cafe in the National Gallery of Art sculpture garden (highlight: a bit of optical illusory fun by Ray Lichtenstein). We had a bit of time before our next event so we went to the Hirshorn Museum. The titular Hirshorn was fabulously wealthy and had an excellent collection of 20th Century masters. There was also an installation by Laurie Anderson. Outside the museum there was a sculpture garden featuring a bunch of Rodin, Henry Moore, and a Barbara Hepworth.

After the Hirshorn we marched north to Planet Word, a museum about words and the features of language, conveyed through three floors of interactive exhibits. Against Washington's august and worthy museums this might seem a slight proposition, but the exhibits are well conceived, esp a "song gallery" in which patrons could sing various songs and also learn the language features that make for good song lyrics. We heard some kids deliver an effective rendition of Shake it Off (Taylor Swift, doncherknow), followed by an appalling attempt at Johnny Cash's Ring of Fire by some adults who should be ashamed!

Another highlight was Gus getting to read autocue and deliver an inspiring piece of Obama rhetoric, while Sally and I gave a stirring performance of Kennedy's "ask not what your country can do for you" speech.

Planet Word closed and we shifted next door to Planet Word was a restaurant called Immigrant Food. It was Happy Hour, and we happily ordered a series as dinner. The most remarkable item were Venezualan Tequenos, a small piece of cheese that wrapped in dough and deep fried. Bueno!

We then retired for the night.

18 April

We were a bit more leisurely in the morning, as we had to check out of our hotel. Sally booked two hotels for our Washington stay, the second just a block along from the first. The "Residence Inn by Marriot" that we've been staying in has been pretty good, but we've paid a premium for that, so to split the difference we moved to the Hyatt Place. We stayed at the same chain near Dulles Airport. It wasn't great. The new version is nicer, but I'm dreading breakfast tomorrow.

Across the road Nasa was celebrating Earth Day early, and had a number of scientists and activities as a kind of outreach. Once again we crossed the road, and spent the better part of an hour doing activities and learning, before making off with a good amount of free swag. Chatting to the scientists was interesting, and at times sobering, climate-wise.

A short stroll up the road brought us to the National Air and Space Museum. Having seen a lot of stuff at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy wing of the same museum, I wasn't expecting too much, but I found that while there was less room for planes, the supporting exhibits had a lot more information. And it should be said the museum does have some of the most sacred items of American aerospace: a Wright Flyer, the Apollo 11 and Freedom 7 space capsules, and the Spirit of St Louis (which I have to confess I didn't manage to spot). The biggest shock and awe though was the gallery about solar system exploration, in which information was densely packed into numerous screens among many model probes.

More astonishing still was that in the giftshop Angus ran into his school- (and rockband-) mate Crawford, and family. What are the chances?! We had a slightly stunned conversation with his parents and traded tips about New York and Chicago.

After this shock we left the museum and returned to our lodgings for a rest. At 5 we went back out to go memorial hunting on the eastern end of the National Mall. We caught the metro to Foggy Bottom (hur hur!) and progressed past the notorious Watergate Complex, dodged the Kennedy Center, then intersected with the Einstein memorial. The physicist's statue captures him well, I think, but also manages to make him into a Disney character - he reminded me of the Disney Winnie the Pooh (if that makes any sense??).

After that we saw the Vietnam war memorial, before turning Sharply right to visit the Lincoln memorial. The elegant building is being renovated looking a bit awful, but the Great Man was safe inside. I like that they portray him seated, looking a bit knackered. Makes him sort of otherworldly. If the Capitol and Washington's monument were intent on sending George to the heavens, Lincoln's memorial makes his assassination feel akin to the crufifixion. Well, maybe. There are two of Lincoln's speeches on each side wall. One is the speech he made at his seond inauguration, which is a bit wordy, despite starting out saying he didn't have much to say. The Gettysburg Address on the other wall is much more to the point.

After Lincoln we visited the Korean War memorial, and then Martin Luther King's. I feel like perhaps King could have done with his own temple, like Lincoln got, but not yet, anyway.

We decided to leave the Roosevelt and Jefferson memorials for another day. We had booked in for the Library of Congress's late night Thursdays, and we had about 20 minutes to get to the other end of the mall in time to see a performance by the avant garde Kronos Quartet. After having no luck with Lyft we decided to Uber it. I don't think we've Ubered in NZ, and it was definitely a first for us in the US, but it seemed to work well.

We rushed into the Library, had bite to eat in about three minutes and dashed downstairs for the performance, only to find that we hadn't booked the Kronos at all (the tickets were a bit ambuguous). Instead we were permitted to sit in a side roon while remaining seats were granted based on a lottery, for which all the tickets had already been given out. We did wait long enough to hear the first song: a rollicking string quartet rendition of House of the Rising Son, before Sally suggested we leave and get an early night in.

We walked back to our hotel on a warm spring evening. The streets were empty and the surrounds, though a bit bureaucratic, were also peaceful. Very nice.

We then retired for the night.

19 April

We rocked out and visited the Spy Museum. It seemed a touch frivolous compared to the august institutions we'd been visiting, but it was genuinely informative. There was also a collection of James Bond vehicles which I watched with misty-eyed nostalgia.

On the way to the food court we bumped into Crawford and family, who were on their way to the spy museum. I think they're off to Chicago and we're off to New York, so not sure if we'll rendezvous a third time.

After lunch we went to the National Gallery, which houses a vast collection of artworks. I reckoned we'd get more value out of the east wing, which hosts modern art, so we went there first. The building was designed by I.M. Pei, and a bit like Frank Gehry's building for the Bilbao Guggenheim, the architecture rather overshadows the artwork. It doesn't help that the building is structured around a large atrium, with galleries situated in the corners, so when you explore it you're always wondering "where's the art?".

The west wing is nothing but art, and the galleries are so labyrinthine that I frequently lost track of where I was. Sally and Angus left early to climb the Postal Service pavilion, while I tried to cover as much ground as I could. I followed my usual plan: pay close attention to the Renaissance, and the Dutch Republic, stride quickly through the baroque and the French academic painting, then pay close attention to Turner and other Romantics (though ignoring all the sentimental Victorian crap), before romping home with the Impressionists.

I largely followed this plan, though I did also pay some attention to American art, esp the early Presidential portraiture (and the odd Whistler) - but if I'm honest I have a feeling I only saw 2/3 to 3/4 of the gallery. I could have done it more justice if it had been first thing in the morning, but by mid afternoon I was getting museum fatigue. I made my way back to the hotel, where I was joined by Sally and Gus, who reported the lift in the pavilion broke down and they had to walk down nine flights. The only thing worse would have been to walk up!

For dinner we made our way to The Wharf, a fancy waterside development containing strange-shaped, glass-faced apartment buildings with restaurants on the ground floors. We dined at Mason's Lobster Rolls, which I'd glass as a fancier (and tastier) McDonald's. Down the road there was a Gordon Ramsay's fish and chips, which didn't seem too promising, but said chippie was heaving with punters. Rule Brittania!

The Wharf seemed to be quite a successful piece of urban renewal; unlike in New Zealand enough money had been thrown at it not to make it feel cheap and half-arsed. We caught a free (free!) shuttle back to L'Enfant metro station, and walked back to our hotel.

We then retired for the night.

20 April

This morning we made our way to Union Station to catch a train to Baltimore. Fans of the Wire would find this an odd choice of tourist destination, but we were going there to meet Sally's cousin Albert, who would conduct us on a visit to the National Aquarium. The train ride took about an hour and we met Albert outside the station.

Although there were plenty of sharks and rays and turtles on offer at the aquarium, two of the biggest highlights were puffins (another Sally favourite) and another two-toed tree sloth in an area devoted to rainforest wetland. There were also dolphins. Albert explained to me that in line with other aquaria there were no longer dolphin shows, which I took to mean there were no dolphins. Happily, the dolphin tank did indeed contain dolphins, and we happened to be there just in time for feeding. When being fed the animals performed tricks, along with spontaneous leaps and other wheezes, so it was hard to say that we weren't watching a show. We were certainly entertained. I guess you can't force intelligent animals not to do tricks.

After this we went to a seafood restaurant that specialises in crab cakes, which we ordered. Said cakes were the size of a baseball and rather rich (felt a bit sorry for all the crabs who died to make them, to be honest; tasted great though!). We had a good chat with Albert. He's a molecular biologist doing work on mutated proteins created/used by cancer cells. The plan is to develop therapies from them. He also told us he had an experiment to crystallise proteins taken up into space in the hope that the desired crystallisation would occur more readily in zero gravity. I was extremely impressed and urged Angus to take note that we were in the presence of a Scientist.

After lunch we parted with Albert and caught the train back to D.C. There was enough sun left to tick off the monuments of Franklin Roosevelt and Thomas Jefferson. Roosevelt's was a sprawling affair, more landscape gardening than memorial, featuring waterfalls, trees, rocks. There was a statue of FDR at one end though, and wife Eleanor got one too.

Thomas Jefferson's marble columned temple was a more straightforward affair, set up more like Lincoln's. We also got a look in at the cherry trees (sadly out of blossom season), and also saw the water overflowing the path by the Tidal Basin in several places. Apparently the water is rising due to climate change and new flood protection will have to be built.

With the sun setting we wandered back to our hotel.

We then retired for the night.

21 April

We started a chilly morning by travelling out to Arlington National Cemetary. Interestingly, despite being only over the potomac river (ie just beyond the Lincoln Memorial), it's outside the D.C. boundary, making it across the state line (sounds much more dramatic) in Virginia.

The cemetary contains thousands upon thousands of war dead from numerous conflicts. (It certainly puts the military plot in Karori cemetary to shame.) We took perhaps the most minimal path possible, taking in the JFK (and Jackie) memorial, with its eternal flame; the Challenger and Columbia space shuttle memorials; and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. This last has a guard of honour that happened to be changing when we wandered by. This ritual required a lot of meticulous stepping and crisp heel clacking, and much rifle shouldering. As I said to Sally, if it was a Japanese I would be nodding and stroking my chin with interest; as it's an American custom I thought it was a bit silly.

Still feeling cold we went back down the hill. Quite by chance I happened to spot to headstone of the late supreme court justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg (it helps to have a Star of David on your headstone rather than the much more common crucifix).

We caught the metro back across down to Eastern Market. (I should say something about the DC metro. It's one of the best mass transit systems I've been on. Clean, frequent, fairly inexpensive, with nice gleaming carriages and brutalist concrete stations, its nigh-on perfect.)

Eastern Market is at the backend of Capitol Hill and is unspeakbly twee, and I say that as someone who has been to the Havelock North Sunday market. As an example, NZ markets normally have stalls vending hippie/bogan tie-dyed shirts, crystals, scented candles, and maybe posters of Bob Marley smoking weed. There was none of that here, only tasteful African ornaments, bespoke hummus, and other bourgeois fancies.

We went into a 150 year old food hall and bought some gimbap (Korean sushi), an okomonoyake (cabbage and noodle omelette) from an Asian vendor; and a cinnamon twist, chocolate croissant and walnut brownie from a baker. Everything was delicious. Everything!

Significantly fortified by this food we zipped back across town to Renwick museum. This contained contemporary American art which was predominantly by women, and had some sort of indigenous ethnic or political slant. I've become so jaundiced towards social-justice motivated art that I couldn't get into any of it; even the coloured fishing net plus lightshow installation about nothing more controversial than the Tohoku earthquake of 2011 made me sneer.

Sally enjoyed the museum. Angus was "hungry" (read: bored).

The Renwick was very adjacent to the White House, which we hadn't really gotten a good look at. We went out the back of it an took a picture. There were various protests going on. A group of climate protestors was rallying in support of some court case the Department of Justice weren't interested in. There was an old bloke supporting Palestine and another supporting Israel. (Further on there was a larger rally with lots of US and Israeli flags, presumably also in support of Israel. I don't know if Joe was aware of any of this, but everyone carried on like he could be. Secret Service agents stolled around the crowd, in uniforms paradoxically identifying them as secret.

Here's another thing I haven't mentioned: D.C. is awash with cops. Wandering through the city you're practically tripping over someone in uniform with a gun. Paranoid? Well, when you've had the Capitol stormed and a plane dropped on the Pentagon I guess you'd be a little paranoid too. I have to confess I've never felt more safe in a city (including Wellington) than I have in DC.

We strolled on to the World War II memorial. We'd managed to miss this one in previous memorial hunts, despite its size. It's plenty grand, but the memorial is somewhat overshadowed by its fountains, making the edifice feel more like a water park than a war memorial. (Must be lovely in summer, though.)

On from the memorial we wandered back to the southwest wharf to eat a lunch of Gordon Ramsay's fish and chips; the establishment that I'd been so rude about a couple of journal entries back. Sally had promised them to Angus for undertaking the long walk. They were ok, but sticking a chef's name on a chippie is a bit misleading, I reckon.

After that we walked home.

This is the end of our time in Washington. I had a pretty good time here, and while didn't see absolutely everything we could have, I think we did a decent job getting a feel for the place in eight nights. Washington is a fairly abnormal city: it's got the cultural baggage of London, Rome, or Paris but in a city with a population of only 600k. It's got better transport infrastructure than London, and more space for tourists to spread out; so it's pretty forgiving on people like me who don't like people constantly in their face.

[stusalgus]

Iceland

9 April

Our nightflight to Iceland was just shy of six hours. Compared to longer haul trips like NZ to HK or NZ to JP this didn't give us enough time to get in a decent snooze. Making things more difficult, perhaps was that we were flying through high latitudes, which meant that six hours of flight took us six hours into the future. So when we landed at about 6:30am it was 12:30am Chicago time, and we felt like it was very much bedtime first thing in the morning.

Iceland! This land of myth and adventure! Of ice and fire! Of eye-watering expensiveness! Our first task was to catch a coach into Reykjavik. The driver was very professional, and good thing too: we'd paid $250NZ for a return airport transfer. It seemed that as with other Scandanavian countries Iceland was a high tax nation.

The landscape on our drive into town could best be described as "desert roady", although it was principally made of frozen lava rather than layers of volcanic ash. We drove past the turn off to Grindavik, an evacuated village that has been under threat from volcanic eruptions over the past few months. The Grindavik sign had been politely taped through, with a certain finality. (On past behaviour the eruptions are likely to be happening on and off for a number of years, so Grindavik is considered to be over.) We saw clouds of smoke or steam rising from that direction. I'm not sure if it was the eruption or the famed (and now frequently closed) Blue Lagoon geothermal spa, or the power station that has also been threatened by lava It was odd having contact with a country's global news event, especially just a few miles out of the airport. But I guess much of Iceland is lava waiting to happen.

Reykjavik has a population of 140k but it managed to feel smaller than that, lacking a centre even as substantial as that of Nelson or New Plymouth. Instead the overall vibe felt more "Scottish fishing village". The morning was overcast and grey and many of the buildings were 1970s style and faced with stucco concrete, which seemed extremely bleak. Luckil other buildings were painted jauntier colours.

Given our tiredness it was with some relief that we were allowed to check in early to our hotel (Center Hotels). I think it's best practice for the jetlagged to stay awake as long as possible to adapt to the current timezone, but in this case we decided "bugger that", and went to bed.

Iceland's equivalent of TV2 only seemed to be showing a live volcano feed.

We awoke around 1pm local time and staggered out to visit the Hallgrímskirkja, a Lutheran church built to cathedral scale, which featured a string winged spire. Indoors it's pretty sparse per Lutheran taste, with a tremendous organ. A bloke sat down at a smaller organ to give an impromptu performance, although I got the impression he was practising for a later service. The walls were decorated in grey stucco similar to the grim buildings I saw earlier. Again it was a little offputting, but perhaps Icelanders are at home with grey.

Across the road we had lunch at a cafe called Loki, where we blew $150NZD on two dishes and a dessert. We shared a lamb rack, and some other Icelandic delicacies: dried fish with butter (the fibrous fish sort of functioning a bit like bread), and pieces of sweet ryebread with various fishs upon them. We even had small cubes of Iceland's infamous fermented shark. The texture was quite odd, but not out of the realms of a Chinese fish ball. The alcoholic aftertaste was more intriguing, though, but not an experience I feel an urgent need to repeat.

Overall, the lunch/dinner was excellent. Chicago had been a gastronomical ordeal for us, and I was glad to eat a meal that felt nourishing.

We had a bit more of a stroll around Reykjavik, in the more touristy end of town. We then retired for the night.

10 April

Today was day one of our two day tour of the south of Iceland, conducted by Nice Tours. Our guide/driver was named Pavel. He is a Pole who, like millions of his countrymen, has taken the opportunity afforded by the EU's open borders to make a new life anywhere in the EU that's not Poland. I like their gumption, but I think a native Icelander might have had more context to impart. Or maybe not; in any event he seemed a decent chap.

We left Reykjavik in sunshine and was immediately by the beauty of the landscape. The cliche is that you see something new in Iceland every few miuntes/miles, and I have to agree. By midday the clouds began to worsen, and eventually the sky became overcast.

The van had wifi (my first experience of 5G - well worth the UN mind control, I reckon; but I guess I would say that…), which proved disastrous as Angus spent most of driving time watching YouTube videos rather than enjoying the scenery, as most 9 year olds generally don't. It did keep him quiet - it's an ill wind, and that - but I lament the low quality of the content. (Meanwhile I listened to a multi-episode podcast about the American Revolution. Well, at least I kept looking out the window, and took innumerable photographs of rocks.)

Throughout the day I have to confess that there we had so many stops I'm having trouble remembering all of them. I can recall a big waterfall cascading downm a cliff. We also visited a vast 17th century lava field festooned with luxuriant deposits of moss. We saw various outlets for the Vatnajokull glacier including one up close. We also the famous diamond beach - a beach littered with lumps of ice) ejected by the glacier. (I tried not to think about how much of the Vatnajokull glacier will be left in a century's time.) In sunshine the diamond beach, with its glittering ice on black sand, is a wondrous sight. We got it with angry dark clouds and a late afternoon gloom. Getting back to the shuttle I found Pavel was showing Angus how to fly a drone, with our lad grinning away, having previously passed on the lumps of ice on the beach.

I should say something about the temperature. It was a few degrees above zero, but the wind chill took it well south of that - at least, that's how it felt. Pavel told us that to him this amount of cold was nothing. Nice for him, I suppose, but despite the number of layers we wore it definitely felt like something.

Around 7 we reached our accommodation for the night, a late 70s/mid 80s single story lodgey thing operated by a local farming family. It felt a bit eccentric, but not unpleasantly so. For dinner we ate a lamb burger (beef was off) and "lobster" (read prawn) pizza, along with a yoghurty cheese cake and some deep-fried dough. It was filling and tasty, and again, a joy compared to US food. (If you're wondering about our lunch, the most memorable aspect was a bowl of tomato soup, for which Iceland, with its year-round hothouse tomatoes, is famed.

We then retired for the night.

11 April

We had a quick breakfast livened by Angus locking himself in the toilet. Then we drove to the jojoskull glacier to venture into an ice cave. We got driven there in a 4x4 which went bumpity bump, and we put on hard hats and crampons/cleats to tramp up to the cave on the glacier ice. The translucent textures of the cave ice were remarkable esp interspersed with ash from innumerable volcanic eruptions. This will seem obscure, but what the the way remind me most of are the "magicube" flash bulbs that my grandfather had on his Kodak instamatic camera. We had an Icelandic guide, and I asked him how much the glacier was retreating. He said that in 1900 it was at the main carpark (at least a couple of km), but that the ice would return "in a few years", citing no evidence. I'm fairly sure this prediction goes against scientific orthdoxy, but I just nodded in agreement - partly out of politeness, and partly because I wished it was true.

On the way back down the glacier Angus tripped and sprained his ankle. Our guide, Pavel was attentive and we later made a special stop to get some anti-inflammatory cream.

After the ice cave we ended up at Black Sand Beach, which is exactly that, but it also has hexagonal lava columns, of which the most specatcular example is the Giant's Causeway in Ireland. The most impressive aspect of the beach though is the huge waves roiling angrily into the shore. There were lots of warnings not to go too near the water, and guides seemed particularly keen to warn people away.

Next we visited not one but two waterfalls, simultaneously. On the south coast there were lots of cliffs for water to fall off. There's not much to say other than the spray from the waterfalls drenched us, and the moss perched on adjacent cliffs absolutely loved it.

We came back to Reykjarvik and bade farewell to Pavel, before checking into a new Hotel, different instalment of Center Hotels, and sadly not quite as mod. Sally was keen for hot water after all that ice so we booked the spa for an hour. I have to say I'm not a fan of sitting in too-hot water (sitting in a bath at the temperature I want is preferable), and even Sally felt she was being cooked. Angus enjoyed himself thoroughly however, even if he spent more time capering outside the hot pool than in it.

We then retired for the night.

12 April

Today we had another bus tour, this time a day trip to the Snæfellsnes peninsula. We drove through a long tunnel under a fjord, and I wondered how a country with a population the size of greater Wellington could build such things when New Zealand seems incapable of creating infrastructure without decades of fuss and rancour. On reaching the peninsula we visited Kirkjufell, a pleasingly shaped mountain that I know chiefly from a Google Chromecast wallpaper image.

Though not much further north than Reykyavik, the Snæfellsnes peninsula was covered in a thick layer half melted snow that was tricky to walk across. We no longer had the boots we'd hired for Angus on the previous tour, so his feet got wet and cold, and he became increasingly miserable. This was the third day of bussing about, and the majestic vistas that had my eyes out on stalks two days earlier were getting a touch monotonous. What's more, our (native Icelandic) driver was a bit of a jerk, and I was missing my old mate Pavel.

Time passed by and we were returned to Reykjavik. We sauntered to the waterfront to get some dinner at a food court. We passed by Iceland's coastguard fleet (two ships, looking in good order). After dinner we checked out the the Harper, the Reykjarvik opera house. It's a flash modern building covered with glass polygons that recall Iceland's hexagonal basalt columns, or (in my head at least) fish scales. The building might be designated an opera house (perhaps to class it up) but it's got lots of different rooms, and - even at 9pm when we wandered in - had a feel like a community drop in centre. Again I was a bit regretful that Wellington is incapable of building something similar.

We then retired for the night.

13 April

We spent our final morning in Iceland wandering around Reykjavik. We bought more pastries from Braud. I should revise my "Scottish fishing village" assessment of Reykjavik from our first day. It turned out there was a modern commercial district, a precinct of government buildings a bit like a sawed-off Molesworth Street, an embassy row like a Nordic Thorndon, and so on. We visited the city council buildings, which were beset by swans and geese. We

Although I'd appreciated Chicago and could have done with another, more sedate week there, I hadn't felt sad to leave it. I was definitely sorry to be leaving Iceland.

At the airport bookshop there was a pile of copies of Njal's Saga, a 14th century transcript of a 10th century recounting of a bunch of goings on between Icelandic chieftains. I'd actually read Njal's Saga perhaps 25 years ago, as my flatmate Andy had a copy. I'd completely forgotten the story, however (and for good reason, as it's a bit rambling and there's a cast of thousands). On a whim I bought a copy and read it on the flight to Washington.

[stusalgus]

Chicago

4 April

Helen dropped us at the airport. Thanks Helen!

Our original plan was to fly Auckland to Chicago on Air NZ, which would have been delightful. Almost non-stop! Sadly, Air NZ cancelled its Chicago route four weeks before our flight dates, and we had to fly Auckland to Houston and Houston to Chicago. The flight to Houston (~13 hours) was relatively tolerable, but the slog through TSA (Transportation Safety Authority) took a lot out of us. On our United Airlines flight (~2.4 hours) to Chicago, first the captain was late, then we arrived late, which meant we were banished to what seemed to be the furthest most arrival gate at the airport.

After quarter of an hour trying to buy a train pass (only for the nice ticket man to take pity on us and wave us through), we were about an hour on the train from O'Hare airport to the centre of Chicago, which felt like an aeon. With the jetlag, we were befuddled by a residual sense of NZ time (it should have been mid afternoon) vs our exhaustion, vs local Chicago time (getting on for 10PM). It was also approximately 0 degrees (in mid Spring? What is this place, Siberia?), which was a bit hard to take.

But you know, that's travel. Our hotel, is called Stay Pineapple (an Iconic (TM) hotel, apparently), is an old-fashioned Chicago building, right in the middle of the downtime city. Now it's time to sleep.

5 April

The beds at the Pineapple were magnificent. So soft… my only complaint is that sleep comes so quickly it's impossible to properly enjoy them.

Our first item of business was to visit the Wildberry waffle house not far from the shore of Lake Michigan. On the way there we saw the world-famous Bean, a giant mirror-coated sculpture that enables tourists to photograph themselves on its surface. It was closed for renovation, which Sally chose to take personally.

At the Wildberry we went ape. I ordered the French Toast, Sally the strawberry chocolate Belgian waffles, and Angus the Oreo pancakes. Angus' pancakes were garnished with so much Oreo and white chocolate chip shrapnel that it turned out to be the most formidable meal. The food was tasty but the quantity of it made the consumption a bit heavy going.

After breakfast we caught a bus up to Lincoln Zoo. The zoo looked quite small from the oustide, but had plenty of inmates. Angus' highlight was probably the squirrels outside the zoo, but he did like the Madagascar hissing cockroaches inside it too. Sally was definitely not a fan of the cockroaches, instead preferring the polar bears. Other animals of note: zebras, lowland gorillas, a Bactrian camel, a rattlesnake or two, and a kookaburra. Animals that didn't come outside: two species of rhino, a pygmy hippo, and half an anteater. Also MIA was the sloth Angus had been very much looking forward to seeing.

Lunch was another novelty: all you can eat sushi. It went reasonably well with small pieces of tuna and salmon but when we ordered the "Godzilla" sushi (tempura outside and cream cheesy center) I hit a bit of a wall, esp after the waffle house.

We caught the bus back into town. Jetlag had caught up with us, so we had a bit of a nap. At 5 we ventured out. In the chill of the morning the sky had been overcast, but it was now a bright blue, and the setting sun on the skyscrapers was very attractive indeed. We walked along the river path and took quie a few photos, all of which we were very happy to be posing for.

After sugar for breakfast and protein for lunch, dinner was sandwiches out of a Walgreens, along with a bag of mandarins and Magnolia bakery's banana pudding.

6 April

Today we set out late morning to Wilmette, in the north of Chicago. To get there we needed to travel to the end of the Red Line, and then the extent of the Purple Line of Chicago's "L" (elevated) train service.

Along the way we passed Wrigley Field, home of the Chicago Cubs baseball team. Generally the cityscape was dominated by midrise brick apartment blocks, with the odd mall sprinkled in. On the purple line, however, the housing grew more suburban, and the houses increasingly grand.

We'd come to visit the Ba'hai faith Temple, an imposing piece of 20th century architecture. I was a bit leery of Ba'hai as one of our neighbours once fell in to it and ran away from her husband (so my mother told me in hushed tones). So as we approached the visitors' centre I was a bit suspicious. But to be honest the tone of the place was pretty benign; the main message being all religions are one, and all humans are equal. In any event I found their bathroom very relaxing, so I'll say I'm a fan, if not a convert.

The Ba'hai temple was built over 50 years in the first part of the 20th century. It's an imposing building of white concrete studded with quartz chips to make it glitter. Although the building was festooned with the symbols of all the world's great religions, it was most reminiscent of a mosque. I guess the most similar building I've been to would be the Haghia Sophia in Constantinople. The inside of the temple was austere like a Prostestant church, but the dome was again exquisitely carved with patterns like concentric waves.

After visiting the temple we pottered around on the beach of Lake Michigan, enjoying the novelty of looking out over what looks like the sea, but is actually a freshwater lake.

We trundled back to Chicago the way we came. We got out at Chinatown, where we collected a series of snacks from a Cantonese bakery called Chiu Quon. We then caught a water taxi up the Chicago river. It was Golden Hour and we took numerous photos of numerous skyscrapers, before coming home for the night.

7 April

Today was rainy, so it was museum day. The first thing we did was catch a bus to Lou Mitchell's, a hundred year old diner. Gus had pancakes, Sally had a salmon bagel, and I had toast, Sally's bagel, and Gus' pancakes. Gus also got a chocolate shake so thick that it was practically concrete, but much tastier, and half the price of a Starbucks frappe.

From there we caught the 146 bus on to the Field museum, one of the world's greats. The Field's most famous specimen is Sue the T-Rex, the largest of all the Tyrannosaurus skellingtons. It's a sprawling museum, with its Natural History exhibits being the best, though it also has collections of Egyptian, Chinese, and Native American arts.

After several hours at the museum we caught a bus back to town. It was raining heavily and we got quite drenched. Our next stop was a Lou Malnati's Pizzeria (another Lou!) to consume Chicago-style deep-dish pizza. Given the quantities of food we'd been served already I was a bit perturbed we were going to be given portions we couldn't possibly consume, but they turned out to be plausible. As for deep dish pizzas, well I'd liken them to quiches where the egg is replaced with cheese. We had ordered four adult portions, and I managed to eat one portion, but Sally and Gus were well off the pace, and we took home only slightly less than we consumed.

(On the subject of meals, we found that two meals a day in Chicago were sufficient to keep us going.)

The rain had eased, so we decided to wander back to our hotel room. I found downtown Chicago's streets on a rainy Sunday afternoon to be quite peaceful. We came back to our hotel and got to packing and blogging.

8 April

Today was eclipse day! The shadow of the moon was set to wander across the United States. Appropriately, our first port of call in the morning was the Adler Planetarium, a magnificent Art Deco, polished granite construction. Outside it is a heroic statue of Nicolas Copernicus.

We got inside, bought our eclipse glasses, and got Gus an eclipse souvenir t-shirt, before taking a look around at the planetarium proper. The most interesting exhibit for me was centred around astronaut Jim Lovell, who went to the moon twice, but didn't land there because his Apollo 13 mission got into a bit of bother. The exhibit included his earlier two-man Gemini 12 capsule, which was very, very small. He flew for three days with moon-walker Buzz Aldrin, which seems an awfully long time to be stuck in a tin can with another man!

We then went to a planetarium session. Over the years I've been to a few at the Carter Observatory, and I can say Adler's one is a lot more slick (sorry Space Place!). The auditorium was pretty large too.

After that it was time for the eclipse itself. A large collection of people and TV trucks had gathered along the Michigan lakefront adjacent to the Adler. We found a seat by a small beach and peered up through our eclipse glasses. It was my first time seeing the sun through these, and I was impressed by how strongly defined the sun was against the (relative) darkness around it. Eventually Gus spotted a small dimple in the right lower limb of the sun, which marked the moon's presence. The eclipse proceeded to its maximum extent over about two hours, allowing us to do other things while occasionally peering skywards to check the moon's progress. One thing we were able to do was buy several Chicago-style hotdogs. Distinct from their New York cousins, these sandwiches include pickle and peppers. I thought they were pretty good, and I joked to Sally that there was more vegetable matter in these hotdogs that in anything else we'd eaten in Chicago. No offence!

Just after 2pm the eclipse reached its maximum. In Chicago that was 94% of the sun's surface only. On paper that feels like "good enough", and there was only a tiny fingernail clipping still visiable, but suprisingly 6% of the sun's brightness makes a big difference. The sky was still blue, for example. and although the sky was much dimmmer a casual observer might not have noticed the eclipse was happening.

Once we reached maximum, the rest was just what we'd already been through except in reverse, and we had a plane to catch. So we skipped the rest of the cosmic marvel and hurried back to our hotel to collect our bags. On the way we caught a section of the L train that is actually elevated above the streets rather than trundling beneath them. Bags collected, we caught the blue line back to O'Hare airport for an early evening flight to Iceland.