On the Land of Ice

I was lucky to not be a pioneer on this trip, because let me tell you... Iceland takes A LOT of planning. But you know what's great about planning for really beautiful, cool, eclectic places? The planning is SO FUN. Friends gave me fantastic tips, and my main man Rick Steves just wrote his first ever Iceland guidebook this year. That is fate right there.

Quick intro on my travel mate Sarah: She's the nicest, most outgoing person you will ever meet. Is a flight attendant. Hates planning. Down to do anything and go anywhere = perfect travel buddy.

For this trip, we flew in on different flights. I know, I know - when paragraphs start this way, they always end badly, but this time it worked out OK! Well, as far as meeting up went. We had one thing in common when we landed in Iceland: neither of us slept a wink on our flights. But it was 6am, so according to my itinerary, it was time to start the day! 

It's pretty easy to jump right into the day's activities when the first thing on the agenda is the Blue Lagoon. Included in your visit: unlimited Silica face masks, drink at the bar, oh and if you make friends with the face mask girl? Upgraded face masks... whatttt. Perks of traveling with Sarah who makes friends with EVERYONE. Was this a very expensive experience? Yes. Am I scheduling a layover in Iceland for every trip from now on no matter where I go? Absolutely.

Next stop? The Snaefellsness Peninsula. This was about a two and a half hour drive which Sarah happily volunteered to undertake. I volunteered to sleep.

First stop on Snaefellsness Peninsula: Rauðfeldsgjá Gorge. Raining? Yep. Super cool though? Hell yes. Pretty much the theme of the day (:

Stop 2: Gatklettur. So I had seen all of these pictures online of people on top of this super cool arch. I asked the owners of this coffee shop about how to climb it, and they just laughed hysterically saying that I was wrong and would fall to my death. Oops. It was still cool.

When we picked up our rental car, we had been given a wifi attachment so that we could use Google Maps to get around Iceland. It stopped working. For THIRTY minutes. We drove around aimlessly in the fog and rain, pulling into random spots hoping that they would be cool because we had no idea where we were. Suffice to say we both had a mental breakdown. We had no sleep (well I had a little, Sarah had none in the past 40 hours). It's all a bit blurry, but I remember us yelling at a lot of things: the wifi, the car, the rental car guy, the fog, you know - the usual.

Sarah made a lucky turn and boom we made it to this cool volcano crater thing. And then... wifi came back! And with it... THE SUN.

After a quick stop at Skardsvik beach, a gorgeous white sand beach (actually quite a rare sight in Iceland), we just sat back (well I did, Sarah focused on the road) and enjoyed the insane views before us.

Next (and last) stop: Kirkjufell. And what is this mountain famous for?? Why being photoshopped into a mountain range in Game of Thrones OF COURSE. I don't even have any great photos of this mountain, but check out the surrounding views. Suffice to say we camped out here for a bit to soak it all in.

Also, did I mention, at this time of year, it does not get dark. The sun just does a little dip to dusk and then is high up in the sky a couple of hours later. So at this point in our day, sun shining and all, it was already 9pm. And we had a two hour drive back to Reykjavik ahead of us.

As if it were a sign that it was time to go home, the fog dropped down over us as we headed to our hostel. Sarah, ever the rockstar, drove for the first hour. Then, feeling noble, I offered to take over, for which she was extremely grateful. I guess she was a little tired or something?

I felt great as I drove along, jamming out to my music, enjoying the views, contemplating life etc. And then we hit... The Tunnel.

It is a very long tunnel. I don't know exactly how many miles, but there were many of them. At about mile 3 I started feeling VERY tired. And then I started thinking about how bright it was. THEN I began contemplating the fact that it actually felt like I was driving in the sun outside. And then I thought that I wasn't in the tunnel anymore. This is the point where I realized I was hallucinating. This fact freaked me out. I got really hot, REALLY claustrophobic and started to see stars. I figured this was a good point to tell Sarah what had been going on in my mind in the last ten seconds. I just looked at her and said "I think I'm gonna pass out."

She looked at me and said "hazards." I threw them on, and then out of nowhere, a pullover point. This poor girl had only gotten a 45 minute break from driving (if that), and now had to takeover again because our lives literally depended on it.

Our plan had been to go out in Reykjavik that night, but suffice to say, this did not happen. I popped some sleeping pills for good measure and was out for the next nine hours.

Day two: The Golden Circle.
After stocking up on snacks, we hit the road for the most famous Iceland day trip. 

Stop 1: Þingvellir National Park. This is the only place in the world where you can "walk between two continents." In essence, it is the point where the North American tectonic plate and the European tectonic plate meet. You can also scuba dive between the plates (next time).

Stop 2: Haukadalur Valley to see the geyser, Strokkur. Super cool, super beautiful. It erupts so often that I think we got to see it five times in the space of 30 minutes.

Stop 3: Gulfoss Waterfall, considered by some to be more magnificent than Niagara Falls. I don't know if I would go that far, but WOW was this impressive. Got sprayed by the waterfall and everything.

Stop 4: the Secret Lagoon and the highlight of my day. I'm telling you, if only more countries had hot springs around every corner; it is a fantastic way to break up the day.

Stop 5: Kerið Crater. The colors at this stop will blow you away. Bright red mud, a shining blue lake, and some vibrant green moss for good measure. We hiked around the circumference and then down to the water.

And just like that, it was 9pm again, but we still had one more stop that we were determined to hit. In retrospect, I'm not entirely sure why we thought it was a good idea to begin a 4 mile hike at such a time, but alas, that is what we did.

Stop 6: Reykjadalur Valley. We were very excited for these thermal springs, because who wouldn't be after a day in cold nature?! I cannot even explain to you the amount of rain and wind that was slamming us in the face as we began our ascent. Sheep were crossing our path. Sarah's umbrella broke from the sheer force of the storm, but still, we trekked on. People hiking back would stop us, and be like "are you sure you want to keep going?" We just looked at each other and were like, "wow, rude."

We kept having to pause to take in the beauty around us, but the pauses never lasted long because we were SO COLD. Finally we arrived and there was absolutely no one else around. Rick Steves had mentioned that there were some makeshift changing rooms... he did NOT mention that these changing rooms were not rooms.

We quickly stripped off our clothes, threw on our swimsuits and dove into the river. Sarah got in first and just looked and me and said, "it's barely warm." I started laughing at her super funny joke. I got in the water. She had not been kidding.

The rain continued to poor down on us. The current was strong. We were shivering... but we had hiked so far..! So we stuck it out, laughing, near tears from pain and disappointment, but somehow still very happy... most likely from the hypothermia that was sending our brain all kinds of weird signals.

This "happiness" lasted ten minutes. We were soaked, our clothes were soaked, our towels were soaked. Suffice to say we ran the entire way back to the car. When we arrived at the car it was 11pm.

Day three: The South Coast.
I had planned this trip so that each day would be better than the next. I'm not gonna lie... I very much succeeded. After taking a little tour of the town of Reykjavik (we had clearly been using all of our daylight elsewhere), we set out for...

Stop 1: Hotdogs. The one food that everyone kept telling me that we had to have was... hotdogs. They were delightful. Why you may ask... because they are made mostly of lamb. Ate a lot of those the rest of the trip. Yes, that is all I had for meals from there on out.

Stop 2 (not counting the 200 stops we made to take pictures of the insanely gorgeous scenery around us): Seljalandsfoss waterfall. Got to hike behind the falls - 'twas grand.

Stop 3: Skogafoss waterfall. Believe it or not, completely different experience than Seljalandsfoss. We were able to hike right up the mountain, alongside the waterfall and then back to its source. V cool. Sarah especially loved this one. I was soaking wet from Seljalandsfoss soaking me, and from the rain, and from the current waterfall we were hiking next to... oh, AND my rain boots were disintegrating as I was walking, so that was a new experience. But yes, I too loved Skogafoss. We also met this "photographer" who loved taking pictures of us, but took no good photos of us, so here is a picture of him taking pictures of us.

Stop 4: Sólheimajökull glacier. It was our first glacier of the trip and we loved it. Hopped right past all of the "do not go past this point", "at your own risk", signs and climbed right onto the glacier. We were in awe.

Stop 5: Vik beach. Extremely stunning black sand beach, also has these very cool basalt rocks and caves. Sarah immediately climbed right up; I then followed. Then the 500 tourists that were also there realized that they could do that and followed suit. It was funny and a little scary because it was raining, and I thought I was going to fall. But I did not fall. Success. This is me upset at all other people...

Stop 6: Diamond Beach. It is very hard to describe how incredible this sight was. Giant chunks of ice from the nearby glacier that are perfect in every way are deposited onto this black sand beach. It was rainy and very windy, but we were just running up and down the beach, inspecting all of the "diamonds" and yelling at each other to come and look at the one that we were looking at.

Stop 7: Jökulsárlón (glacier bay). My favorite stop from the whole trip. Words can't describe what I felt when I saw this. Pictures don't do it justice, but that's all I got... plus a video of Sarah.

Stop 8: A beautiful guesthouse in the middle of nowhere surrounded by mountains. It was perfect. We drank wine and went to bed... at midnight... with the sun still up.

Day 4: It was sunny!
After a very satisfying breakfast, we hit the road and headed back to Diamond Beach and Jökulsárlón because how could we not. The sun had come out once again so why not see these sights again in the sun...

We stopped at the other side of the glacier, stopped for some hotdogs, did a little tour of the town of Vik, frolicked through Mars and just enjoyed the sun and our last day on this other planet called Iceland. Did I mention we had a six hour drive back to the airport? Everything went so smoothly; here are the pictures from this day...

Upon arrival at the airport, Sarah realized that her flight had been canceled. She was somehow put on another flight; they held the gate for her. She made the flight. I wasn't really sure where she had gone, so I came to the logical conclusion that she is good at being in airports and bought myself some wine and watched Iceland play in the World Cup. Little life hack on Reykjavik airport... while their bar does close at 6pm, it is extremely socially acceptable to drink the duty free wines in the open there :)

Aahhh, SWEDEN.

This trip came about in what has become a prettyyyy typical way for my trips to materialize: in my morning Google Flights routine. Yes, first thing - coffee, second thing is finding cheap flights to anywhere in the world. Sometimes this consists of me just scrolling all over the map of the world; other times I just type in random cities and dates to see what will pop up.

On one such morning, I was scrolling around and rolled right over Stockholm, and thought, "Emma!" And since she is the absolute sweetest girl in the WORLD, she agreed to have me visit her THE NEXT WEEK after the shortest conversation ever:

Sooo just ten days later, I was off to Stockholm!

I was quite thrilled to be flying Norwegian - last time I had flown with them, I got free wine and chocolate the whooole time. What could possibly go wrong with such a swell airline?! Let me tell you. Not only could I not check in online, but all but ONE kiosk were broken at the JFK airport - which meant 500+ people standing in line (I also waited in line for 30 minutes for a kiosk which ended up being broken).

After an hour of standing in three different lines, I was finally rushed to the front since my flight was boarding. Of course security was absurd, and after sweating my way through that, I rushed to my "boarding" flight to find yet ANOTHER line. Obviously I sat down because... Why do people wait in that line??? People actually stand for thirty minutes just to sit down in their ASSIGNED seat. I, on the other hand, chugged a quick G&T. Smart traveling at its finest.

Unfortunately things only got worse from here: had to pay for wine, food, blanket, WATER. OOOHHHH Yeah. Then I remembered. I had sat next to a pilot on that previous flight, and he had told them to give me the same treatment as him. Little bit different this time around. Norwegian is in fact NOT a luxury airline.

I arrived in Stockholm and at last, all was well with the world.

First stop? Swedish meatballs.

Stop two was obviously (after coffee) paddle boating down the river. And by down the river, I mean we were really bad and couldn't even figure out how to pull away from the dock. Suffice to say we definitely made all the dock-side lunchers' day. Eventually we started going in a direction, and right as I was about to start gloating, we got caught on rocks... for a good bit, but we brought the boat back in one piece sooo it was a success after all.

On to Emma's house. Do you want to know why I am hereby declaring that she is the best host? She not only had a bottle of gin and tonic (and lime AND cucumber) waiting for me, but also this:

Ladies and gentlemen, beat that. Next was Galma Stan. Definitely at the top of my list. Sweden's old town is everything you would hope it would be: quaint, open, perfect amount of people, perfect amount of noise... just perfect. We wandered until we found a dinner spot down a cute little alley.

After the most epic walk across various bridges (Stockholm consists of several islands) as the sun was setting, we arrived at our destination for the night: Slakthuset. Okay, I think that's the name of it. Swedish names are hard. It was a rooftop bar. It was amazing. The sun never actually set. Super cool. Then, bed :)

Day two began with us waiting in line at the wrong dock, but after a little run around Stockholm, we made it to our boat just in time and were off to explore the Archipelago!! (Essentially Stockholm and the surrounding area consists of 30,000+ islands - and yes, when they calculated this number, they included rocks jutting out of the water.)

Our destination was the lovely island, Vaxholm. When we looked at a map, it looked super easy to walk to the beach. And we thought "wow, how nice would it be to have a nice stroll along the water to the beach?!" This thing did not happen. We walked along the highway for about 45 minutes (an hour?) before we reached the beach. No such scenic route existed. Oops. But the beach itself? Super great.

After a lovely picnic, we headed back in a much smarter fashion: the bus. And wow, seven minutes later, we were back by the boats. Imagine that. After a lovely drink by the water, we headed back to Stockholm.

The evening we experienced was all thanks to my man Rick Steves. I BELIEVE the spot we went to was Malarpaviljongen... which is just a floating oasis of joy.

After perfecttt rose wine here we headed for a night out in Gamla Stan... which was completely dead, because it was a Sunday night... in Sweden, which is essentially the opposite of New York when it comes to drinking hours. We asked for rose at this random sports bar (mistake, MISTAKE). They gave us cold red wine.

We headed home for a movie which was much more enjoyable :)

Last day! Hit the road early and conquered Skansen, the first ever open-air museum. Highly recommend it - super cool.

After another meal outside (every single meal that we ate was outside which was actually phenomenal).

We then grabbed some bikes for a twirl around the island of Djurgarden which was one of my favorite things from the whole trip (no, I did not fall and lose a tooth, but yes it was indeed the one year anniversary of losing my front tooth).

Emma and I grabbed a couple more roses on the water and then boom, I was off. No injuries this time around, folks!!!

DID YOU KNOW: Squatters have more rights than you

In the words below, you will find the wildest of tales. Do not grow faint of heart, this story does have a happy ending.

It is 100% true.

Also, I would not recommend the below for children. I'M SERIOUS.

So I moved from Brooklyn to Manhattan (for that journey, see the previous blog post). The purpose of this story is to raise awareness about one thing and one thing only. Sh*tty people have more rights than nice people, and they know it.

We had such a person live with us for a bit, and it was the most horrifying experience I have ever had.

For legal reasons, I am going to refer to this person as... Bellatrix.
First sign that she was crazy: admitting to my friends and I that she was so scared of her last roommate that she would barricade herself in her bedroom and sleep with a knife under her pillow.

Second sign: I came home from work one night, excited to open my (family size) bottle of wine. Bellatrix heard me walk in and said, “Oh, so my friend came over and accidentally opened your bottle of wine."

I'm thinking - no worries, it's not like she drank the whole thing. But then I open the fridge: no wine. She proceeds to go on this whole long narrative about how she'll replace the liter and a half of wine that she and her friend "ACCIDENTALLY" drank. Yeah, and I sing like Adele. C'MON.

Then came the weirdly personal and long stories about how she is pregnant, and then not pregnant, then pregnant again... As you can imagine, my much perfected "smiling and nodding" came to be quite handy during these stories.

Next, a bottle of rum goes missing.

THEN, Bellatrix was a week late on rent.

Then Andrew Tulley finally came home from Australia! My knight in shining armor, ready to fix everything. But things were not to be as easily amended as we had hoped. In fact, they got immensely worse.

My dear Andrew came home to a bed that had no sheets... or comforter. (Bellatrix had been subletting from him, then moved into our third bedroom when Andrew came back). They were "at the dry cleaners." This caused immediate added tension. Then, he got her to pay the rent that she was (again) tremendously behind on. But THEN (I don't know what to use instead of the word "then," I'm so sorry!), the next day rent was due again, so it was but a small victory.

Three days after his return, tensions began to reach extreme heights. Andrew confronted Bellatrix about the rent, she got REALLY upset saying that it was such an "uncomfortable" thing for him to be asking. To which he replied (honestly favorite line from this whole ordeal, hands down), "I'm uncomfortable without my sheets!!!" Well. Said.

TURNS OUT, she had "lost" the dry cleaner slip, so Andrew had to go get his comforter and sheets himself, except there were no sheets andddd the comforter had blood all over it. YEAH. Just going to leave that there, take from it what you know you should understand as an adult (since no children are reading this due to my warning!) Oh yeah, and of course, Andrew had to pay for it.

This is where we come back to the very first clue, that I should have heeded, way back from the beginning. Bellatrix barricaded herself in her room. We would knock on her door, requesting rent, and also wondering where the (now THREE) liquor bottles were. NOTHING. I'm telling you, seven hours at a time, no sight of her (this means, no water, no food, no bathroom... Yeah, no BATHROOM), gross.

I cannot even begin to explain to you how insanely stressful this was. Anything that we had felt from our move was nothing compared to the anxiety of coming home to... Bellatrix, locked up in her room. The only reason we even knew she was in there was from the constant smoke from her cigars - inside her room, yeah, GROSS.

Andrew had reached his limit after manyyy days (weeks?) of this (wow I need to hurry this up, Ok, so this is the CLIMAX, so at least keep reading for a hot sec). He grabbed a butter knife and broke into her bedroom (with me supporting him by standing behind him with a hood covering my whole face - facing such situations is not my strong suit). She SCREAMED.

Andrew calmly told Bellatrix that it was time to go (and here I could go into our text messages begging her to leave our apartment, but that's just even moreee time consuming), and grabbed one of her bags. She slammed the door and barricaded it as soon as he walked out, threatening to call the cops. And then she called the cops.

So Andrew followed suit by calling 911 (while I hid in my room). He politely greeted the cops, and within seconds they knew what they were dealing with. A SQUATTER. Yeahhh. We asked how we could get her to leave. Their life changing response, "You can't." Illegal to go into her room, illegal to move her things, illegal to change the locks. Talk about getting a Real Estate 101 crash course from two NYPD officers.

When we asked for advice, their response, "Well, you're in a pickle." When we asked for further advice that would hopefully advance what we already knew, their new response: "Get her to harass you." Thus we begin the journey of Andrew and losing our souls.

I call the following section... How to get your squatter to leave:

Step 1. Always have music on. Like LOUD obnoxious music. So loud that you can't think, but can at least rest assured that she can't think either.

Step 2. Have people over. Every night. When you're annoyed with all people and just want to be alone? Have more people over. Encourage them to be loud. When they're not loud enough? Turn the music up.

Step 3. Change the wifi password. (This one was Andrew's idea and it was absolutely GENIUS!)

Step 4. Pretend you're home when you're not home. For example, going to Target? Leave Atomic Blonde on. FULL VOLUME. That one? My idea.

Orrrr watch Lord of the Rings when you ARE home.

Step 5. Confront, confront, confront. Like bang on the door, obnoxious confrontation. This was really hard for me until I woke up one morning reallyyyy hungry. I went to go eat one of my five bananas that had been there the night before. ALL GONE. So I went for my hard boiled eggs. ALSO GONE. This infuriated me. Not because the food was expensive (actually the two cheapest things out there), but because they're soooo cheap that WHY, oh why, would you steal them. I knocked and knocked on the door demanding that she stop stealing my food (because thieves always listen to demands). Andrew was much better at this; I could write a whole blog just on the things that he said to her - it was amazing.

Step 6. Confront the boyfriend. Yeah. She had a boyfriend. One that clearly didn't care for her.
One night, Andrew and I had a few friends over for a dinner party (all friends that were quiiiite aware of the situation that we were in). The boyfriend walked in, and Andrew immediately goes, "Hi, does your girlfriend have a plan of when she is moving out? Will you be covering the rent that your girlfriend owes us? This should be your problem, not ours."

Let me just say that the boyfriend was not a skinny white guy. He turned around after Andrew said this (my head was slowly disappearing behind a pillow in the meantime). "Come talk to me man to man outside. NOW." And stormed out with Andrew. I went running after them, insisting that he must leave the door open.

This infuriated him, and while Andrew and I struggled to keep the door open, the boyfriend grabbed Andrew and shoved him away from the door, slamming it in the process. I then turned back into the apartment only to receive a torrent of insults from Bellatrix. What did she say? I have nooo clue. Completely blacked out (not like fainted, but couldn't tell you a word of what she said).

What did the boyfriend have to say to Andrew you may be asking? Turns out he has a lot of money (which he felt the need to show to Andrew in cash). Also turns out that he wouldn't let her come live with him for one reason and one reason only: he didn't want roommates. Who wouldn't want to date this guy?!

Andrew and I spent the whole next day researching how to file restraining orders. Due to the shoving and pushing by the boyfriend the night before, we finally had the harassment that the police had encouraged us to instigate.

Our friends Glenn and Zach came over that night (remember step 2!), and we blasted our music (step 1!), while I changed our bedroom door locks (by this point, I had moved all of my alcohol from the bar to hidden spots around my room).

We recounted (quite loudly) everything that had occurred the night before, seeking advice on how to proceed. Obviously filing ANYTHING in the legal system was not the preferred plan of action. After a slight panic attack by me, we decided to break into Bellatrix's room again. We even very loudly shouted that if she was alive, she should say something.

Zach entered the room (which she had of cooourse locked). AND SHE WAS GONE. What did we do next? Call the locksmith because the b*tch had stolen the keys when she left. BUT WHATEVER. We were free. We could enjoy our new apartment and each other for the first time since Andrew had come home.

After losing well over $1,000 due to this predicament, I'd like to think that we can now at least be advisors for other people with squatters? Worth it........

ALSO. We now have a new roommate that we adore, so please don't be afraid to visit ;)

Also, my bar is again fully stocked.