Iceland’s Convenience Store Classic: Pepperoni Taco

On September 10th of 2020, a paean to the glories of a premade plastic-wrapped sandwich available in Icelandic convenience stores briefly made an appearance on the Wikipedia List of Sandwiches.

The edit was almost instantaneously deleted by a bot as possible vandalism, to be forgotten, the call to arms in support of Iceland’s contribution to the world’s ongoing sandwich discourse forgotten.

I saw it though. My curiosity was piqued. If there’s one thing we here at the Tribunal understand, it’s this type of overwhelming passion for a sandwich, even such an obscure Icelandic gas station offering. You are seen, mysterious stranger, fan of pepperoni taco.

The Tribunal sees and remembers.

Aaaaaaaaaaaah Aah!

Aaaaaaaaaaaah Aah!

We come from the land of the ice and snow

With a pepperoni and a hot taco

The sandwich of the gods

Well was it really such a phenomenal sandwich? I needed to know. I scoured the internet for clues, finding a few scattered blog posts extolling the greatness of this sandwich but little in the way of hard description. I reached out on Twitter to slightly improved results, though parts of the conversation have since been removed.

There were minimal existing photographs of the sandwich online, and what photographs did exist mostly depicted it still in the package, so in large part I was able to put this much together mostly from the few descriptions I could glean from helpful Twitter users.

• The sandwiches were sold prepackaged in various groceries and convenience stores throughout Iceland, and multiple brands made their own versions
• The roll was a “cheese loaf” that was similar to a long hot dog bun or narrow torpedo roll with shredded Parmesan baked onto the top
• The roll contained ham, pepperoni, cheese, and taco sauce
• The taco sauce was not a picante sauce but rather a seasoned mayonnaise
• The cheese inside the sandwich was likely something similar to Gouda

This helped fill in the gaps: Sómi, the manufacturer of what seems to be the most popular, or at least most prevalent version of the pepperoni taco sandwich, lists its ingredients on their website, to which I applied the magic of Google Translate.

The ingredients list is a little difficult to read in this format so let me sum it up for you

• Cheese Loaf (in Icelandic: ostalangloka)
  • The ingredients here are basically cheese and flour/yeast/water along with bread stabilizers
• Taco sauce (taco sósa)
  • This contains the makings of mayo along with a thin salsa and “taco seasoning”
• Cheese (ostur)
• Ham (skinka)
• Pepperoni (pepperoni)

It doesn’t sound like a sandwich to inspire such devotion, does it? Still, I wanted to try one, and with that ingredient list I had the tools I needed to make it happen, or at least to construct a facsimile of sorts.

To start, I brushed some egg wash on top of a bratwurst roll from the bakery at my local grocery store and used it to adhere some shredded Parmesan cheese to the roll. Then I browned the cheese under the broiler.

For the taco sauce, I mixed together some plain old Hellman’s mayonnaise with a slightly smaller amount of Taco Bell Fire Sauce (my favorite) and some of the kind of taco mix you can find at the grocery store in packets.

To make the sandwich, I started by applying a somewhat ridiculous amount of the taco sauce to the bread, since it is the 2nd listed ingredient, indicating a higher content in the sandwich than ham, pepperoni, or cheese.

Then I added some simple Polish ham, a somewhat excessive layer of pepperoni, and some sliced Gouda

And that was it! This is my version of Iceland’s Pepperoni Taco sandwich, based entirely on hearsay, shoddy research, and poorly-translated foreign ingredient lists like so many of my sandwiches.

It was good! And the best part, like the bloggers who’d written about it pointed out, was that taco sauce. Obviously I had no idea how well my taco sauce approximated what Sómi or any of Iceland’s other convenience store food manufacturers used in their sandwiches, but the sour, salty, savory, and somewhat spicy kick of that sauce tied everything together–the simplicity of the ham, the slightly fermented paprika and cayenne flavors of the pepperoni, the nutty sweetness of the Gouda cheese.

I was very glad that I made this sandwich, it’s a good one! But that was all I was going to have to say about Iceland’s pepperoni taco sandwich. After all, only an idiot would fly overseas to try a plastic-wrapped $5 convenience-store sandwich.

Valhalla I am coooooming

Last week, as I was waiting in the terminal at O’Hare airport to board a plane to Iceland so I could try a plastic-wrapped $5 convenience-store sandwich, I bought myself a AMERICAN $5 convenience-store sandwich (which was $20 because airport)

This sandwich consisted of 2 small slices of ham, folded in such a way that they did not cover all the bread; a thin slice of something processed and somewhat cheddary; lettuce; tomato; and white bread. The lady who sold me the sandwich asked if I’d like mayonnaise with it. I said that yes I would. She made no move to give me any packets of mayonnaise or any other condiment–I suppose she was asking merely out of curiosity. I took the sandwich back to my seat and split it with Mindy.

The ham and cheddar sandwich was satisfactory to an extent–foodlike substances entered my body conveyed by dint of convenient bready handles, there to be processed as sustenance so that hunger could momentarily set aside. It was not the kind of thing I’d seek out or make for myself, but it fit the mold: sandwich.

The sandwiches where I was going would, I was assured by the internet, be much better.

Upon arrival at Keflavik airport, I scoured the duty-free shop for evidence of the pepperoni taco sandwich. There were none to be found, but sandwiches were not a featured item there. Just past customs, there was a small convenience store, and there I found empty shelves where the pepperoni taco sandwiches should have been, yet to be restocked for this 6:15am arrival.

On the way to the house where we’d be staying, I stopped again, at a corner store with a small sandwich selection but no pepperoni taco. I was told this would be the kind of thing we could find at any 7-Eleven analog in Iceland? We made it to our house, exhausted–we’d flown forward 6 time zones, so while the clocks said it was 8am, it felt like the middle of the night to us.

It did not help that it was still pitch dark outside–at this time of year, the sun would rise around 10:30am, meander along the southern sky for a few hours, and go down again not long after 4pm. We had originally planned to do a little light sightseeing that day during the limited daylight–drive around the countryside, look at waterfalls and volcanos, that kind of thing–but… well, plans change.

After a few hours of sleep, we were revived enough at least to explore our immediate surroundings, though not to tackle our optimistically ambitious agenda for the day. Our lodging in Reykjavik was not a hotel room but rather a very cozy 1-bedroom apartment in the second floor of a brilliant red house called House of the Snowbird. The basement or garden level houses a pottery artist’s workshop, and the house itself is decorated extensively with art–photographs, ceramics, paintings. According to the website:

Located in the old town of Reykjavik, this iconic house was built the year 1898 by the beloved Icelandic poet Einar Ben. The house was is imported by ship from Norway and one can see signs of that here and there in the house, such as markings on the beams. The house is owned by a family of artists who have left their mark on its every detail. The interior style is an interesting fusion of old Scandinavia and raw modern art. The house is filled with artwork, paintings, photographs and ceramics by its owners which make it very unique. 

House of the Snowbird sits on the cusp between two neighborhoods of Old Reykjavik, Vesturbær or the Old West Side, and Miðborg or Center City. The area immediately surrounding the house is a lively one–restaurants, shops, bars, street food, an ice-skating rink, beautiful and well-kept homes. Just east of the house are some of the city’s recognizable landmarks; the statue celebrating Iceland’s tradition of the Yule Cat; Tjörnin, a small lake ringed by the lights of the city; a street done up in rainbow colors for Reykjavik Pride years ago and then left that way in an ongoing celebration of diversity; the Hallgrímskirkja church’s steeple rising like a rocketship above all.

It was only then, once we had revived ourselves a bit, that I started thinking again about finding the pepperoni taco sandwich. A travel log is all well and good, but this is a sandwich blog and we had a goal, to eat a silly sandwich that I’d been assured was easily found at convenience stores.

So I pulled out my phone and googled “Iceland 7-Eleven”

It turns out that there is a chain of convenience stores in Iceland that are called 10-11, not 7-11, and they not only carried a variety of sandwiches including the Sómi brand Pepperoni Taco, but the sandwiches each came with a free bottle of pop. I chose something that I fear may have been an energy drink, not a usual vice of mine but jetlag can lead to some strange decisions.

I brought the sandwich (several of them, actually, along with a few different varieties of Icelandic soft drinks) back to House of the Snowbird and spent some time just looking at it. This was to be the culmination of over a year of anticipation. I took in the packaging–the image of the solitary figure setting out along a road toward snow-covered hills. The confusing and unnecessary surplus of fonts in the product name…

That now familiar list of ingredients. The caveat that the sandwich would be best enjoyed grilled

Best grilled, eh? I’ll take that under advisement. For now, let’s get a decent photograph of this sandwich online.

Not my best work, but it makes a few aspects of the sandwich easier to discern. It contains 2 thin slices of a rectangular-shaped ham loaf laid end to end; there are only 3 slices of pepperoni visible (the sandwich contained 4 total spaced relatively evenly over its 9″ length); the cheese may be Gouda-like but it is in 2 very thin slices that do not overlap and does not have the deep color of a sharper, tastier aged Gouda.

The browned parmesan coating on the roll isn’t quite as thick as the one I made but it is spread over more of the bread’s surface, with a skirt of crisp parmesan ringing the roll’s bottom where it made contact with the baking surface. The taco sauce looks quite similar to what I made and is applied liberally enough to squeeze out the end (though perhaps not quite as excessively as I’d used it).

What about that disclaimer that the sandwich is best grilled? I cut it in half and pan-fried one piece to compare.

Cold, the sauce comes to the fore, and it’s good, quite good as bloggers had claimed, though I must say that the version I made using Taco Bell Fire Sauce was superior. (Fire Sauce 4ever!) The bread is noticeably nuttier/grainier than a standard hot dog bun would be, and while the ham, pepperoni, and cheese are sparsely applied, the quality bread and sauce make the overall experience quite good.

Hot, though, it’s a different sandwich. The browned cheese surface of the bread gets crisp, the crumb compressing and changing the surface-to-volume ratio for the better. The cheese melts slightly, and the little bit of fat that renders from the ham and pepperoni combines with the small amount of liquid separating from the melted cheese and that sauce to create.. I don’t know, some kind of upgraded sauce, a version of the taco mayonnaise that is hot and extra-savory.

It’s a good sandwich, surprisingly good for its type. Perhaps even worthy of the praise lavished on it that had brought me to Iceland to try it. I say that though with this caveat–I had not, and have not yet, remade my own version and tried grilling it.

After snacking on the Pepperoni Taco sandwich from Sómi, we continued exploring our area of Reykjavik. We tried the classic Iceland-style hot dog from Hot Dog House Pylsuhúsið, just a block away from House of the Snowbird, which was served with sweet brown mustard, remoulade, raw onions, and crispy fried onions on a bun that had been briefly toasted in a panini press.

We preferred the version from Bæjarins Beztu Pylsur only slightly farther from our apartment though. The sausage seemed slightly snappier, matched better by an untoasted bun. I don’t normally like to display photos of bitten-into food but I didn’t have a knife and I thought the cross-section showing the onions under the sausage deserved attention.

We almost missed the Museum of Icelandic Punk, which tells the story of how punk rock invaded Iceland in the 1980s, along with interactive exhibits such as leather jackets for guests to try on, musical instruments for them to play, and constantly looping albums on headphones for them to listen to, all stuffed into what is clearly a former underground public toilet. They didn’t even remove the actual toilets. It was so punk rock.

We also visited the Iceland Phallological Museum, an unusual but singularly focused set of exhibits featuring, well, dicks. Lots of them. Not only in the art that lined the entrance, the gift shop, and some of the walls of the museum itself, but in preserved samples of the genitalia of males from many mammalian species, focusing on those found in and around Iceland itself but with additional samples from other species around the world (don’t miss the elephant member–well, you can’t, not really), speculation about extinct species, and displays involving some of the creatures from Icelandic folklore. (If you are easily upset, do not approach the troll exhibit). This museum is honestly a delightful though brief visit, a must-see if you ever visit Reykjavik.

For dinner that first night we returned to the rainbow road pictured above, where we’d spotted this small restaurant called 101 Reykjavik Street Food.

One of our goals while in town was to sample some of the classic Icelandic dishes including the prosaically named “Meat soup,” though the Icelandic word Kjötsúpa does sound more exotic to American ears. This is a simple soup, minimally seasoned, containing lamb and root vegetables in a light lamb stock. Upon tasting it I immediately vowed to make some once we returned home. It is, again, not highly seasoned, nor very splashy. It is not a sexy soup. But damn was it satisfying, savory but not overwhelmingly so, with pieces of onion, potato, carrot, turnip, and lamb that all tasted simply of… soup? Just soup, almost an ancestral memory of soup, soup unadorned. I returned 2 days later and tasted it again and while I still liked it, I was not struck by that same overwhelming sense of familiarity and delight. Kjötsúpa will still go on our menu at home though.

Plokkfiskur on the other hand, Icelandic fish stew, will probably not. Though it was not unpleasant; on the contrary, it was fine, satisfying, filling even. Mindy and I each took a bite, looked at eachother, and asked, “Fishy mashed potatoes?” And that’s as good a description as any–the stew consists of potatoes and haddock, boiled, mashed, and mixed with milk gravy and minimal seasonings–some cooked onions, some black pepper perhaps.

Possibly the only non-soup item on 101’s menu is their fish & chips, a dish that appears on many a menu in Reykjavik, and if this blog post is to be believed, is among the more popular fast food dishes in Iceland. This was fine, the fish competently fried and tasty, the fries–they were certainly not “chips” in the British sense–coated pre-frozen food service fries from a bag. It came with an overly sweet cocktail sauce for dipping but the included lemon wedge was more our style.

Exhausted, we returned home. That is, to the House of the Snowbird, which we’d already begun to call “home.” More Iceland awaited.

We’ll drive our ships to new lands

I awoke, as usual, somewhat early on Saturday–7am. That is of course not terribly early to some people. But my body still thought it was 1am, and the lack of light coming in the windows did nothing to convince it otherwise. At 7am in December, Reykjavik was pitch black apart from streetlights. Nothing–or let’s say few businesses near where we were staying–opened this early in the winter in Iceland. 100 feet from the house though was a bakery I was willing to wait until 9am to try. The Syrian proprietors of Aleppo Cafe seem to have gone native based on the number of menu items featuring ham (any number greater than zero would indicate that I think, but I saw at least two). I chose an apple and lemon croissant for Mindy though and a croissant sandwich featuring lax, cured smoked salmon, for myself. The pastry was good, crisp and thick-glazed with something very sticky, the apple and lemon filling tasty but sparse. The croissant hit the spot, filled with a local version of Nova lox and hard-boiled eggs. Neither worth driving across town for, perhaps, but a 100 foot walk was certainly in order.

We had certain fixed points while we were in Iceland, tours we’d booked, things we wanted to see, around which our visit centered. Among those was a boat tour showcasing the Northern Lights that we’d scheduled for Saturday evening. Later that Saturday morning we were expected at Laugarvatn Fontana, a geothermal bakery that you may have seen in a food-based TV show or two. On the way though we stopped and took a look at the lake Þingvallavatn, part of Þingvellir National Park, one of the 3 spots of Icelandic tourism collectively called the “Golden Circle.”

Laugarvatn Fontana is a small operation, giving 2 tours daily showcasing their geothermally baked rye bread as well as managing geothermally-heated steam baths and a small pool. The lake behind the operation is also called Laugarvatn, as is the village surrounding it. The small resort town features a guesthouse and University in addition to the bakery and other amenities.

The parking lot was entirely iced over and the approach to the lake covered in thick snow, but a belt of green gave away the location of the hot springs warming the ground.

Our guide told us how their dense, sweet rye bread is baked–by enclosing the batter in metal pots, wrapping the pots in multiple layers of plastic, and then burying the pots in the boiling hot volcanic sands near active hot springs for 24 hours. The entire town has access to the hot springs, and it is a common practice for families to cook their bread this way, or stews, or whatever is to be eaten on the day following, each spot branded with a particular person’s marker–a stone or similar. The best spots are given names, and the bread baked in one of those spots shares its name. A hole is dug; boiling water spews forth from the earth, partially filling the hole; the hole is filled in and mounded over, with the brand or marker left on top; and the cook returns 24 hours later for their treasure.

The multiple layers of plastic fuse into one. There is additional plastic inside the pan in case the outer layer gets punctured during retrieval. Once the plastic is removed, this is what that dark rye bread looks like.

Our guide was kind enough to let Mindy and I pose with the bread before we took it inside for slicing up and sampling.

It’s a dense, sweet, moist bread, tasting very much of molasses, though the recipe we were shown contained none. Laugarvatn Fontana serves it simply with some butter for spreading on their tours, though they make some lax–in this case a cured smoked locally-caught trout–available for a small upcharge. I enjoyed the bread with the smoked fish but butter would be enough, the bread still steaming hot, butter melting and pooling on its surface rather than instantly soaking in as it would with lighter loaf.

Upon leaving Laugarvatn Fontana, we stopped at a local grocery for some bottled water before continuing east. There we found a second brand of Pepperoni Taco, which we saved to sample later in the apartment (it was not as good as Sómi’s). Our next stop was one of the Golden Circle stops we’d intended to make on our first day if we hadn’t elected to sleep instead, a magnificent waterfall called Gullfoss, where we would be entirely unable to properly grill a Pepperoni Taco.

Mindy loves waterfalls, and we try to visit them while traveling whenever we can. Gullfoss is the best we’ve seen, deafening even at a distance, the Hvítá river dropping in multiple stages, stalagmites of ice lining its canyon walls. It would be easy just to stand and stare, if it wasn’t December in Iceland and hovering right around the freezing mark. It was glorious. OK, OK, I admit it–I love waterfalls too. So does our friend Pepperoni Taco.

On our way to the falls we had spotted a group of tourists petting and feeding a small herd of the sturdy, shaggy Icelandic horses at a small farm along the road. On the way back we stopped by to see the horses ourselves, but the tourists had left, as well as whichever farmer had sold them snacks to entice the horses to come closer. Only these two handsome specimens remained, aloof enough to keep their distance from us, but perhaps hopeful enough of the possibility of snacks not to roam too far.

After communing with nature, we made our way back to Reykjavik to rest up before dinner. Our destination that evening was Cafe Loki, a restaurant featuring Icelandic dishes whose name did not seem to excite our House of the Snowbird hostess when we mentioned it. Possibly because, as we learned, it is where tourists go to dare each other to try the notorious Icelandic specialty of fermented shark, hákarl.

The hákarl at Cafe Loki is served in several small cubes with toothpicks for skewering them and an ice cold shot of the local caraway-based akvavit Brennivin for washing them down.

Hákarl smells distinctly of ammonia, though I would not be surprised if Cafe Loki washed theirs before serving in an attempt to keep drunken Brits from emptying their stomachs onto the dining room floor. The smell was not as overwhelming as reports had led me to believe. I tasted it and… it was fine? The flavor was reminiscent of a strong cheese, and the white flesh had a chewy, almost bouncy texture. Brennivin is fine, a little solventy, and I would not recognize the flavor as caraway if I didn’t know, but it’s drinkable in small, frigid doses.

That rite of passage out of the way, I ordered the meat soup here as well, and found it quite different than the one at 101 Reykjavik Street Food–an opaque and richer stock, meat cooked more thoroughly and falling apart into shreds, cabbage added to the mix of root vegetables common to both versions. My first bites had me comparing the two and perhaps finding this version lacking but the more I ate it the more I found it much like a soup that I would make at home. I grew to appreciate this version as much or more than the one at 101, and indeed ended up enjoying the 101 version less on my subsequent visit.

Mindy ordered a lamb shank served with small potatoes, carrots, and additional root vegetables in a rich demiglace. Also minimally seasoned, the meat itself was slick with gelatin and fork-tender, the vegetables absolutely imbued with lamb flavor. A very satisfying dish.

I also requested a house-made rye flatbread topped with green pea salad, a turnip mash, and sheep’s-head jelly, a kind of head cheese we saw in the refrigerator section of almost every market we entered in the country. Slightly salty, meat-heavy with enough gelatin to bind, I thought it was delicious, and I enjoyed combining it in various ratios with the other elements of the dish. The rye flatbread was very much like the Finnish ruisleipä we tried previously, and the turnip mash was simple but good. I was floored though by how much I liked the green pea salad, something very much like an Olivier salad but not so potato heavy, simple, savory, full again of various root vegetables but absolutely bursting with al dente green peas.

We had to take a good part of this home with us. Upon our arrival, I noticed an email saying our Northern Lights boat tour had been canceled due to weather. The entire island of Iceland was it seems under cloud cover all weekend, with intermittent freezing rain. Late that evening, as I processed photos and Mindy watched Netflix at our apartment, we picked at our leftovers until they were all gone

Where the hot springs flow

Again rising early on Sunday, again finding a world bereft of light, we made our way across town in the deep darkness to retrieve a cinnamon roll that had caught Mindy’s eye, from a bakery called Brauð & Co.

It was fine–a laminated dough, a sprinkling of confectioners sugar soaking up enough butter in places to turn itself into a kind of glaze. My preference though is for savory breakfasts, which I indulged with one of their croissants, some local butter, and a few slices of smoked trout that I had picked up after our visit to Laugarvatn Fontana.

Our Sunday, the entire day, was to be taken up with another of those fixed points, the primary selling point in fact for getting Mindy to come to Iceland with me, a trip to Iceland’s famous geothermal spa Blue Lagoon. I did not bring my cameras into the lagoon. I did not even bring my phone into the lagoon. Mindy and I spent several hours exploring the hot spring, trying to stay neck-deep in water that was often only thigh-deep, avoiding close contact with others, though the spa itself was not crowded, this large outdoor hot spring on a December day featuring intermittent blasts of freezing rain. We held hands in the sauna, we got drinks from the poolside bar, we took in a steam bath. We even got an exfoliating volcanic mud mask together, which was a first for me.

As our time in the spa ended though I did retrieve my camera to try to capture the experience.

Then we took our table at Lava, the restaurant attached to the spa. Fine dining is not my beat, and I feel out of my depth when describing it, though some reviews I’ve read might contest that descriptor for this particular restaurant.

Bread service came first, slices from a dark loaf and from a light one, with a fist-sized glob of whipped butter presented on a piece of porous volcanic rock between the two. Both were of the chewy, open-holed, “this is fancy!” school of bread, the kind that is perfect to spread some butter on and eat by itself but you wouldn’t make a sandwich out of it. In other words, a good bread for just this situation.

For a starter, Mindy ordered their Langoustine soup, which was surprisingly good, a savory creamy soup base with a surprisingly zippy spice profile, small sections of langoustine lurking in its opaque depths.

Mine was a cured beef, 4 or so pieces served with small crackers, curls of pickled shallots or similar, blueberries soaked in Brennivin, and a dab of some kind of sauce, an aioli of some kind. Perhaps this sauce was the black garlic in the menu description that otherwise did not seem to be present but the beef was good and the blueberries were a nice surprise, the combination of those tart fruits and the caraway liquor presenting as almost anise-like.

Mindy’s main dish was a nicely seared, fatty filet of lamb served with a stalk of bok choy, celeriac, carrots, mashed potatoes, glazed with a tart and savory pan sauce. It was a generous portion of lamb, which Mindy kindly shared with me–medium rare, crisp-edged, tender. Lamb is considered the national dish of Iceland and I’ve never had it better prepared, honestly.

I went with the fish of the day, which turned out to be ling, a white fleshed fish similar to cod. Two pan-fried filets of ling, one on top of the other, were served with some roasted cauliflower, a small salad of shaved fennel, some thin slices of a tart apple, a small portion of mashed potatoes, and a surprising amount of Hollandaise sauce. Again, these portions seemed surprisingly generous, but I had no complaints about the quality. Then again, if you douse anything in enough Hollandaise sauce I’d probably find a way to eat it. The sauce and the fish were a natural combination though, and I love cauliflower, and everything on this plate was really in tune with my personal likes, though I rarely order fish.

I also rarely order dessert but Mindy has a knack for finding good ones. This combination worked in a sort of subdued way, two sweet cold mousses with both whole berries and a sort of granita plus a scattering of well-toasted slivered almonds. Sweet, tart, nutty flavors, each bite a slightly different combination.

Of course I only managed to get my camera pointed at it after Mindy had already dug in, so I may not have caught it at its most elegantly presented, but it was a tasty dessert, and an enjoyable meal. We made the hour drive back to Reykjavik for our last evening in the country in the utter darkness of 6pm, venturing out again somewhat later for a dinner (our second visit to 101 Reykjavik Street Food as mentioned above) but mostly relaxed companionably at home.

Our only goal will be the western shore

We left Iceland on Monday afternoon. Three and a half days is not enough to get to know a place, not really. We’ve lived in our current house for 12 years and I don’t think we really inhabit this neighborhood, this town, not the way a local does. Maybe we are born visitors.

That last morning though, before the hour-long drive to the airport at Keflavik, we drove out to see the lighthouse on Grótta Island, past the western boundary of Reykjavik in the neighboring town of Seltjarnarnes, the northwesternmost point of this small peninsula.

Grótta Island is a tied island accessible by foot from the mainland, and, I had read, an ideal spot to see the Northern Lights–that is, if you visit it at night, at a time when clouds have not entirely enveloped Iceland. The causeway or tombolo is submerged during high tide but exposed and walkable at low tide. Our visit came somewhere between the two I think.

As we walked the tombolo, we startled a pair of ravens who took to the sky, fighting over some prize they had pulled from the sand. The showy, snowy hills of Iceland were visible to both the north and the east. To the west, the Atlantic only. We walked to the island and, finding no further path to travel, we returned. It was a brief, quiet interlude, a moment of peace before a day of airline-induced anxiety–a flight that didn’t exist, a scramble to rebook, an unexpected layover. We made it home that same day–late, and having traversed 6 time zones to make the day literally 30 hours long. But yes. We made it home.

We really enjoyed that quiet walk on Grótta Island though. So did our friend, Pepperoni Taco.