Iceland, episode 4. In which I speak in tongues.

This charmingly colorful little guy was among the first items liberated from the overflowingly eclectic mix of souvenirs, collectibles, and ephemera on display at Reykjavik's weekend fleamarket.

Now, I know what you are thinking. 

Why the heck would you shlep yourself and your American-sized luggage all the way to Iceland to buy a tiny little Barcelos rooster candle holder that is obviously not from Iceland?

There's a story.

Among the many talented, lively, and friendly vendors Mari and I had the pleasure of interacting with that Sunday morning, I was pleasantly surprised to find a Portuguese transplant with a definitively diverse collection of used household items for sale. It's just the type of booth I love discovering and diving into and this barely three-inch tall souvenir rooster, colorfully emblazoned with the traditional hearts, flowers, and bright blue base was first to meet my collector's gaze shortly after the market opened at 11:00 AM.

But there's more to the story of this very traditional very symbolic souvenir of my family's homeland (as you suspected there would be)...

As I picked up this miniature version of my own full-size Barcelos (authoritatively perched atop a rooster display cabinet in our kitchen 4,000 miles away), the charming booth proprietor started to inform me that it was a traditional souvenir from Portugal. The huge smile already on my face grew ever larger as I detected her familiar accent and then cut her off by proudly proclaiming, "Eu sou portugues." I was emocionado to call upon my mother tongue as I embarked on a colorful exchange with my new friend, a Portuguese native who had emigrated to Iceland long ago and was a regular weekend vendor of bric-a-brac (my favorite hyphenated fleamarket find in any language) at Kolaportið. I discovered that my compatriot was originally from Aveiro, a colorful and ancient city of canals along the coast of Northern Portugal with which I was most familiar from childhood family visits.

After our exchange (which included the exchange of Icelandic króna for the new miniature addition to my coleção de galos), Mari and I were wished a pleasant and safe journey and I was encouraged to take my wife to visit my family's homeland.

I know. It's on my list.

I'm not embarrassed to admit that a visit to Reykjavik's Kolaportið fleamarket was near the top of our travel wish list as soon as I discovered during my obsessive travel planning that there was indeed a fleamarket. We also arranged our summer itinerary to include a weekend stay because, as you know, we are serious about fleamarketing.

One of the first photos I snapped that Sunday morning is the one above, just inside the market entrance. As you enter the market and pass the first room of stalls and shops on the right, you will find yourself in the large main area of the building with fleamarket stalls on your right and the entrance to the food market at left. More out of curiosity than a need to stock up on fermented shark or spectacularly speckled puffin eggs, this foodie foraged the food market first to soak up some very colorful local flavor (and snap these first few photos).

The flea turned out to be the best location to purchase locally-harvested lava salt which was in abundance at street souvenir shops in a wide range of flavors and prices. An intensely savory and naturally smoky bottle of black "volcanic" sea salt made its way into my ever-expanding salt collection which is threatening to take over an entire kitchen drawer.

My mini Barcelos now stands perched atop a wall cabinet with its previously posted (London, episode 9) distant cousin, but he was not the only addition to a favorite collection that day.

Mister Hani also stands about three inches high and is a gently glazed ceramic rooster in a traditional Icelandic design.

Purchased from a local vendor's discount table for all of 100 króna (about a dollar), Hani made the bubble-wrapped transatlantic voyage to South Texas with his fleamarketed Barcelos brother and a third colorful sibling plucked from a St. Petersburg souvenir shop early in our summer adventure.

The rooster brothers are patiently awaiting their own blog moment, so maybe I'll scramble up a kitchen photo shoot soon.

Mari and I had another lovely lively language exchange a few days prior to fleamarket Sunday at Reykjavik's Hard Rock Cafe of all places. As you know from our Vienna visit, Mari and I enjoy treating ourselves to a taste of "home" when we are lucky enough to find a Hard Rock when traveling abroad.

I especially enjoy sampling the "Local Legendary" burger to get a taste of local flavors and inspiration. My last was the Vienna legendary topped with ham schnitzel, but I had previously passed on the not-so-tempting haggis-topped local in Edinburgh. Expecting some kind of surf and turf combo or smoked fish component to my Friday evening burger, I was instead treated to a sundry sampling of toppings on my organic beef burger including smoked bacon marmalade, pickled onion, roasted wild mushrooms, and Béarnaise sauce.

Hvað?!

Perhaps the seemingly motley mix was a reflection of the growing eclectic nature of the local melting pot population itself. As we were greeted by our spirited young waitress that busy evening, Mari and I detected an accent and I responded to her request for our drink order in my best Spanish (with my charming Portuguese accent, of course). A beautiful smile came over our waitress as she relaxed her hurried Friday night frenzy a bit. We asked her where she was originally from and she responded with a very enthusiastic, "Sevilla!"

From there, our evening became much more than simply having a burger at the Hard Rock. We conversed with our very attentive and friendly waitress in Spanish throughout the evening in the middle of downtown Reykjavik surrounded by tables of local friends who had gathered to celebrate the end of a busy work week and by a diverse mix of out-of-towners, tourists like us who were enjoying familiarly danceable classics, affectionate fellowship, and the local Béarnaise.

We set our sights on more local sites next time.

London, episode 9. In which we love a parade.

It was during our first visit to London that I enjoyed my first visit to Paris. If you recall, we chunneled to Paris on the Thursday of our 2007 Spring Break, spending a very long day walking and touring and walking and snapping photos and walking and (you get the idea). Previously pictured (Paris, episode 4) was our sole souvenir of that memorable (and very long!) day, a colorful souvenir poster purchased from a vendor along the Right Bank of the Seine as we meandered our way towards the Louvre (and towards tourist exhaustion).

Hanging just above that souvenir print now is this little gem which caught our eye back in London three days later as we awaited the grandest and most colorful St. Patrick's Day parade we've ever witnessed. Having performed the previous day (on the 17th) at home in Ireland, many of the parade's musicians and performers were treating Londoners and out-of-town visitors to an exuberant encore. The London streets were not only lined with expectant spectators and boisterous tourists, there was also the occasional street vendor and local artist waiting to help the right tourist capture a special memory. Mari and I fell in love with this sweet little depiction of an iconic London image, a simply colored oil-on-canvas that we were thrilled to purchase from the artist. It now hangs framed on our "travel gallery" wall, waiting to greet guests in our entryway. Watching the parade that blustery Sunday morning with Mari is one of my most treasured memories. It was the final day of our first European adventure after all.

Or so we thought.


Pictured below my favorite image from London's 2007 St. Patrick's Day Parade (bagpipes!) is the incredibly photogenic and bucolic bed & breakfast Mari and I enjoyed the next day, the day our direct flight to Houston left without us.

Long story short (only because it's not really that interesting, not yet anyway), we arrived at the airport past the allotted window to check in with our American-sized luggage so our seats had been given away. (No on-line check-in a decade ago.)

As I am sure you are aware, there is an old adage which is old and an adage for a good reason: everything happens for a reason. That bonus day suddenly tacked onto our first trip to London was one of our best vacation days ever. We spent the day in a beautiful little airport-proximate town (main street pictured below B&B). We even did some shopping at a few charity shops and enjoyed a wonderful pub dinner.

There's more,

but I'm a gentleman

(so I've been told).

Before we get to gettin' and finally make our return flight to Texas, I would be remiss were I not to recommend a final favorite. Right down the street from our first London hotel, just steps from the Earl's Court tube station, Mari and I discovered a local chain restaurant (which has since expanded to DC and Chicago!) that would top our travel favorites list and which we would return to at least once every return visit.

My passionate Portuguese eye could not help but spot the colorfully iconic Barcelos rooster hanging above the doorway of Nando's. (You can barely see the round sign on the far right of our photo.) As soon as I walked in the door, a familiar spicy aroma greeted me like the warm welcome of family. It was a treat to speak in my native language to a very friendly employee who would walk us through the menu and take our very first order for peri-peri chicken. I would eventually learn that not all locations are run by Portuguese-speaking employees, but the generous welcome and helpful smiles I have come to expect from the Portuguese are certainly routinely observed.

Why is roast chicken such a big deal when London is known for fish & chips? Mari and I enjoyed absolutely wonderfully flavorful local food during our week's dream vacation. We sampled bits of everything we could, including the Lonely Planet London City Guide recommended "best" fish & chips (Costa's Fish Restaurant near Notting Hill) and traditional pub fare like shepherd's pie. Not a bland boring dish in site. The roast peri-peri chicken at Nando's is not traditional English, of course, but it retrieved some very distant, almost forgotten, but very fond memories.

Among my favorite food memories are blistering hot summer days at the beach with my parents during family visits to Portugal. I'm talking about a "day" at the beach not just a day at the beach. My dad would always want to be the first one out on the sand to claim a spot, the best spot of course (close to the water, but not too close). We would be packed up with enough supplies for a week, not just the day, and that included a striped beach umbrella which Pai would stake into the perfect spot like a beach pioneer, claiming our territory, then he'd sway back and forth with it in his own special tango until the pole was buried far enough that he needn't worry about the umbrella blowing away while he was napping. We would help Mãe spread onto the colorful sand one of her homemade quilts, made from pieced-together leftover squares of fabric rescued from the trash bin at whatever local sweatshop she was working in that year. There would be a basket full of goodies and treats to sustain us for a full day of sun worship as well as an ice-laden cooler loaded with sandwiches, sodas, and water (sometimes an occasional adult beverage for Pai).

It was always a big production.


I always had a book, of course, and a spare should
I be more than halfway through my current read.
(Always a planner!)

If we were at the beach during one of our Portugal summers, though, we always hoped there would be someone grilling and selling frango churrasco, butterflied whole local chickens grilled to blistering perfection after bathing luxuriously in a peri-peri bath. That smoky, peppery aroma (even a little bit of the Portuguese coast's salty, sandy surf) hit me like a furnace blast when I first walked under that festooned wooden rooster and opened the door into the Earl's Court Nando's restaurant. At right is my own Barcelos rooster (purchased by my mom for me during my last visit to Portugal in the summer of 1985).

I know.
Too long, too long.

My sentimental souvenir rooster has been plucked temporarily away from the kitchen rooster collection only for this special photo shoot. Sentiment and a remarkably delicious and authentic roast chicken has kept me returning to Nando's again and again when Mari and I have the good fortune to be in London.

Give the colorful site a good browse, especially if you plan to be in the vicinity of a Nando's.

Even if you are just Texas-close, it's worth the extra miles.

nandosperiperi.com

A carefully coordinated combination of temptalicious memory-inducing Nando's peri-peri chicken, rich and seductively-complicated royal history, and warm British hospitality has tempted Mari and me over and over to several London revisits. Our first return visit would be five years after this first 40th birthday celebration.

Our London2012 experience begins next time.