On the Rocks

Today started with a two hour guided ride on Icelandic horses. Bill has never been on a horse and I've only sort of ever been on one. And that one was a retired race horse who didn't want to be retired. I ended up with an 18 year old named Bessti. Bill assures me that horse names have significance so obviously he was the best horse. And he new what he was doing so I could spend my time taking pictures instead of worrying about falling off or keeping up with everyone.

Towards the end of the tour, during one of the faster bits, he let the horse ahead of us get kind of far ahead so that he could really put on the speed to catch up. I think he hit that magic 5th gate for a few seconds, which was cool. I'd have to agree with the multiple tour guides from previous days who said you could hold a cup of coffee during that. No idea how much would be left in the cup in the time it takes to get up to that smooth pace, though.

Also, now I kind of want to eat horse.

After the tour, we decided to spend the afternoon being serious about jewelry. A fairly common style here is the combination of lava rocks with silver. And we all know that 10 years is volcanic lava. I have a bit of an affinity for metals mixed with atypical materials, so this should be totally my thing. Unfortunately, there are two prevalent styles. One works the silver into shapes that look like flowing lava around stones and the other polishes them so much that they look like glass or plastic. Neither was really working for me.

Bill did find some cuff links at a street vender that were nice rectangles of lava rock and some slightly more expensive silver ones that are pretty cool. I eventually found a nice spherical pendant that was working into some fish leather instead of silver and it's lovely. Also, somewhere in between looking at the styles and price points of various vendors it occurred to me that one of the stores we've passed and ignored is totally a craft supply place. So now I have some raw materials to work from. Er, to have someone more skilled than me (Vo0? Want to do some sketching with me this weekend?) work from to make something I'd really love.

Then it was off to dinner. So glad we decided to wait until we were actually hungry to try the Tapas place. We each went with a slightly different menu. Mine was the "Hunter" which included puffin, lobster, salmon, lamb, chorizo and a substitution of Icelandic foal in place of tuna. Bill couldn't remember if foal was horse or venison, but it's not like there's a wrong answer to that one. The internet tells me I did indeed get to enjoy a fine chunk of horse meat which I suspected from it not being terribly like venison. The tour books lie when they say puffin tastes like liver. It's much closer to goose in flavor. The lobster was deep fried and yet still the best lobster either of us has ever had. Also, wow can that place make a flourless chocolate cake.

A final lesson for the evening: sage and pineapple go in mojitos.