We Take Ourselves With Us

 Reykjavik means "smokey bay" and our last day in the city lived up to this name. It started with a misty walk to one of the city's top bakeries, which was just a few blocks from our apartment: Braud. As always, in Reykjavik, the walk is its own destination, and we found more murals and charm along our route.   Braud, itself, is in a very colorful home with a great old-school shop window filled with all the day's best baked goods. As with most places in the city, despite its hipster red, everyone was super friendly and spoke English.  A note: I had my Google-translate app at the ready for this trip and had downloaded the dictionaries for the most common languages we would encounter (Icelandic; German, which Ned speaks a little; French, which I speak even less; and Italian).  The best (and kind of creepiest) is the ability to have all text in an image immediately translated. Given the gf/lf question, this has been very helpful on food labels. Highly recommend! Anyway-...

On our last full day in NYC, we decided to split our time between Iceland and France--with a morning at MOMA's Bjork show , dinner at Daniel Boulud's db Bistro , and an evening at An American in Paris . We started with a quickie brekky at everyone's go-to NYC staple: Europa Cafe .  Where nothing is European but everything is brightly lit, fast, and fairly cheap. Why does she make these faces? Sigh. Then, Bjork at MOMA.  This show has been savaged by critics.  I get it--a lot of what's here wouldn't be out of place at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame or the Experience Music Project; swan dress, I'm looking at you.  But, I would argue the criticism of the "songlines" poem that guides one through the exhibit is really off the mark.  The story may seem a bit twee, but it also captures the persona and context that Bjork has adopted and that has remained a clear through line in a varied career.  And, the pacing of the exhibit moves on...