2018 Tour Stop #2: London, United Kingdom

Dins Kevin Kearns #244 and Sang-o Park #249 figure out that phones weren't always wireless

Photo by Sam Rosner #245.

Hi, everyone, it's Sam. Let me catch you up on a little bit since Iceland. Following our stay in Reykjavik, we flew into London Luton Airport on the early morning of Friday, June 1st and then left for our homestays in groups. I had the pleasure of staying with my friend James, one of my best friends from middle school who lives in Bishop’s Stortford, right outside London. It was so great to see him and his family! After arriving in Bishop’s Stortford with Kevin, Sang-o, and Patrick, we all had our first authentic English pub meal. I dined on a delicious beef and ale pie with a heaping portion of gravy and classic British chips (to clarify: in the UK, chips are thick-cut fries, fries are thinner versions of chips, and crisps are what we think of as potato chips). British pub food at its best is not remarkably complicated but has a hearty simplicity that makes for a really enjoyable dining experience.

    After spending most of Friday getting settled into our homestays, the Dins all met on Saturday to depart for Oxford, where we spent the rest of the evening. The city is made up of intricate and beautiful stone buildings, some dating as far back as the Medieval period. The combination of the historic architecture with modern commercial culture makes for an aesthetic blend of old and new that is really intriguing. After briefly exploring the city, we got dinner with the Oxford Gargoyles, a jazz a cappella group from Oxford University, and then had a joint performance at the Turf Tavern. To celebrate, we had an after party on the grounds of Oxford University, which included the most intense game of Twister I have ever played in my life. At the end of a very fun, albeit late, night, the Dins made our way back to the Gargoyles’ dorms, where we were hosted for the night.

Dins take Buckingham Palace. We were royally impressed.

    The next day, we headed back to London and enjoyed a free day of sightseeing. I was in a large group that visited Buckingham Palace and on such a clear day, the gold on the gates and the statues was almost blindingly bright. Afterwards, I broke off from the group with Sang-o and Kevin, and visited Westminster Abbey. Although it wasn’t open for the day, we really enjoyed exploring the grounds and viewing the abbey from the outside. While we were exploring Westminster, another group of Dins visited the London National Gallery to the world-famous Monet exhibit. That night, we had dinner with our host families that included bangers (sausages) and yorkshire pudding with gravy.

A picture of the famed London Eye

Photo by Eli Troen #250

    After more sightseeing and free time on Monday (which for me included a trip to Covent Garden and lunch at a fantastic British curry house), we performed at the Lansdowne Club on behalf of the Harvard Club of London. The building has a rich history - the Treaty of Paris was signed there in 1783! We performed for an audience that included members of the Harvard Club, an alum of the Dins who surprised us during Sh’boom, and our generous host families. That night, some of us went out to dinner and ate Fish & Chips with mushy peas before packing and heading off to bed.

    We woke up early the next morning to perform at the Falkner House, an all-girls school in South Kensington. We performed two small sets: one for the girls in the school, and one for students from a local all-boys school nearby. It was such a pleasure to perform for the kids and their parents, several of whom hosted the Dins. After a great performance, we rushed to Gatwick Airport where we caught our flight to Dublin. Stay tuned for more details on our trip to Ireland!

    To Din-finity and Beyond,

    Sam #245

2018 Tour Stop #1: Reykjavík, Iceland

Greetings, and welcome to the Din & Tonics’ 2018 tour blog! If you’re reading this, I’m sure you want to know what exactly it is that we’ve been doing since we left the United States. I am here to fill you in on our all-too-brief travels in Reykjavík, Iceland, our first tour stop. Iceland, a nation near the Arctic Circle that houses only about 350,000 people, is a country that belies its name in a few ways. Most obviously, it is not covered in ice, and due to the ocean currents, the temperature near the coast rarely dips too far below freezing in winter. What is perhaps less known, though, is the warmth of the place’s culture: the incredibly generous culture of the locals more than made up for its occasionally chilly weather.

We met up and departed Boston Logan International Airport on an Icelandair vessel at about 8pm EST on May 28th. We caught up with each other quickly after a four-week break, ate dinner, and then prepared for a 5 hour flight and a 4 hour time change. Most of us had barely slept a wink when we stepped out into the cold rain that awaited us at Keflavík International at 6 am. We rode the shuttle into Reykjavík, a colorful and vibrant little city, and killed a little time exploring before checking into our spacious but confusingly laid out Airbnb. A group dinner was arranged at a great noodle restaurant near the church Hallgrímskirkja. After, some of us went out to a rooftop bar to take in views of the city. 

A photo of Hallgrímskirkja, the large Lutheran church that dominates the Reykjavik skyline. 

Photo by Kevin Kearns '20

The next day was free and full of sightseeing: seven of us woke up early to go on a “Golden Circle” tour around protected geological areas in the southwest of Iceland. Our tour took us to Þingvellir national park, the site of the oldest continuously operational parliament in the world. It is famously located right on the fissure between the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates! We also visited Geysir, a hot spring, and Gullfoss, a dramatic and beautiful waterfall. While we were out beyond the borders of the city, others stayed behind and explored downtown Reykjavík. Some of us regrouped and went for a run out to the peninsula of Seltjarnarnes. Following that, we changed into our very special Din tour T-shirts and traveled to our first performance of tour! It was a relatively low-key affair at Kex Hostel, an up-and-coming hostel located on the city’s coastline. Arnar, the event manager for the hostel, was very gracious to us and we had a great time debuting our sound to a European crowd. Some of us bar-hopped after the gig while others returned home to keep catching up on sleep. 

A brief aside: if you ever visit Iceland, make sure to bring a mask or use very good blinds! During the summer months, it always seems like the daytime, as the country is so far north. I kept needing to remind myself to go to sleep when I would return to our Airbnb at 2 am in broad daylight.

A gaggle of Dins visiting Geysir and the hot springs on our "Golden Circle" tour in Iceland.

Like all my previous stays in Iceland, the last day seemed to arrive far too soon. I woke up at 1 pm and went immediately for a traditional Icelandic lunch at Café Loki with a few others. We enjoyed the dark, sweet rye bread and sheep’s-head jelly more than we were expecting! That night, we had two back-to-back performances, the first at a miniature concert hall in Hannesarholt, the former home of the first prime minister of Iceland (now a restaurant!).This was an intimate affair in which we got to show our music to a small but very enthusiastic audience. Next, we had a more relaxed evening gig in a converted old cinema called Gamla bíó with the Icelandic all-male choir Bartónar. While we couldn’t understand a whole lot of what the group was saying on-stage, we found them to be an extremely affable group of people behind the scenes, with a killer sense of humor.

The thundering waterfall Gullfoss.

Photo by Eli Troen '20

Our last night after the final gig was spent hanging out with Bartónar and friends at Kaffibarinn, a bar that has long been host to Reykjavík’s artistic elites. We chatted with a number of interesting and colorful characters until long past an ideal bedtime, but the conversations were worth it. 

The next day, we woke up, headed back to the bus terminal, and went to the airport. If I had been awake enough to think in complete sentences, I probably would have had something sentimental to say about leaving so soon, but for the time being I could only look toward our next stop in London.

Many thanks are due to all of the wonderful people who made this tour stop possible (Þakka þér fyrir, guys)! Next time you hear back from us, we’ll be talking about our stop in London and Oxford. Until then, please stay tuned!

With fire and ice,

Ethan Craigo #237