Iceland!
Okay. Here are a bunch of photos I've already posted, with boring chronological reporting on our small adventures.
We landed in Reykjavik early in the morning on the first day, after losing a night to the time zone change. We were exhausted, and got lost in Reykjavik a bunch* before arriving at Þingvellir.
We didn't get to much of Iceland, but the part we did see seemed almost impossible. I've seen beautiful places before, but mostly just the kind of beautiful places that have ONE beautiful vista. In Iceland (once we escaped the land of box buildings and indecipherable road tangles), you're always in the center of a beautiful panorama. This, for example, is the view out the bathroom window in Þingvellir.
Also, Iceland is cold. We put on all our clothes once we got to Þingvellir, but we were still cold. This pushed weary Skipper into a state of miserable rage that made the first part of our visit pretty awful, and made me begin to wonder if the entire trip had been a huge mistake. She pulled out of it, though, and we saw a really nifty waterfall and learned about Iceland's legislative history. Also, the drowning of witches. I also began a series of photos that I like to call "Duchess Posing In Front of Iceland."**
We piled back into the blessedly warm car and pushed on to purchase groceries and drive to our cottage. Cook was so tired that he started worrying he was going to crash, and we had to pull over for a nap.
At the cottage, we went for a little hike around the property to keep ourselves awake. Even this hike had beautiful views all around.
On the second day, we went to a few more classic "Golden Circle" tourist destinations - Geysir and Strokkur and Gullfoss. There were a LOT of people touristing with us, and this wasn't even quite yet the high season. These places, however, are destinations for a reason, which is apparently that they're staggeringly beautiful, and while you're happily contemplating the beautiful panoramas all around you, you turn the corner of a canyon or whatever and see these even more beautiful places and are astonished and swear out loud.
And then we pulled over after crossing a bridge, and found this place. Just, you know, a random place by the side of the road.
And then we went horseback riding. This was also very, very beautiful. Duchess was very, very happy. We all tried the tölt, with varying degrees of success. (I was not successful. My tailbone did not enjoy it.) These horses radiated sensible, unflappable confidence and good humor. They were like stuffed animals that are alive, like a child's fantasy about what horses would be like, right down to their accessible size and very furry coats. Our guide was a teenager who had grown up nearby and been riding all her life, and she had a large wooly sweater and very long hair. Duchess very clearly intends to grow up to be Exactly Like Her.
This is how Duchess looked on the way back after the ride, wearing her new wooly sweater and dreaming of the Icelandic horse farm in her future.
Because the sun was still shining and we were jet-lagged, we just kept the day rolling. We swam in a geothermal pool, and then bought ice cream on the way home at 10 PM, at a farm/restaurant where you look at the cows through a window while you eat food made out of cows. That was a pretty great day.
*This state of lostness approached existential despair, or a terrible dream. We drove back and forth on the same road over and over, trying to figure out how the hell to get to a perpendicular road. We also spent a lot of time trying to find a grocery store. All the buildings in suburban Iceland look pretty much the same (boxes with minimal windows), so you can only tell if you're at a grocery store (or a daycare center or a place that sells boat awnings) by reading the signs, which is difficult to do when you can't read Icelandic.
**Duchess is building a life plan around running a horse farm in Iceland.
We landed in Reykjavik early in the morning on the first day, after losing a night to the time zone change. We were exhausted, and got lost in Reykjavik a bunch* before arriving at Þingvellir.
We didn't get to much of Iceland, but the part we did see seemed almost impossible. I've seen beautiful places before, but mostly just the kind of beautiful places that have ONE beautiful vista. In Iceland (once we escaped the land of box buildings and indecipherable road tangles), you're always in the center of a beautiful panorama. This, for example, is the view out the bathroom window in Þingvellir.
Also, Iceland is cold. We put on all our clothes once we got to Þingvellir, but we were still cold. This pushed weary Skipper into a state of miserable rage that made the first part of our visit pretty awful, and made me begin to wonder if the entire trip had been a huge mistake. She pulled out of it, though, and we saw a really nifty waterfall and learned about Iceland's legislative history. Also, the drowning of witches. I also began a series of photos that I like to call "Duchess Posing In Front of Iceland."**
We piled back into the blessedly warm car and pushed on to purchase groceries and drive to our cottage. Cook was so tired that he started worrying he was going to crash, and we had to pull over for a nap.
At the cottage, we went for a little hike around the property to keep ourselves awake. Even this hike had beautiful views all around.
On the second day, we went to a few more classic "Golden Circle" tourist destinations - Geysir and Strokkur and Gullfoss. There were a LOT of people touristing with us, and this wasn't even quite yet the high season. These places, however, are destinations for a reason, which is apparently that they're staggeringly beautiful, and while you're happily contemplating the beautiful panoramas all around you, you turn the corner of a canyon or whatever and see these even more beautiful places and are astonished and swear out loud.
And then we pulled over after crossing a bridge, and found this place. Just, you know, a random place by the side of the road.
And then we went horseback riding. This was also very, very beautiful. Duchess was very, very happy. We all tried the tölt, with varying degrees of success. (I was not successful. My tailbone did not enjoy it.) These horses radiated sensible, unflappable confidence and good humor. They were like stuffed animals that are alive, like a child's fantasy about what horses would be like, right down to their accessible size and very furry coats. Our guide was a teenager who had grown up nearby and been riding all her life, and she had a large wooly sweater and very long hair. Duchess very clearly intends to grow up to be Exactly Like Her.
This is how Duchess looked on the way back after the ride, wearing her new wooly sweater and dreaming of the Icelandic horse farm in her future.
Because the sun was still shining and we were jet-lagged, we just kept the day rolling. We swam in a geothermal pool, and then bought ice cream on the way home at 10 PM, at a farm/restaurant where you look at the cows through a window while you eat food made out of cows. That was a pretty great day.
*This state of lostness approached existential despair, or a terrible dream. We drove back and forth on the same road over and over, trying to figure out how the hell to get to a perpendicular road. We also spent a lot of time trying to find a grocery store. All the buildings in suburban Iceland look pretty much the same (boxes with minimal windows), so you can only tell if you're at a grocery store (or a daycare center or a place that sells boat awnings) by reading the signs, which is difficult to do when you can't read Icelandic.
**Duchess is building a life plan around running a horse farm in Iceland.
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