Iceland Day 3: Reykjavik to Akureyri

Today we had a leisurely morning and then caught a midday flight from Reykjavik to Akureyri.

Our morning was lovely because Rhodri could get some work done, the kids could write in their Adventure Diaries for school, and I could organize our stuff. It was very nice to not go rushing off and to just have breakfast in our slippers and then catch the taxi at 11:30am, only 40 minutes before our flight. 

We saw a double rainbow at the airport which stretched completely across the sky. I couldn't take a photo that captured the whole thing, but here are R & T in front of the terminal.

Reykjavik domestic airport with a double rainbow

It is such a small domestic airport - when we walked up with our bags, the desk lady just asked for our last name and then gave us the boarding cards! She didn't ask where we were going or anything!  We thought that was quite funny.

It was a good flight, though we couldn't see much because of the clouds. Upon landing in Akureyri, Tryfan immediately got down in the snow to write his name.

 

Our taxi driver met us at baggage claim with a sign that said "Lewis" and he whisked us away to our hotel, the Hotel Akureyri. We checked in around 1:30pm and made a plan for the afternoon. Originally we were going to go downhill skiing, but then when we arrived we found out that the place closes at 4pm so we wouldn't have that much time there. We decided to go for lunch and then swimming instead. We stumbled onto this lovely little cafe called Bláa kannan café and had a great lunch there.

Gangnam style in the Bláa kannan café 

Then we walked up a rather steep and icy hill to get to the most fabulous outdoor swimming place! It had 2 waterslides, 4 big hot tubs of varying temperatures, 2 big pools, and a couple of kiddie wading pools. None of the pools had cold water, which was good since it was snowing!

One of the big pools and the 2 waterslides at "Sundlaug akureyrar" on a snowy day similar to ours today!

We spent a couple of hours watersliding, swimming and hot tubbing before feeling hungry enough to go find food again.

Walking back down the hill into town after swimming. Our hotel was to the right of this big church on the right side of the photo.

We ended up going back to the Bláa kannan café , this time to have cake and coffee even though it was near to dinner time! We had the great fortune to meet Lene, who is the lady I have been corresponding with in the planning of this trip.  Although she works for Nonni Travel, she is not a typical travel agent type person. Actually she is an artist and a tanner and has a farm in the countryside where she works with animal skins and animal hair/wool. I am so intrigued by her and her work, and this brief visit in the cafe was not enough.

Anyway, after our lovely meeting we finally went out for dinner (though Lene could not join us). We chose this place called Strikid which was absolutely superb in terms of food quality and not too crazy expensive, especially given the rooftop location!

Finally we walked back to the hotel and went to sleep, ready for an early day tomorrow. 

Iceland Day 2: Golden Triangle

We saw so many amazing things today! The Lewis family went on a bus tour called the Golden Triangle tour, a "must-see" for every visitor to Iceland. We were picked up at our guesthouse at 08:30 and taken to a central bus station which was a bit of a chaotic scene, because there were loads of buses and hundreds of people trying to find the right bus to go on. Anyway, we got there in the end and headed east from Reykjavik (A/E on the map below). Our itinerary was to travel southeast to Selfoss and then turn northeast to Gullfoss at (B), stopping first at a tomato farm along the way. Then we would go to Geysir at (C), Thingvellir at (D) and back to Reykjavik.

Morning light as we head out from Reykjavik

Sun rays as we head into Hveragerdi

 We were a bit skeptical about stopping at a tomato farm, but actually it was so great! Our 4 busloads (about 150 people I would guess) piled into this greenhouse with cafe and the farmer stood on a platform and talked about how Icelandic farms like his produce vegetables. He showed us the bees that he buys from Holland and how they buzz around pollinating the flowers, how he adjusts the temperature and humidity by monitoring and controlling everything from his laptop, how the baby tomato plants start in the nursery room and then graduate to this main room, and each day they grow about 3cm and in 8 weeks they are ready to harvest -- all with the geothermal power.

Farmer guy talking about tomatoes. His wife was clearing tables and one of his 5 kids was serving up the tomato soup! An idyllic family business

Even T & R enjoyed the tomato soup

Then we went on to Gullfoss, which was this gigantic waterfall complex. It was really really cold and windy but with clear skies.

Rhodri, Rhiannon and Tryfan skating along the pathway on the icy slippery planks above the gorge

Closer view of the icy waterfall gorge at Gulfoss

 After Gullfoss, we went to Geysir. They had a great multimedia center and a cozy restaurant where we ate packed lunches.

This was a floor display in the multimedia center showing active volcanism throughout Iceland with the Mid-Atlantic ridge extending north and south in the ocean.  

 Finally we walked around outside watching the Strokkur geyser erupt every 5 minutes or so. Superb!

This is the Strokkur geyser which erupts every 5 minutes or so. 

 Finally we stopped at Thingvellir National Park, which is a really special place geologically (where the North American plate and the European plate meet) and also historically (because Icelandic people had their parliament here from 930 AD to 1271 AD). It is such a dramatic setting with these basaltic walls which are the plate boundaries! We walked up it to the Visitor Center at the top of the cliff, then got on the bus and went back to Reykjavik, arriving around 5pm.

Walking up the rift surrounded by lava formations

We dropped our bags in the room, grabbed our swimsuits and towels and headed to the best swimming pool in town, the Laugardalslaug geothermal pool. The big waterslide was awesome - some very dark sections with flashing neon lights on the roof of the tunnel!

It wasn't quite this crowded today, but the hot tub seemed like it was!

Then we got a taxi to the best restaurant in Iceland - this tiny hot dog stand!

This was voted best restaurant in Iceland! They sell 2 things: hot dogs and coca-cola.

Iceland !!!!

Today we flew to Iceland! Its been my dream for as long as I can remember to visit Iceland, so finally we just booked flights and planned a little itinerary, and here we are. I had to get up early to finish some work this morning, then we left the house at 8:30am to get to Gatwick by 9 to catch the 9:20 bus to Heathrow, arriving at 10:30am, a comfortable enough time allowance to check bags and have a hearty lunch at Terminal 1 before our 1pm flight.

Approaching Iceland from the southeast, view of Eyjafjallajokull and neighboring volcanoes

 We had a really nice flight. Iceland Air are so generous with children! They gave out headphones for free while adults had to pay for theirs, and provided a generous meal with hot food and snacks to the children while adults got nothing unless they ordered (and paid) something from the food trolley! The entertainment was fantastic too - each seat had a screen on the back and the entertainment started before we lifted off the ground. We had a great range of TV, movies, short clips, documentaries, and music with about half of the offerings were relating to Iceland. Superb. I wish it was a longer flight than the measly 2 hrs 50 minutes!

The steam as we approached the Keflavik airport is from the famous Blue Lagoon

So we landed at 4pm and then went through normal arrival stuff. We had seen this other family with the same kid configuration (older girl, younger brother) and had been told that there was another family with the surname Lewis who were going to be in roughly the same places as us on the same days. Rhiannon had spotted this family back at Heathrow before we even checked in, and wondered if it was this other Lewis family. So then once we were retrieving our bags in Iceland, I got brave and approached them to ask if their last name was Lewis. It was indeed them, but the mother (who is the one I approached) did NOT look too stoked about this news and grumbled something about how she guesses we'll be seeing more of each other during the next week. We reckon they are our unfriendly alter-egos and actually we hopefully will not see them again!  Anyway, that is a bit funny.

We took a bus from the airport to Guesthouse Sunna where we are staying for tonight and tomorrow night, then we had about 30 minutes of chillout time with T & R writing in their Adventure Diaries while Rh and I unpacked a bit and enjoyed small glasses of box wine that we bought at Duty Free! Then we walked down to the main part of Reykjavik, found a place for dinner, and walked back to bed.

Just about ready to get into jammies after this long day

We have a big day of touring the Golden Triangle tomorrow...

Spontaneous visiting

We had a fun weekend of visiting a couple of weeks ago (Jan 25-27) when Rhodri was away and I was alone with the cubs. First we spent the Friday night (25 Jan) at my friend Bev's house. She is a real character and I've only just started getting to know her, so I was sad when she told me that she was about to move to Chad! But then again, somehow living on an operations base in the middle of Africa somehow suits her more than working in a cubicle from Gatwick airport... Anyway, we had a sleepover at her house which was pretty fun.

Then the next day, my old friend Nev and his girlfriend Ana called by. We went for a great but soggy walk through the forest to the Cat Centre and over to the Red Lion for a swifty before going home for dinner. Then they stayed the night and Rhodri came home that night from Norway so he got to hang out with them too!

Ana had planned to read to Rhiannon but Rhiannon ended up reading to her

Nev and Tryfs, reading "Don't let the pigeon drive the bus"

It was fun having them over. I can always count on Nev to show up out of the blue with a jolly smile and some treats in his luggage!

Local update

Good news! Our Goodie friend Marc DF won the election and the Baddie lost. Woohoo!

Forest buddies

I took these photos of Tryfan and Oscar the other day when they were at Forest School with me. They are just in their own world together most of the time, making up action stories that involve Transformers and sticks.

They sat in this hollow under these trees and I loved their comfortable poses

Local support

Our village has been through quite an interesting political atmosphere the past few years, and although neither Rhodri nor I are directly involved with the local Parish council, its a small enough place that everyone knows bits of everything. Basically, there was a "baddie" on the local council and he was so ancient, hostile, ornery and difficult to work with, that the rest of the council voted him off the island. That meant there needed to be an election to replace him. So Baddie identified one of his elderly homies to be his henchman (or rather, henchwoman) and did everything he could to publicize her candidacy for this election. This included pushing advertisements through letterboxes and promising to drive all the older folk in the village down to vote on the day, then giving them sherry and cake afterwards! (This is all 2nd or 3rd hand information, mind...)

Dining in the play area on a cold day

Needless to say, there is a "goodie" in all of this. Our friend Marc decided to run for local council and so we did what we could to promote him! So today the kids and I pushed flyers through letterboxes which promoted Marc for Councillor. We went down the road, alternating houses for who got to push through the letterboxes and then had some lunch at the Coach & Horses pub. Although it was actually a bitterly cold day, we ate outside in the play area before walking back home pushing flyers through the houses on the other side of the road.

Secret treasures nearby

Today we went on a very quick expedition to find some secret treasures in the Ashdown Forest. We had to make it back in time to watch the kick-off for the first rugby game of the Six Nations tournament. It was a cold but beautiful day. We punched in 3 sets of coordinates and decoded the clues for some geocaches in the area.

Setting out on our expotition

We thought the silver birch in the middle of the heath was the tree we were looking for, but it wasn't

We never did find the first treasure, but we found the 2nd and 3rd treasures.

 After finding 2 of the 3 treasures, we headed for home and got back just in time for the kickoff. Phew! Too bad Wales lost in the end, but at least we were there to see it.

PS. Happy Groundhogs Day, everyone! I guess Punxatawny Phil thinks the winter is soon over. Hope he is right. A bit more sunshine would sure be nice...

Snow come and gone

Yes we had a couple of good days in the white stuff.
School was closed on Fri and again on Monday, then Tuesday we started at 10am (too bad that's not every day! It was nice having a leisurely start). We spent at least part of nearly every day in between on the one slope in last week's post. Snow really brings people together, at least here in the UK where it feels very special and neighbors try to help each other out more than usual.

In fact, on Sunday (22 Jan) after Rhodri left for a week in Norway, our lovely neighbors Ava and her parents invited us round for dinner. And it was while we were there that we found out school was closed the next day, so we could really relax and enjoy the evening.

The rest of the week was hard but good. I guess the hard part was not going into work on my usual days because there was too many demands at home (i.e. taking to and from school, the afterschool activities on Tues, Thurs and Fri, Bentley needing to go for runs). I just always feel a bit of guilt when I work from home because lots of things other than just work get done on those days. Anyway, all good. Finally Rhodri got home on Sunday night (27 Jan) while we had my jolly friend Nev and his lovely girlfriend Ana visiting from Houston. It was a very full week and we were all glad that Rhodri was back just in time to start this week.

Hurray for snow!

We've finally got some snow here. It arrived Friday morning and hasn't left yet. We got some good sledging in both yesterday afternoon and this afternoon in the forest across the road.

Down the public footpath tunnel of rhododendren trees

Rhiannon and Sam on the fastest sledge in the village

 

 

The queue at the top of the slope - nearly half the village was here!

Bentley was SO happy to be back in the snow!

New addition

Yesterday we traded in the red Renault and upgraded to a newish Kia Piccanto! So exciting! It is a very happy color of "lemongrass". I've only driven it a few short times so far, because today we had a big snow day and I didn't want to risk taking her out on the roads. She is small and cozy but has 4 doors + boot/ trunk and all the essential features like a radio and heated seats! We are all really happy to have a bright green car in the driveway.

SAS skills

Today I was at Forest School with Tryfan's class (as is normal on a Thursday morning), and it was the first one of 2013 so a bit exciting just because of that. We always do something a little structured in the first half of the session and then have free play for the last half. The children all have their own things planned for this time and I get to hear tidbits of conversation in reference to what the different children are planning as we are walking to the site. Tryfan's ideas normally center around Transformer, Star Wars and Power Ranger characters and his favorite play buddy is Oscar. So usually these 2 + whoever else they rope into their game are running around the woods with sticks as their pretend weapons. (Sounds more dangerous than it is...)

Today I didn't actually overhear anything too specific and was more tuned into other conversations so I didn't know that Tryfan and Oscar were planning a secret stealth hiding game. When it was time for free play, I did spot Tryfan quiet and very still behind a tree but didn't think much of it. I found out as they were all leaving to walk back to school that he had peed in his pants because he didn't want to move and get spotted by Oscar! He wasn't too upset about it and his teacher reassured him that there were clothes to change into, so it wasn't that big of a deal. But Tryfan really never pees himself so it was unusual.

When we got home and Rhodri heard the story, he was VERY PROUD of Tryfan demonstrating such advanced special forces (SAS) skills at such a young age. Rhodri is a wannabe SAS military operative, so I guess it was only a matter of time before he starts grooming Tryfan and Rhiannon to be the same.

Many reasons to celebrate

Today was a funny day, especially since it was a very normal sort of Tuesday with only the normal Tuesday things planned: school, work, and then hopefully exercise of some shape or form.
But Rhiannon and Tryfan decided upon waking that actually today was the birthday of Kitty, Blanks, Penguini, Wolfie, Milly and Mama Kitty. So they made breakfast for Rhodri and I (tangerines and toast) and set the table with a fancy tablecloth. They busted out the party hats and we all started the day off in celebration. (I couldn't find my camera at breakfast time, so these were taken after we got home from dinner).

By the end of today, both Tryfan and Rhiannon had been promoted to their respective next levels of reading at school, Rhiannon had her first gymnastics class and she did really well in it, and Rhodri had managed to exchange my red 2004 Renault Megane for a lemongrass-colored 2012 Kia Piccanto (not a straight exchange - we also had to pay a bunch of money, but at least don't have to try and sell the Renault ourselves!). So we treated ourselves to dinner at Cafe Rouge in Haywards Heath and then came home for dessert and wine. Such a great day!

Happy New Year 2013!

Last night we went to a New Years Eve party at the village hall, and it was SO FUN

The 3 Gangnams in their new party shirts

Don't want to forget Valentin!

We had a fairly uneventful day on Dec 31st, except that we set aside time in the afternoon where everyone was required to lay horizontal, still and quiet (and hopefully sleep) for 2-3 hours. That was very nice. Why don't we do that more often? Then we all got dressed and made our way over to the hall at 8:30pm with our plates of food and bags of beverages to share. It was our friend and neighbor Warren (along with his wife) who organised it, and since he was a professional DJ in his previous life, he had all the equipment and style to be a really great DJ. He sent out a questionnaire ahead of time which had space for song requests, so of course Nia, Rhodri, Cris and I put together a lengthy list* for him!

The deal was that everyone had to bring food to share and drink for themselves + sharing. There were about 30 adults and what seemed to be about 50 kids at the height of the party, with most people wearing formal evening wear (as the theme was "Strictly Come Dancing", a show that we don't watch). I was so happy to be able to borrow this sequiny number and gold necklace from my friend Emma.

Sweaty boys, feeling the sugar crash after drinking Coca-Cola around 10:30pm

We did some socializing with our neighbors and friends, as we knew most people there, but mostly we just danced! Fair play to Warren, he did play a lot of our songs and the night just went really quickly. One of the guys had brought a bunch of inflatable air guitars, and Warren played a ZZ Top song for all the Dads to rock out to (as evidenced in the photo below), then later played the Robert Palmer song that has all the ladies in black playing guitar looking really bored so that us Ladies could have a go. There weren't enough to go around, and I remember sharing one with Sue. She was the left hand and I was the right hand and I think we must have been quite funny to watch...

 So we stayed until the bitter end when Warren shut off the music and turned on the lights. The kids were well on their 2nd or 3rd wind by then. In fact, Rhiannon danced all night to all the songs (except the Moms and Dads air guitar ones) wearing her sunglasses and pink earplugs. That is definitely the way forward!

The next day, kids were all up at the normal time of 7am and we had a slow start to the day. After all the crappy weather we've been having, New Year's Day was crisp and clear and stunning. Unfortunately Nia and the gang had to drive back to Wales around noon, and none of us were too motivated for anything other than a short walk in the forest opposite us. Anyway, it was a fabulous start to the New Year. Best wishes for 2013!

* Kelly Marie - Feels like I'm in love; Kylie Minogue - Love at first sight or Spinning Around; Jamiroquai - Canned Heat; Dee-lite - Groove is in the heart; Blur - Boys and Girls; The Offspring - Pretty Fly (For A White Guy); DJ Fresh ft. Rita Ora - Hot Right Now; Maroon 5 - Moves Like Jagger ft. Christina Aguilera; Bahamen - Who let the dogs out; Chumbawamba - Tubthumping; Cypress Hill - Insane In The Brain; Whigfield – Saturday Night; Santana - Smooth (feat. Rob Thomas); Gina G – Ooh Aah... Just A Little Bit; Lou Bega – Mambo No. 5 (A Little Bit Of...); Clash - Should I stay or should I go; Stayin' Alive by the Bee Gees; Will.i.am - I like to move it; Praise You - Fatboy Slim; Katy Perry - Firework; Psy - Gangnam Style; Outkast - Hey ya!; Ricky Martin - She Bangs; Madison Avenue - Don't Call Me Baby; Flo Rida - Low; Bangles Walk Like An Egyptian; Wham - Wake me up before you go go; Brand New Heavies - Midnight at the Oasis; Bom Bom - Sam and the Womp; The Pogues - Fiesta; M PEOPLE - Movin On Up; Spice Girls - Spice up your life; B52s - Love Shack