Hotel Braedraborg Vestmannaeyjar

What a whirlwind year 2009 has been for me. Many highs and many lows but here I am again and ready to start 2010 on a positive note. A great opportunity recently crossed my path, which has presented me with the opportunity to travel to Iceland.

So it looks like I will be traveling to Iceland this coming January. How "COOL" is that; get it? :-)

A glacier tour and a dip in the Blue Lagoon are on my "To Do" list. If ...

... audio book, all the magazines in sight, two trips through Skymall, about an hour of fitful half-sleep, a few meals and a few movies, and bam! it's like you just show up.

After we arrived, the time change was an adjustment. It helps if you're an early sleeper like my friend Dave - I however am more of a night owl and the transition took a few days. The days are still useful days though, and the jet lag is just a by-product of going a significant ...

... next foss was interesting Hraunfossar comes right out of the middle layer of "pillow lava".  It doesn't originiate in a river, just from springs in the area that sort of "leak" out through this very porous lava and down into the rushing river.  The river really did rush!  Upstream at the so-called "children's falls" (sad legend) the entire river squeezes through a hole carved in the lava--just like gushing out of a fire hydrant.

 

... accounts for so little left from the earliest times and that is the frequent catastrophic volcanic eruptions which repeatedly buried farms and villages in volcanic ash, lava or both.  What does remain are a few scattered examples of turf buildings.  We spent some time at two museums that exhibited hybrids of rebuilt and reclaimed turf buildings.  They were on opposite sides of the country but both showed the same technique of farm buildings from the ...

... justice, the noise of the thundering water and the amount of spray being blown backwards. We needed cake and coffee afterwards before the drive to Skogar to our hotel. The hotel was situated below a huge cliff, dotted with caves. In amongst the caves were traditional turf roofed barns and troll houses, much to the excitement of Lucy and Daniel. We also managed to find some fairy houses but no fairies were at home.

... pretty waterfall that supposedly has treasure behind its' falls...it has a height of 60 meters and a width of 25 meters...with all sorts of sealife and sheep around, it is quite a beautiful spot and I suppose that it must get a fair bit of traffic as the area has a youth hostel and a hotel or two... As we drove a little bit further down the road, we headed to one of Iceland's many glaciers, this ...

... riding. It had been raining and was quite cold but we were excited about going riding. The horses in the stable were so friendly and cute. They would nuzzle you and push at you until you pet them. Patrick kept getting hassled by the horses for more attention, he was popular among the Icelandic breed! I had written in the email that I was an experienced rider and that Patrick was a beginner. Of course, the owners assumed that my "experienced" was like expert so I had to down play my ...

Friends, I have been enjoying your comments . All of you now may be fledgling puffin lovers like me. More factoids about puffins then (from the tour guide). Some sources say they are cousins to penguins. They fly in a wobbly pattern, jumping off from a high cliff and using the air to their advantage. They flap their wings 8 times a second. They nest during from June to Aug (apparently Aug 23rd to be exact). They then fly off individually to some unknown place. They ...

I´ve just spotted this computer whilst taking a little break in the Information Center in Hvolsvollur. The rain finally dropped its act on Friday at about lunch time, allowing to to make a grand escape from Reykjavik. In my mind this was a good thing, the continuous rain was starting to take its toll and I was beginning (very quickly) to hate Iceland! I took the road south to Porlakshofn, 50km that took me through grand ...

Somehow we still weren't quite prepared for leaving. When we finally got going it was already afternoon. Teitur's mother drove us out of town while it started to rain. Thankfully we didn't have to wait for any amount of time until we got our first real ride, nor for any other ride. It all went very smoothly and the people were really nice. A milk farmer, a teacher, a young couple, a German au pair traveling with her mother, a business man in a hurry to catch a flight... "I wanna get ...