ICELAND EDITED: DAYS NINE & TEN

I've decided to combine our last two days in Iceland into one post for reasons that will become apparent later

DAY NINE

Day nine we were back in Reykjavik. We started our vacation here but we were so jet lagged that most of the experience was a kind of blur. This time we were alert as we ever were and went off to explore the town in whose environs the majority of Iceland's population resides

As the major city in Iceland, Reykjavik faces the dichotomy of past and present and future. They are trying to build for the future ...

... while acknowledging the past

The day before we had visited the Althing, Iceland's historical parliment, today we visited the current building that occupied a spot with a lot of other historical buildings many of them preserved, some of them "recreated".

We were back in weather a bit more typical for this time of year in Iceland, not terribly cool but with little rain showers popping up suddenly. We developed a formula to deal with it: Rain shower = pub, it worked quite well.

As summer wore on the days were getting longer, we were not quite yet into the midnight sun but it was light out quite late into the night. Reykjavik has a very active music scene and there were bars featuring a wide variety of music late into the night. There are a lot of resturaunts and bars and clubs in the town; we found one with a pool table large enough to accomadate soccer balls

Besides music, Reykjavik is a major centre for many arts. We found this little public square the celebrated what is, apparently and active and appreciated graffitti art scene

The city has always been a haven for the country's artists. We found more statues dedicated to artists than we did to politicians. There were several public sites, such as parks, that were inspired by famous works of Icelandic fiction

Like the last time we were here, we enjoyed the many colourful houses, reminiscant of Newfoundland

Reykjavik is a place where you can book a lot of day trips, like whale watching or going over the Westman Islands, a group of very active volcanic islands just off the course but after living on the bus for several days we were happy to wander around, take it easy and enjoy our final full day in Iceland

DAY TEN

This was our getaway day, when we would fly back home to Toronto. Our flight however would be in the evening so our travel agent had prepared for us a special treat. There are natural hot spas all over Iceland but the most famous in the Blue Lagoon, on the way to Keflavik Airport

The Lagoon is the most luxurious spa in the country and definitely one of the biggest tourist traps. We'd been to one other spa, in the north and it was a lovely, homey, communal kind of place, frequented by locals. The Lagoon is a different experience, not many locals come there and it didn't have that communal spirit. Still, the springs are lovely and surrounded by interesting lava formations

The spa is lauded for the healthful benefits not only of the water, but of creams and lotions made out of the natural sediments. You can buy a massage, there are sauna's, hot rock treatments and you can sample some of the creams right there in the spa. Mostly it had a swim up bar, now I find that extremely healthful

We had a very relaxing couple of hours then it was a short trip to the airport and on our way home. Always happy to go home of course, but it was also sad to leave. Iceland would give us a lot to think about, a lot to dream about, and lot to look forward when next we visited this remarkable island country

ICELAND EDITED: DAY ONE

It's been a busy time since Collette and I had our tour of Iceland in July. In that time I have managed to edit all the video and Collette has been working on her photo's. With the year starting to wind down, I thought it was due time I began posting the final results.

Uploading videos takes time and there is the issue of file limits etc so I'm not sure how frequently I'll be able to load the videos and post the blogs, it probably may not be consecutive, so please bear with me and check back for new Iceland posts.

Day one was pretty simple. We flew from Toronto to Iceland, on our way catching a few intriguing glimpses of Greeland, which we see better on our trip back home.

We landed at Keflavik Airport early morning Icleand, but late night Toronto time. On our way to Reykjavik we caught our first glimpses of Iceland's famous lava fields, one of the few places on earth where the climate allows lichens and moss to form on the hardened lava. You'll see a couple of shots int this video, and much more in later scenes.

Our first night in Iceland was spent at the Grand Hotel, a really lovely place, very modern, I'm told the largest hotel in Iceland but a bit of a walk to the downtown of the city

Reykjavik is a lovely harbour town. Most of Icleand's population live in this area, like over two thirds of the people but it still maintains a quaint charm . . .

. . . while still looking to the future

Walking around the harbour, we came upon this little locomotive. There are no railroads in Iceland, none. This was one of only two trains that ever operated here; they were used to shuttle rock down to the harbour that was used in creating the breakwall

Reykjavik is a pretty town but jet lag began to kick our butts pretty badly; we weren't able to check into our hotel till 4 pm which was something like 2:30 am our time. We knew we would come back here, after our bus tour of the country, so we grabbed something to eat, loaded up on some Viking Beer, grabbed some quick shots and lurched around like Canadian zombies

More to come

ICELAND: TEN DAYS IN TEN SHOTS

No. Not gunshots. When I talk about "shots" I talk about something I've taken with my camera, not an Ak-47.

Get over yourself.

I've just finished uploading all my raw camera footage from the HDD I took to Iceland to the work computer. Once I unwrapped it from its compressed storage medium to full Pro Rez 422 I ended up with about 400 GB of video.

I did the math and that comes out as ... a fuck of a lot.

It will take a while to log all the footage and find a suitable program format etc. I will probably document that oh so fascinating process on my other blog, Idiot With a Camera

In the meantime I decided to make a little trailer, a tease if you will. Normally I would select a dynamic piece of music and cut to it, lots of fast cuts with some filters, titles etc. I still may do that but looking at this footage, shot in this incredible country, I found that it mostly speaks for itself. It did not really need "jazzed" up.

I realized I could best create a teaser of our Iceland trip just by presenting a few clips as they were captured, with the naturally occurring ambient audio. But how to package that? The solution seemed obvious: Our trip lasted 10 days, including our 6 day guided tour around the country. So what about picking one shot to represent each day of the trip: Ten days in ten shots

Simple yet difficult. Each day, especially during the tour, was jam packed with events and sights and sounds. We went a lot of places, we saw a lot of things ... in one day on the tour we could visit 3 or 4 locations. How do I pick just one locale? And from that, pick one shot.

The answer was to pick an event and/or place that had the greatest impact, that lingered in my mind: The beautiful church that is the focal point of the pretty capitol city of Reykjavik; a storm racked bit of coast line in Snaefelles; the bubbling and steam of the hottest spring in the country; the slick back of a minke whale breaking the surface; the thunder of the most proficient waterfall in Europe; an ice berg floating in a glacial bay; ice adorned mountains guarding a gigantic glacier; the explosion a huge geyser; gulls circling the City Pond back in Reykjavik; steam gilding bathers at the Blue Lagoon ...

I could easily re edit this piece, finding more and more compelling images. But the exercise was to just string together a string of impressions. For me, they are memories. I hope, for you, they are enticements to stay tuned ...

ICELAND: DAY NINE

Our last full day in Iceland. Yes, you may sigh. I will even permit you a pout. Please do it now. You will not be allowed to do it later.



All done? Swell. Let's move on



Collette and I considered booking a day tour from here in Reykjavik, either another whale watching trip or a voyage to the Westman Islands, a place of which we have heard much but have never visited ... well that voyage is not available on a Sunday. We could have gone whale watching but let's be honest ... we're old and damnit, we're tired.



So instead we decided to stay here in Reykjavik and explore. Yes, we spent our first day here but, due to our exhausted state, that wasn't exploration, that was a zombie crawl.



At the end of the day we are very happy with our decision. Reykjavik is a pretty little port town with colourful houses in the Newfoundland tradition and lots of resturaunts, bars and of course tourit shops. And yes, we shopped. What the fuck, we are, after all, tourists



We got to see some of the city's historical landmarks, like the Parlmiment building (recognized early on by the stench ..no wait, that would be Ottawa) and a little area of buildings dated from the 1800's

We actually began the day by visiting a local flea market. This was about as untouristy as you can get. It actually reminded me of the Heights, back home. Those who don't know, will be saying "Oh, how quaint" Those who do know will be saying "Crap, really?"

For lunch we ducked into an English style pub. Yes, I went to an English pub in Iceland. Hell, I go to English pubs in Toronto, they probably are not authentic either. But I did have an Icelandic beer. OK, it was an India Pale Ale. But it tasted different from those I drink back home so perhaps it actually is authentic.

In all it was a very laid back day, just ambling around the town, no particular plans and avoiding steep hills and anything with too many stairs. Ah, perfect.

Tommorrow we visit the Blue Lagoon. This is an Icelandic spa that seems so posh I can't help but think I'll be tossed out ... If it's posh, why the fuck would they accept me?

Don't answer. That was a rhetorical question. Ahem

In all liklihood this will be my last post from Iceland. It's a sad thing to contemplate. It's not sad that I won't be communicating from here to all the people I pretend actually read this thing, but sad that we will be leaving.

We've seen a lot of this remarable country but I know there is so much more to experience. I suppose that a good trip is any that you are relunctant to end.

By that standard, this has been a very very good trip

ICLEAND DAY ONE: REKJKAVIK

I'm writing this post rom the lobby of the Grand Hotel in Reykjavik Iceland. It is around 10 pm local time So it's been a long day. A long long long day

We arrived here in Icleand around 2 am our time, around 6 am local time. Each of us managed a couple of hours sleep during the 5 hour flight and trust me, that turned out to less than sufficiant for the rest of the day.

From the airport at Keflavik to this hotel it was about a 30 minute bus ride, during which we got to experience a very Icelandic landscape: On one side, the ocean and on the other side, miles and miles of lava fields that had a ver Lunar feeling

That landscape petered out by the time we arrived in Reykjavik. It was a sunny day, temps in the low 20 C, with a brisk wind coming off the Atlantic. Reykjavik is a pretty little town, narrow sometimes cobbled streets running dow to the harbour. Away from the heart of the town which

has become the tourist haven, you could call the city quaint, with lots of unique architecture.

It is, of course, a harbour town, an ancient haunt of Vikings after all. And although the only Viking long ship we saw was this lovely metal sculpture ...

... it is still a very active working harbour town.

It is a pretty area, hosting 60% of Icleand's 300,000 residents but still small enough for a nice brisk walk. That is, if you haven't already been up for so many hours your brain can no long tabulate said hours

So we returned to the hotel around noon local time and around 7 am our next day ... and quickly fell into a heartfelt coma. Tomorrow we are off with the Great Canadian Tour company for 9 days of adventure all over the country. We will return to Reykjavik ... and hopefully be awake enough to appreciat it even more

IF IT'S SUNDAY, THIS MUST BE SNAEFELLSNES

Today we received the full itinerary for our Iceland trip and it's helping to put more of it into focus.

We fly out of Pearson at 9:15 pm our time and will arrive in Reykjavik Iceland at 6:25 am ... while actually only eating up about 5 hours time. Thank you very much time zones.

We'll spend that first day in Reykjavik. I considered looking up a local surgeon who could rewire my jaw so I could pronounce these Icelandic words but Collette suggested perhaps checking out the sights and sampling local cuisine. What a spoil sport eh.

Reykjavik sounds like a pretty cool town, with a population of around 200,000. That's less than the number of people in Yorkdale Mall on a saturday afternoon. I know that for a fact. I once counted them all. The magistrate suggested that it may be inappropriate to be touching that many strangers. Duly noted. But who knew?

Speaking of "cool" we knew that summer in Iceland would not be exactly balmy. As I right this post, the average temps for the country (and of course there will be a variety) are in the mid teens. We've been told that the climate should be very similar to New York City in the spring but without the smog .. and the crack ho's ...

Day three we're off to the Snaefellsnes Peninsula with glaciers, fishing villages and lava fields. The entire country of Iceland is roughly the size of Kentucky so our travel time will not be too long for most trips but I expect to see some great scenery during the voyages anyway.

I'll be spending my birthday in the north part of the island, visiting Hraunfossar where water comes running from the under the lava into a river, one of the biggest hot springs in Europe and a visit to Gooafoss, the Waterfall of the Gods.

The next day begins with a fairly normal breakfast experience; you know, some coffee, a croissant, some whale watching .. nothing special. In that area we'll also see puffins .. dude, puffins .. which I once associated with a British publishing company. Apparantly Icelandic people eat puffins. Sitting down to a holiday meal of a dozen roasted puffins .. yummy (I made that last part up, duh)

Another feature I'm looking forward to is visiting Vatnajokull .. no, not a villain from a Robert E Howard novel but the largest glacier in Europe. Cool ... like, for real

Iceland is one of the newest places on the planet so there will be volcanoes and geysers and lave fields .. oh my! Not to mention some huge waterfalls mountains and ... unexpectantly .. a sandy desert.

Day 9 we'll get introduced to the Icelandic horse, a unique breed and visit the Viking Parliment of bingveilir .. a Viking Parliment. Hold on, I may need a moment ...

We'll end up back at Reykjavik for a day. We can decide to explore more of the city or choose to take one of many day trips, we'll have to see how tired we are at the time

Our travel agent arranged our last day for us. While our baggage will be sent off to the airport, we'll take our bathing suits to the Blue Lagoon ... um, no not that blue lagoon, stop thinking dirty. It is the most famous geo thermal spa in Iceland, a country that is replete with such features and actually uses geo thermal energy to warm their house etc.

We'll loll around in the waters, get in some serious relaxation, then go to the airport for the flight home.

Yeh. That's living rough for you