Month: July 2015

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Iceland

The second day we slept in a bit. After breakfast we went to the penis museum.

Sperm whale penis

In the afternoon we'd booked a helicopter tour. I thought it would be a great way to see more in our limited time.

 

Yanmei forgot her sunglasses so she borrowed a pair.
Hallgrímskirkja church

Geothermal plant. Iceland has such an abundance of cheap energy that they heat their roads in Reykjavik in the winter to keep them free of snow and ice.
Steaming stream
Boiling mud pit
Glacier melt river winding through farmland
Glacier melt river

The weather was good so we got to land on top of Eyjafjallajökull which is the volcano that erupted in 2010.

Another helicopter on the edge of the crater
Caught in the rotor wash of the departing chopper. The pilot in front of me had his hat blown about 50 feet away, and I got a face full of snow particles.

Vestmannaeyjar islands
Crater, no lava now, but there is a bit of steam rising from a few spots
Two hikers climbing the mountain and glacier
Black sand coastline
Large tidal pools along the south coast

Unfortunately Yanmei got a little airsick towards the end of the flight, however she didn't need to use the barfbag. Earlier she took a few nice videos with her phone, which capture the experience better than photos do. Next time we travel we will bring a real video camera. Maybe a GoPro or something like that.

That evening I decided to give the sunset another try. Even as I was driving down to the sea wall I could tell it was going to be good.

I actually left too early. The sky kept changing colors well past this. The sun doesn't go that far down beyond the horizon so basically the whole night is just one long sunset/sunrise. Yanmei was up at 2am and she said the clouds were still red and orange.

-David

 

 

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Reykjavik

For our first day we decided to start off with the free walking tour of Reykjavik. We've done several of the free walking tours and they are generally good, because the guides rely on tips. There is not much to see in Reykjavik compared to the major European cities, since most of it is relatively new. Supposedly it was founded in Viking times, but our guide showed us a drawing of it as it was in 1850, and there was a church, a store, a pier and about 30 houses, that's it. Even now the population is only about 200,000.

Tour group in front of the parliament building
Viking founder of Reykjavik
Look at the angle of the satellite dish. Very strange.

Although there wasn't much to see, the guide was good at telling stories and keeping us entertained. At one point he mentioned there is a penis museum in Reykjavik. That immediately became somewhere Yanmei wanted to go see. 🙂

It started to rain just as we finished the tour, so we headed back to the hotel. We tested a bit in the hotel and the rain stopped and it started to clear up, so I suggested we go on a whale watching tour.

Minke whale
Dolphins jumping

The tour was successful we saw several minke whales and some dolphins. At one point a whale came up right next to the boat, although I didn't get a picture of that. It is pretty difficult to capture good pictures because they only surface for about a second and then go back under, so I have several photos of recently disturbed water, ha ha.

Bird caught a fish
The coastline was very beautiful, this picture doesn't fully capture it.
Spinal disc of a minke whale

As we headed back, the clouds seemed to be clearing, so I thought it would make for a good sunset. I came back down to the shoreline at about 11:30pm to catch the 11:55pm sunset. Unfortunately there were too many clouds on the horizon, so it wasn't great. The ocean was remarkably still.

Midnight, 5 minutes after sunset.

-David

 

 

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Winter is coming

At long last our time in mainland Europe is come to an end. But I had one more thing I wanted to do before leaving Denmark: have a danish.

From the Andersen bakery near Tivoli Gardens. Delicious.

Then it was off to Iceland. It is about a 3 hour flight to Reykjavik from Copenhagen.

Disembarking in Iceland

Of course it is summer, not winter in Iceland. The temperature was about 13C when we arrived. By the time we got to our hotel and had dinner it was raining, so we didn't go out to do anything. The great thing about this time of year is it never gets dark, so you can go see things late at night, if you feel like it. Sunset was at 11:55pm, so no official midnight sun, but then it becomes dusk and never gets any darker, because the sun comes back up at 3:00am. The only drawback is no chance to see the famous northern lights at this time of the year.

-David