Iceland

Our band the "VikinQuacks"
(Camara woman included)

     It's been about a month since our sibling Iceland week, and a lot has happened since then! There's always a dilemma: write about bygone times before I forget them completely, or start with the most recent? Today I'm settling with the former, but I hope it won't be too long before I can catch up and talk a bit about our wonderful July full of reunions with family and friends.

     Rosie, Rachel and I had quite a sleepless time getting to Iceland, though mostly just because of time change and travel, not as much stress or logistic failure. The girls stayed up all night with friends at the ITI the night before we drove to Budapest to catch our flight to Reykjavik, and so we arrived at the Reykjavik airport in the evening and stayed up till midnight waiting for Madeleine and Joseph to arrive from the Netherlands where they'd been for the past few days. I'm not sure exactly where they went, but they'd been traveling about Europe for a few weeks before our final Icelandic hurrah.

Five hours to kill at the Rekyavik airport...Awake for 24
hours already, somehow they managed
to stay cheerful. ;)

     We hadn't seen Joseph since last summer, and Madeleine since Christmas, so it was a welcome and happy reunion when they finally showed up. The five of us were picked up from the airport after a short mix up with the rental company, and soon were happily crammed into our rental car and setting out under the 2am sun into the Icelandic wilderness.

Exploring Reykjavik!

     Our first day we explored Reykjavik. It was interesting and fun to look about, though the city was surprisingly boring and quiet for it's fame and expense.

Rosie: "$9 for a SMOOTHIE?"
Rachel: "Yup. We're doomed."

We looked into some interesting crafty shops and some not so interesting souvenir shops, saw the famous Lutheran Church and spent a fortune in a tiny, charming coffee shop after not eating a solid meal since lunch the day before. We had fun with various photo shoots and some grocery shopping, and then we relaxed and made food at our airbnb.

The next day was our first big driving day, and Joseph and Rachel provided us with hours of "pumping tunes" for the way. We did what's called the Golden Circle, a route that, besides giving us hours of beautiful scenery to look at, took us to a national park, a geyser and a crater. We were very grateful that we had our own car and didn't have to try to manage tour bus schedules and such (but mostly we were glad because we had a handy dandy "free coffee"card for whenever we bought gas...), and our our only stress and time constraint was that we didn't want to drive after the sun went down. This, of course, wasn't too much of a burden because the sun wouldn't go down for a few months yet. (Aren't we clever...)

A colorful crater on the Golden Circle

Our rainy hike near Reykjavik

     Next day we went for a hike just outside the city. It was foggy, wet and steep, so we stopped for a break and a beer before we started. Then with spirits sufficiently strengthened we began the trek up the hill, enjoying beautiful, though rather foggy views of the surrounding hills and ocean.

There were fields and fields of lupines everywhere we looked. Generally the scenery came in magnificent, stark, solid sections of color: fields of purple lupines, black rock, red rock, or bright green grass.

Exploring a waterfall

After our hike we had dinner at our airbnb and then went to Mass in the cathedral in Reykjavik. It was interesting to recognize tiny bits of the language because of it's similarity to German, and a kind priest gave us booklets with the English, Icelandic, and Latin translations. I enjoyed going out for a few runs along the waterfront near our bnb in the mornings, picking lupines and making friends with geese who were wisely enjoying the view without putting themselves through the ordeal of running, and looking peacefully fat and satisfied with their decision. 

     Our last full day we did another long and beautiful drive through the wilderness with some various general destinations along the way. We saw a huge and beautiful waterfall and walked around behind it and were all fairly soaked afterwards.

We also stopped to walk about seven kilometers to an old crashed airplane that people like to see out in the middle of a nowhere. It was interesting how short the walk looked, because it was a completely flat, open space covered in black volcanic rocks and a few meager flowers here and there.

And ready for the walk back to our warm car!

We walked along the way, complained, enjoyed the rain and prayed a rosary, and got to have another fun photo shoot when we got to the plane.

That's some glacier...

     It was our very last evening in Europe, and for the icing on the cake we got to see a glacier on our way home. We stopped by the side of the road, and walked about 15 minutes right up to it. It was quite a sight. It was very cold and rainy, and so we stayed just long enough to enjoy the view and thank God for his Creation and our family adventure in Europe before stealing a piece of said Creation and heading back.

"And NOBODY saw me do it. "