Iceland Part Four

(1-5)visiting a national park; the four women are me and three others who are all members of the same guild, Minnesota Contemporary Quilters
(6)a geyser
(7-11)gorgeous waterfalls; see the rainbow?
(11)a salmon ladder

(1-5)a stop at Gudrun's mother's house; she served us Icelandic doughnuts, and then fermented shark followed by a shot of Black Death. Now I can say I've eaten fermented shark, and I can also say I will never do so again.

(1)2:00 AM - it's really not as dark as it appears in this photo. It is just dark enough for city lights to come on. This is from our hotel room in Reykjavik. The Harpa Concert Hall is streaming colors across its front. It's an award-wining and very interesting building that reflects pretty lights off its façade during the day.
(2)a pretty,quilt-like sidewalk in Reykjavik
(3)sculpture along the waterfront
(4)our hotel in Reykjavik

(1-2)Workshop with Icelandic quilters was so much fun. This is four Americans with our Icelandic table-mate, Jona. She gave us each a skein of yarn which she hand-dyed - two with moss and two with rhubarb. I got a rhubarb skein. I must plan something very special to knit. The second photo is one of the Icelanders during show and tell.
(3-4)visit and soak at Blue Lagoon
(5)S.knitting while waiting for our flight home
(6)late addition photo from friend M., is me feeling jubilant after finishing a tough hike

(1-3)During the flight home I had a window seat, and I got this great view of Greenland as we flew over it.

(1)flying over Newfoundland, Canada
(2)modeling my souvenir sweater from Iceland

Iceland Part Three

Samples of beautiful Iceland scenery along with a cute kid enjoying some ice cream.

(1)B.emerges from a cave which is at the site of this fissure. Water is running inside this cave. (She wished she could put a rubber ducky in the river, and someone somewhere would find a rubber ducky floating along... haha!)
(2)Fissure opened up over time due to earthquakes between the years of 1975-1984. This is where the American plate and the European-Asian plate are separating.
(3)I am standing on both sides of the planet: one foot on the American plate, the other foot on the European-Asian plate.

Members of our tour group doing the straddling of the earth's tectonic plates. - photo by GEG

(1-2)This crater happened during a 1700s volcano eruption. One hundred years later the water was still boiling. Now in 2017 the water is cold.
(3)Icelandic horses are unique. They can do a gait that no other horses do. It is called Tolt (umlaut over the o). It carries the rider in a very smooth ride, no bumping up and down. She is showing that she can carry a full glass of beer during the Tolt, but during a trot, the beer spills all over.

One more post coming -- see Iceland Part Four.

Iceland Part Two

(1)Icelanders love to swim. Even tiny towns usually have an outdoor pool, heated by the natural geothermal hot waters of the earth. They use these pools year-round.
(2)A yummy lunch of lamb soup and rolls. I loved the bread in Iceland! Oh, so yummy, and it inspired me to start making home-made bread like I used to do.
(3)Friends Sally and Maureen. Notice the lovely weather we enjoyed. We were told that it was by far the nicest weather they'd had so far this summer. Most days the high was in the low 60s. I often got hot from hiking and walking so much, but evenings cooled down beautifully and wearing a jacket or sweater was in order. Also, depending on where one goes, it could suddenly be very cold and a person would need mittens and a hat! We stopped at a huge waterfall where this was the case. It was VERY windy there, and cold. But just a half kilometer down the road, it was not windy, and the temperature was much warmer.
(4-5)random pretty views
(6)four friends at a quilt shop (wow, fabric there is very expensive.. in our money, about $22-24 per meter).

(1)trolls in Aukureyri.. the troll folklore is a big part of their tradition
(2)Icelandic sweaters. They are beautiful and are sold everywhere. Yes, I bought one. Also bought mittens and a hat.
(3)a church in Aukureyri
(4)our hotel outside Aukureyri.. it used to be a chicken processing shed or chicken barn, or something about chickens.

This sequence of photos was taken from about 10:30 to 11:30 PM. I don't think the sun ever went lower than it is pictured here. It then starts rising as it moves along the horizon to the right. It was odd and fun to experience 24-hour sunlight. It got dusky at night, but never dark.

Check back in for Iceland Part Three in a day or two!