Day #18 – not planned

After falling asleep around 7 PM I of course woke up around midnight, definitely not on the plan! Fortunately fell asleep again. I could definitely get used to the king size plus bed, we could have slept in a T if we had wanted.

Then properly woke up around four in the morning, feeling fine. I don’t think I’ve ever been so ready to wake up for a flight in the wee hours of the morning (when we fly to Europe from Iceland the flights are mostly early in the morning so normal wakeup hour for a flight is around 5 AM). Ate an unusual breakfast, olives and artichokes in olive oil and some chocolate pudding but took the chicken spears with us to eat on the plane so we wouldn’t have to buy breakfast there.

No trains this early, neither the airport trains nor the tube so we called the concierge to call a cab for us. Not a problem, got a call to the room 10 minutes later when the cab arrived. No walking between Terminals 5 and 1, the buildings aren’t connected and surroundings definitely not pedestrian friendly. Took 10 minutes to drive, I wouldn’t even have wanted to try to drive, really confusing to find the way, endless spaghetti junctions. Taxi left us in front of check-in on Terminal 1.

In we went and had to stand in a seemingly endless queue, we’ve gotten used to the luxury of self-check in or early check-in and baggage drop in Keflavík Airport, those queues are a thing of the past here. But no self-check in machines and no baggage-drop desk for Icelandair in Heathrow and only 2 desks to service a full plane, this took ages. Then of course another long queue for passport checks and the third one for security. I was really glad not to be tired to start with.

When we finally got within it was almost time to go to the gate, just had time to buy a bottle of Macallan (can’t get it in the duty-free in Keflavík any more) and a box of our favourite Thornton’s chocolates.

Found a McLaren car, of course I took a photo of my McLaren fan with the car. Would have liked to be able to sit in the car, but totally understand why they don’t let people do that, of course.

Walked all the way out to Gate 52 (a looong way, it seemed), a short wait and then everybody was hoarded on a bus and driven out to the plane. Jón Lárus and me thought a flight of 2 hours and 40 minutes really short, after all the long flights from Australia the days before.

Finally in the air, really really looking forward to getting home. Bought a glass of red wine each (hey, it was about 5 PM in our body time, even though it was morning for most everybody else) and ate the chicken we had left from our uneaten dinner the day before.

Reading and watching a movie in the short flight, a soft landing in Keflavík, eldest and sweetest daughter picked us up at the airport and then home at last. Lovely!

yeah, and has anyone

noticed my new blog header?

This is a photo I took from our family summer house (well, husbands’ family, his grandparents used to live there until about 20 years ago). Love the place but it’s a bit far away, we don’t go there every summer. This summer we will, though. It’s all the way up in the West Fjords, Dýrafjörður to be exact.

It’s not far from Þingeyri on this map, just over the fjord.

(map from here)

(the house is actually rented out in parts of the summer, if anyone’s interested ;)

Ash Wednesday

Here the kids dress up and go downtown (or to the malls), sing a song in the shops and get candy. Our version of Halloween. The younger daughter slept over at a friends house, so I don’t have a photo of her, yet at least, but here’s the son, normally blond, not today. Not going to say guess who he’s supposed to be…

cream puff day

thanks Alda for the name, it’s pretty good.

In Iceland we have those 3 days, 7 weeks before Easter, Bolludagur (Cream Puff Day – or rather Ball or Bun day, as it’s traditional to eat all sorts of buns and balls, meatballs, cream buns, pfannkuchen, you name it), then there’s Sprengidagur (exploding day), last day before Lent, then you’re supposed to eat until you burst. The traditional food is very salty lamb plus yellow split pea soup. Can’t stand the stuff. Then Öskudagur, a mini Carneval thing, where kids dress up (the eight-year-old’s going to be Harry Potter, my mother made him an orange/red striped scarf)

But my favourite of those days is definitely Bolludagur, the cream puff thing. Love the thin pastry puffs, coated with chocolate and filled with various sorts of cream and/or pudding or jelly. Husband made these puffs yesterday (I’m hopeless at those, but he’s really good at it).

Hmm, must really take a photo of them filled…

new year’s eve

some photos:

Just a sample, and not a very good one, New Year’s Eve’s pretty grand around here – a bit less now than sometimes before but it mainly manifested itself in that the shooting took shorter time, at midnight it was basically the same. Downtown Reykjavík (well up on the hill where the big church stands) there were much more people than usual, though.

Happy new year

everybody :)

5 days

5 Christmas family parties.

Good it’s done, fun, since we have great families but this is really taxing. The best one was my dad’s birthday, yesterday, big family and we took our instruments along and played Christmas songs and other music, and the ones not with instruments, sang along. (most everybody a trained singer). Great fun.

Gleðilega rest (happy rest, we say here), Christmas officially doesn’t stop until the 6th of January.

Gleðileg jól

Merry Christmas, Happy holidays, pick one, my dear readers :)

Went

swimming in a river yesterday, – well, the kids anyway, see here:

Probably horribly dangerous, but, yes, fun!

dag syv

let’s switch to Danish with the numbers, now, since the day before we had left the Czech and now we’re in Denmark. Felt pretty good to be back in a country where you actually understand what’s being said.

Breakfast at Ascot Hotel was excellent, even though it was sort of funny to have to look for the cutlery in various places (knives and forks one place, spoons another and teaspoons yet another). English Breakfast, American (pancakes and maple syrup – that’s sort of American, isn’t it?), plus a very good continental, loads of bread, ham and cheeses, yogurt, cornflakes and muesli, even porridge, I think).

Up again, called Irme, turned out that the poor woman had waited and waited for us to call the day before, as I had told her we’d be arriving that day, but didn’t think to say it would actually be late in the day. She didn’t have time to see us, had other plans for the day + saturday too. Shame. But we decided to meet up when I go back to Copenhagen, in 2 weeks time.

Also called Bettina, our former landlady (hehe, sounds old – but actually she’s only 3-4 years older than we are), she was going to Sweden that day, so she didn’t have time to see us either – will also meet up with her next time.

Kept calling, our oldest friend, Bryndís, (actually the one that introduced us in the first place – can’t thank her enough) lives just over the water, in Sweden. She did have time, we decided we’d spend most of the Saturday visiting her and her family, before flying home.

Last phonecall, Hafdís, an ex composition student of mine, she also had time, and we decided to meet her for lunch. Went on a smallish shopping spree, sent Jón off to the wine shop and myself to H&M, more clothes for the kids – nope, didn’t buy a thing for myself, honest :D

It was raining, the umbrella I had bought in Paris a few weeks earlier (yep, jetset, me!) came into use. Thunderstorm and all. As we were 3, the umbrella wasn’t quite enough, so we took shelter – in a candy store. Of course couldn’t resist and bought some.

Lunch at a mexican place, I and Jón bought a litre of beer to share, got it in a huge pitcher:

felt like in a biergarten in Germany, really, except there you don’t share the litres.

Great fun to meet Hafdís, she also promised me to help when I get back, that will probably be hard work.

Spent most of the rest of the day just walking around enjoying Copenhagen, we studied there, and our eldest daughter was born there. Visited Charlie’s Bar, amazing bar with tons of beer types, always different ones from tap.

Then, when it didn’t stop raining, we went to the hotel, on the net again for a short while, then down to the restaurant we had ordered a table, a Reef N’Beef. Actually, we almost didn’t go at all, we were so shocked over the wine prices, it was actually quite a bit more expensive than you could get the same wines in restaurants in Iceland. Especially one, well, I’ve never seen it in a restaurant here, but from the shop it costs about $170, normal pricing in a restaurant here would be maybe $210, but there it actually cost $590! (no, we didn’t buy a bottle). Ended up with buying a couple of their most expensive wines that we could get by the glass – the food merited good wine, not a light one.

Had an amazing cocktail there, made with fresh strawberries, light rum, some Triple Sec and some lime juice:

also like the glass :)

Ranted about the wine prices to our waitress, who turned out to be Icelandic; she promised to bring the objections to the owner’s attention. Pretty sure nothing will change, though, since the place was stuffed with people.

Food was excellent, and afterwards we went for a stroll around Copenhagen’s Lakes, as the sun was back out.

view from Tycho Brahe Planetarium

some ugly ducklings?

Back to hotel, and a good night’s sleep.

Day #2

(hmm, should really learn the days and numbers in Czech, here)

Woke up with a tired back, bed was just a tiny bit too hard. And I didn’t think that possible, I like my beds fairly hard. Jón Lárus’s cold was coming on strong, he hadn’t slept well at all and the coughing was terrible. I’m convinced the people in the house thought they had someone with tuberculosis living in our flat. Anyway, went out and found a shop, bought some lemons for him to make hot and strong lemon tea, plus some batteries for the borrowed camera, since our was being repaired.

The batteries turned out to be unuseable, ran out in 4 photos, so we had to get new ones. Never buying generic brand batteries again, I think.

After drinking his tea, (horrid, made of tap water, which isn’t good in Plzeň and then we both put 2 teaspoons of sugar in the cup), Jón fell asleep again and I let him sleep until 1 pm. Needed that. I almost finished all the books I had to read, though.

At 2 o’clock, Anna, the wife of Jiři Bezděk (hmm, can’t remember how to write her surname, derived off Bezděk) and their daughter came to pick us up, for a ride to a medieval castle near Plzeň

Lovely woman and beautiful sweet daughter, as you can see :)

When we sat down for a glass of wine (us) and juice (them), I was speaking to Katka the daughter and asked her if she’d used Stardoll.com, which Freyja, my middle daughter’s really stuck on. Told her Freyjas nick, and to be in touch, if she liked (which she since did).

The inside of the castle was splendid, especially the paintwork on the walls, all sorts of intricate things, sorry I can’t bring any photos, but it was expressly forbidden to take pictures in there. The guide only spoke Czech, so we didn’t understand a word. I wanted to go one room ahead of the group, (and maybe sneak some photos) but no, had to follow the group. Fun to see, anyway.

Once outside, we walked round the castle, in front they had this beautiful porch (at a loss for a word, here, porch will have to do) They could hold one heck of a grill party, there, if they wanted…

Back home, now it was my turn to fall asleep, slept for about an hour. Went out to find a restaurant, but as we weren’t exactly in the centrum we only found two places, in the first one they weren’t serving food at 19:30 on a Sunday (apparently normal Czechs eat the biggest meal at lunch), in the second one the TV was blasting and we didn’t fancy eating there. Went to the big Interspar supermarket, they were about to close, had no hot food, I grabbed a pack of 3 small pork slices and a bag of crisps and some beer and we headed back to the flat. Fried the slices in a casserole, as there was no pan, they turned out fabulous, some sort of garlic marinade, I don’t think I’ve ever cooked pork to such perfection, probably never will again.

finally

online again, been in the Czech Republic for the last 5 days in a flat where I didn’t have a chance for the net (oy vey!).

Now in Copenhagen, the Czechs were brilliant, already missing them, hope to go back soon. Must try to remember my German better, if I’ll be going regularly to Plzen, English isn’t all that widely spoken there.

Holiday in Denmark for a couple of days, home late Saturday evening. No more now, onwards to my almost 300 rss entries…

national holiday

Today is the national holiday of Iceland, commemorating Iceland’s independence day, 1944.

Normally a rather unorganized parade down the main shopping street, a couple of bands playing, some boy/girl scouts in front, then downtown various artists and musicians in different places, people drift about, activities for the kids in the public gardens, rather nice, really. Used to be that you could buy candyfloss and hot-dogs + some huge hard candy bits, now there’s a bit more variety, we like to sit down with a burger and beer.

Weather’s really nice, sunny (well, a bit of wind) and fairly warm. We’ll probably join the parade, with the younger kids, anyway, then the extended family’ll be around for some traditional Icelandic pancakes, rolled up with sugar, or some jam and whipped cream. Hmm, must remember to call my brother and invite him…