Euroadventure 2016! Day 2

< previous

There wasn’t an obvious daybreak, but when I got up and looked out the window it was a beautiful sunny day. One of the things we’d gotten at the store the day before was cereal, so there was breakfast. WCN declared, “I’m ready to go to the pool.” Which we did. One could get used to that, the going to the pool every day thing… For lunch there was skyr, flavored today, and the breads and spreads plus ham and a lamb pate.

We then set out on a bit of sightseeing and the Memory Lane tour. First stop was the Pearl, a restaurant with a view atop geothermal water storage tanks. We didn’t actually eat there, but you don’t have to eat to enjoy the view. We were able to see back to the apartment building in Hafnarfjörður and over Reykjavík.

school!

view into one of the classrooms

Next we went in to Reykjavík to the school my sister had attended as an exchange student. From there Faðir drove around old town a bit and took us by where we needed to go the following day for the puffin boat.

house in Seltjarnarnes

The next stop was where the family had lived when my sister was an exchange student. We also went by another house where her host parents had lived after she’d been there.

Atlantic Ocean

We went out to the lighthouse on the point, although we couldn’t walk out to it due to it being bird nesting season. There was a nice little beach – the Atlantic Ocean! I put my hand in the water. A bit hard to tell from just that, but it didn’t seem that cold. Actually probably warmer than the Pacific in Northern California.

geothermal well

shark drying shack

There was also a geothermal well, a shark drying shack and a foot bath nearby on the point. We continued back through Reykjavík, cruised by the Gorbachev-Reagan meeting house – built by a poet, now owned by city, claimed to be haunted – and the sports complex, to ICE CREAM! (my day is complete)

sign on the window of the shoe store next door to the ice cream store

One of the host nephews had come along on the excursion, 10 years old, so he’d had a bit of English in school, and he and WCN were able to talk some. We stopped at the market on the way home, and I started asking him how to say things in Icelandic. I’m not sure which of the boys was more amused at my efforts at pronunciation.

Dinner was deep-fried fish balls. That is – round patties of fish meat, deep-fried – the tasty little potatoes and slaw. Yum! Móðir kept urging WCN to eat more. We played some cards, then Móðir showed us pictures of the show her sewing group had had of the quilts they made from Lynne Edwards’ New Sampler Quilt Book. It was quite amazing – they were all the same blocks, but from the colors chosen and different arrangements the quilts looked completely different.

Móðir’s quilt

After the sunny morning, there had been some clouds during the day, then it was fully overcast by nightfall. It still wasn’t full dark, but it made it seem a bit more like night/sleep time. Although again I didn’t seem to have any problems falling asleep right away, I did not sleep completely through the night.

June 15, 2016

Advertisement