An Unforgettable Summer

We've been home from our trip for about 2 weeks now, and I've been hesitant to start in on a blog entry because there is so much to write.  I don't even know where to begin!  I think I'll begin with a summary...

We left on June 6 for Iceland.  From there we went to the Netherlands and stayed with my host sister Sylwia and her family.  After that we flew to Denmark to check out Copenhagen.  From Copenhagen we took a train across the Øresund Bridge, the longest combined road and rail bridge in Europe, into Sweden.  And finally, we took an overnight ferry from Sweden across the Baltic Sea into Poland.  About a day and a half into Poland, Joe had to return home to work, but the kids and I stayed on another 3 weeks.  The kids and I returned home on August 18.

Even as I type this I am welling up with tears.  There is no way to adequately describe what an unforgettable trip this was for us.  We had so many great experiences, tried so many new things, and met with so many old friends.

I'm not even going to post a fraction of our photos here, and it will be really, really difficult to choose the best ones, but I'll do my best!

Here is how we looked on the day we left.  Our trip began on foot; we walked to the bus stop from our house and took the bus and MAX out to the airport.  We all had a backpack and some sort of small bag.

This was Molly's first flight, and the first flight Desmond could remember (he flew to Aunt Donna's right before he turned 2), so we started out with a trip to the cockpit.

The pilots offered to let them sit at the controls, but the kids were too nervous and would hardly even back this far into the cockpit.  LOL!  I was a little worried that the kids would freak out when we took off, but they did great!  Outstanding even!

I had made everyone a sleep mask for the white nights of Iceland, and they were put to use on the flight, as well.  (Note that Desmond chose a map of Iceland for his mask!  Haha!)

 

The flight went well.  Or should I say flights?  We had a short flight to Los Angeles, and from there we flew to Reykjavik.  The next two pics make it look like it was all fun and games, but it was not.  Sleeping on an international flight is hard, especially for kids!  But we survived!

ICELAND
Our first country!  We landed at 10 am, which meant we had to trick our bodies into believing it really was 10 am, so we spent the first day walking and walking and discovering the capitol of Iceland -- Reykjavik!

Wait, I forgot to mention that when we landed, the kids got their first glimpse of a puffin, which was one of the things they were most looking forward to seeing!  Their stuffed puffins were actually brought from home.  They've been really into puffins for a long time.

Ok, on to Reykjavik...

The entire country of Iceland has only 332,000 residents, and 122,000 of them live in the capitol.  It's a peaceful little town, despite the 2.2 million tourists that descend on the country each year.  Weird statistics, huh?

Here are a few examples of the architecture.

While we were in Reykjavik, the World Cup was happening, so the main square was set up as a viewing area, with a giant screen and people all around.  Joe and Desmond enjoyed watching a little bit of the game while we ate Icelandic hot dogs.

We walked along the harbor and came to a giant game of chess, so Joe and Desmond stopped to play.

This building, the Harpa Concert Hall, was really impressive.

Colorful and reflective from the outside, the inside was filled with mirrors, black stone and colorless silhouettes.  So cool!

We continued our walk along the harbor.  Just outside the Harpa there's a rocky area where people build cairns, so we stopped and built some of our own.

 Farther along the water we came across the Sun Voyager.  Sun Voyager is a sculpture by Jón Gunnar Árnason, and is described as a dreamboat, or an ode to the sun.  (Stolen from wikipedia.)

This is Hallgrímskirkja, which can be seen looming over the skyline in that first picture of Reykjavik.  I love the style of it.  It is supposed to be reminiscent of basalt columns, which are a common volcanic rock formation and can be found on the island.

Everybody was pretty exhausted after walking the whole city, which was a good thing, since we had to not only trick our bodies into being tired that night, but also sleep through the white nights.

I'd always wanted to experience the white nights.  We went to bed at our 'normal' time, with sleep masks on, and for some reason I happened to wake up at midnight.  I'm so glad I did!  The room was almost as light as day, and this is what I saw out the window.  You could tell the sun had gone down, but it hadn't gone down far and would be back up soon!  It was pretty surreal!

I noticed on the way home, when we had an overnight in Reykjavik, that after 6 weeks this had changed dramatically.  There was actually darkness at night.

The next day we got into the car and drove the Golden Circle, which is a popular tourist route that passes some great sights.  Our drive started with a short hike at a little church in Mosfell, just barely outside Reykjavik.  We got out just to take a picture of a cute little church, and the kids found a path and wanted to follow it a ways up.

These purple flowers are all over Iceland in the summer.  They reminded me a lot of lupine, so I did some research to find out what they were.  Turns out they are Nootka lupine, from Alaska and British Columbia, and they are an invasive species!  At least they're pretty, I guess. If you like to read, this is a really interesting article about the Nootka lupine in Iceland.

Our next stop on the drive was Þingvellir, where you can actually walk between two continents.  The pic below shows where the mid-Atlantic rift is gradually pulling apart at the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates.  Iceland is the only place in the world where the rift is above sea level and you can walk right through it.

This is a waterfall called Öxarárfoss.

From Þingvellir we drove to Geysir Hot Spring Area, where you can really see just what a geothermal island this is.  Because of the cold, steam comes up from the ground nearly everywhere you look.

This is Strokkur, one of Iceland's most famous geysers.  It erupts every few minutes, so we got to see it happen quite a few times!

Here's a short video of a small pool and how the steam looks all around you as you stand in this spot.

We saw these super vehicles all over the country!  In our rental agreement, we had to swear we wouldn't drive off road (or we'd be fined severely!), but there are all kinds of gravel roads and roads that are covered in snow and ice all year round, so you really need something like this to get around.  This one was part of an adventure tour you could take.

For scale.  :o) This thing could go anywhere, I'm sure!

Next stop Gullfoss, or Iceland's Niagra Falls.  This thing was amazing!

Yes, as the sign says, do not get too close to this rope, which is the only thing protecting you from certain death!  Yikes!

I just love this wall of spray that you can see here.

The next day, after Joe spent hours researching where the best puffin viewing was, we headed out for a drive along the southern coast to Vik.  We saw some cool things along the way, too.  First stop, Seljalandsfoss.

This reminded me a little of Silver Falls, Oregon, where you can hike behind the waterfalls.

We saw quite a few sheep grazing in this area.  Icelandic wool waiting to happen!

The term 'rugged landscape' feels a little cliche, but there's really no better way to describe Iceland, as these pictures illustrate.

In the center of this photo is a glacier.  More on that later...

Yes, this is a shed built into the side of a rock.

Onto the puffin search.  Iceland is home to about 60% of the world's Atlantic puffins.  Finding them involved quite a climb.  Joe had read that the puffins hang out at Dyrhólaey, a cliff along the North Atlantic, on the way to Vik.

On the way up we ran into someone coming down, so we asked if there were puffins up ahead.  He said yes!  A few minutes later, we ran into this little guy, sitting all alone on the edge of the cliff.  Amazing!

We figured he probably had friends, so we kept walking.  At the top of the cliff we saw tons of puffins, flapping through the sky, dipping down to the water, and resting on the cliff tops!  The puffins were so cool!  I think Joe and I were as excited to see them as the kids were.

The views from the top of this cliff were also worth the climb.

You can actually see a puffin flying around in this pic, and below is a black sand beach.

A few times on this hike I had to remind myself: 'We're in Iceland!  We're in the Arctic Circle!  This is the North Atlantic Ocean!'  It was really cool, and I never imagined I'd get to come to a place like this!

After the puffins we drove a little farther into Vík to see the black sand beach up close.

Yep, that's black sand!

Those rocks in the distance are the ones we could see from our cliffs.

This is a little church in Vík.

This felt like a good place for making some cairns!

On the way home it was getting late, but I desperately wanted to see the glacier that was in my earlier photo.  I'd never seen a glacier, and neither had the kids!  This glacier is called Sólheimajökull.

I wanted to go up close enough to touch the glacier, but Joe convinced me otherwise.  This sign says: "Attention natural hazard.  Calving and unstable glacier.  Do not pass this point."  Plenty of other people had passed this point, and I desperately wanted to, but Joe reminded me how a calving glacier can make a mini-tsunami, and the water would be freezing, and our kids don't swim.  All valid points. Seeing it was still really cool!

 Unfortunately, on our last full day in Iceland, Molly got lice!  Yuck!  We'd planned to take the kids for Icelandic pony rides, but it took us so much time to deal with the lice that we ran out of time.  Instead, we went to a thermal pool, which was also on our list of things to do!  This was one of 12 public thermal pools in Reykjavik, and we just loved it!  It had about 6 hot tubs in different temperatures, a slide, an indoor pool, an outdoor pool, a sauna, and a bunch of fountains.  We spent half a day here, and it was really fun and relaxing.

The next day we headed to the airport to fly to Amsterdam.

 We mailed some postcards.  Maybe you got one??

There was a World Cup display at the airport.

I should also mention that the kids kept the most adorable journals on our trip.  I'd love to tell you that they kept up with this amount of detail, but they did not.  (So sad!)  They became a bit like a chore along the way, so they didn't keep up with them like I'd hoped, but hey, at least there's something in them!

I'm going to have to break this up by country, because it's taken me a really long time to just get this far!  Whew!  Also, Desmond starts school tomorrow, so that's going to warrant its own entry.  :o)

Thanks for reading!