What I Did on Summer "Vacation": The Good, Part I

Where did the month of August go? It's Complicated.

July was all about our Balcony Upgrade. And August was supposed to be about our fun trip to Europe followed by a some long-awaited visitors. But instead it was followed with a trial by fire and smoke, i.e. the Lolo Peak Fire getting all up in our neighborhood business. More about that later; here I'm going to talk about the first leg of our fun trip!

Angry Robot Books, who published Dr Potter's Medicine Show and The Trials of Solomon Parker, is a Sci-fi/Fantasy publisher so he's been a attending WorldCon since 2015. The first year it was in Spokane, Washington (and he hadn't signed with AR yet), the second year it was in Kansas City, Kansas. I didn't tag along to those. This year it was in Helsinki, Finland! So, yeah, you bet I went along!

I think this was my first time on the new PDX carpet! 

Hold that thought, because we decided to take advantage of that deal where you can fly Icelandic Airlines through Reykjavik and layover for up to 7 days without additional fees and taxes. So we flew from Missoula to Portland, then the next day Portland to Reykjavik, arriving at about 6:00 AM.

I am not sure we ever had darkness outside the window on our red-eye to Iceland.

We've arrived! Such a striking landscape! 

Then we spent two whole days and two nights in Iceland. The first day we spend exploring Reykjavik while waiting for our AirBnB check-in at 2:00 PM. We chilled for a bit, probably took a nap, then went out again for dinner and more poking around. It turns out that our place was right by the city center so we walked from there.

Reykjavik is known for public murals.

From the Icelandic Phallological Museum! Good times.

We ran into our old pal, Bigfoot, at the Hallgrimskirkja. Guess he was checking out the statue of Leif Eriksson, too.

Not sure who this lumpy lady was, but she was up for a selfie.

And again at the Harpa concert hall! I wonder if he came on one of the tourist busses?

Sooooo windy there along the sea. Still we took the requisite shot at the Sun Voyager sculpture.

At the Iceland Punk Museum, housed in a defunct underground toilet. It was GREAT.

No one is more punk rock than Bigfoot.

Out the window of our AirBnB at 23:00!

We ate some great food! We had some really not great drinks! Everything cost a h*ckin' ton of money! A hamburger from just about anywhere was about $25.

The next day we took our rental car for a drive along part of the Golden Circle. The landscape is strikingly harsh in its beauty. You definitely feel like you can see the tectonics of it all - it's viscerally magical in its stark contrasts.

Views from the passenger side.

First stop!

I think if you click on this panorama it you can see a bigger version.

Summer residence of the Prime Minister in the park. Pretty humble, quite charming form the outside. Has a chapel and more interestingly, a graveyard.

Spotted on the way out in the parking lot! We saw several similar tourist vans with different humorous sayings.

We got a farm-to-table lunch experience at FarmHotel Efstidalur where it wasn't nearly so awkward to view the cows while eating a burger as you might think. They also have house made ice cream, but we didn't have any.

Next stop, Geysir where they have, you guessed it, Geysers.

Lots of tourists, of course, including Bigfoot.

The steamy areas are from geysers and the run off from them. 

A few times an hour the gesyer goes off and people gather all around behind a short barrier waiting for it. It doesn't shoot as high or "spouty" as Old Faithful, so we were pretty close.

For some reason Bigfoot was looking the other way when it went off. Shoot.

Our last stop was at Gullfoss waterfall. It kind of sneaks up on you and isn't really visible until you're right up the barrier. I was surprised by it's volume.
I think if you click on this panorama it might get bigger.

Like almost the entire world, we didn't know any Icelandic. We learned "thank you" and "cheers." We were very lucky that pretty much every Icelanders' second/third/whatever language is English. Did we feel like Ugly American Jerkfaces? Yes we did. Do Icelanders expect anyone to speak Icelandic? I didn't seem so. In fact, we definitely heard other travelers whose first language was definitely not English, use it to order food, ask directions, etc. Actually, we couldn't even mispronounce street names to each other in ways that at least we could communicate directions among our party of two. The GPS lady in the car was no help at all.

We got up around 4:30 to catch our 7:00a flight. I spotted this F&F sign on the highway to the airport. Don't know what it is!

One more night in Reykjavik with more delicious food and this time some amazing cocktails, then a VERY EARLY flight to Helsinki. Eric has all the foodie/boozy pics, so you'll just have to trust me!