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Saturday adventures

I already shared some photos from our adventures on our last full day in Iceland, Saturday, but now I will give the full low-down on our day!

We started off by going down to the harbor in Reykjavik, where all of the tourist whale-watching and puffin-watching tours, and other day-trips, depart from.  The first time we came to Iceland, my dad and the kids and I did a whale-watching tour!  This time, we booked a tour called the “Classic Puffin” tour, since we didn’t get to go to the Westman Islands this time, which is puffin-watching central! So, this one-hour tour involved a fifteen-minute ride out to a small island right off the coast of Reykjavik and then thirty minutes viewing the puffins in their summer breeding grounds, on both sides of the islands.  They were everywhere!  Then, after the viewing period, fifteen more minutes were spent cruisin’ back to Reykjavik.

Now, the thirty minutes of puffin-watching was awesome!  There are so cute and so dramatically colored and shaped, with their oval bodies and their big orange beaks. On this rocky, small island, they lay their eggs and pufflings hatch. The pufflings are grey and with our binoculars, we could see them (well, they were the tour’s binoculars, but anyway).  Now, the adult puffins were darting this way and that over the island, out to sea a bit, diving for fish, swooshing above the boat.  It was so cool to see them in action.  On the boat, there were some little books all about puffins and there was a life-like puffin doll, which the MC used to explain a few things about puffins to everyone on the tour. 

Rowan is not the hardiest sea-faring boy; he also gets a bit carsick sometimes.  But, he made it through this boat trip and stayed under deck, as opposed to out in the air and on the deck, for a bit of time. When we’ve taken big ferries, the being-on-a-boat element does not affect him, but smaller boats’ swaying and bopping up and down does affect him.

Anyway, we got back to shore and got our car (we’d used the Easy Park app to park everywhere on our trip and that made it very easy) and drove back to our apartment for a quick pitstop and then we went to the Perlan, which Eric didn’t visit with us a few days before.  We went for a gelato-break!  They had a beautiful ice cream shop on the fourth floor, and on that floor, you can walk the 360-degree deck around the outside of the building and see all of the views.  Eric loved to see that!  We all thoroughly enjoyed our gelato.  Cece got green apple and mango sorbet; Rowan got kiwi and lakris; Eric and I got salted caramel and cookies-and-cream.  It was all sooooo yummy. 

OK, so with our bellies full of gelato, we drove about 45 minutes outside of Reykjavik to the Reykjadalur Valley, where there is about a two-mile hike in, leading to a steaming, geothermal river that people love to soak in!  I am all about soaking in warm water!  So, we started off with the hike, and, wow, it was windier, steeper, and a bit more exposed in parts than I was expecting or than I had hoped.  I can do some pretty solid hikes, but the wind?  I am not a fan. So, anyway, it took us about an hour to do the 2+ miles, which is much longer than usual, but there needed to be some coercion of the dispirited troops. But, behold -- we saw the steaming river and as soon as we were there, morale improved.  Then, we all changed, and into the river we plopped.  Unfortunately, we plopped in not far from a younger American couple who seemed to be not-big-fans of children.  Anyway, I had to advise our children to try to keep the volume down, which they did, and then the 20-somethings moved on after finishing their beers and their chitchat about how they both used to run track in high school. 

The river was not deep; most people just sort of laid down in the water so it could cover all of them.  It was actually quite hot where we were sitting, but you could lay crosswise across the river, and so your feet could be in a “cooler” stream of water and your torso in a hotter part, or vice-versa. I am not sure how long we soaked -- maybe an hour?  What’s great is that, like a typical hot tub, where you’ve gotten yourself all steamed up and cooked, when you get out, you can manage the cooler outdoors temperatures. So, we got dressed without too much duress and then we hiked down.  But, because the hike down was as steep downwards as it had been upwards (obviously), and the terrain was pretty gravelly, there were some episodes of stumbling, tumbling, and plopping on bottoms. 

Once we got back to the car and back to the apartment, it was about 5:45 p.m., and we had plenty of time for a leisurely evening, when the kids could play with the toys one last time and then make sure to sort them in all the little girls’ appropriate bins.  I made dinner and then the kids’ took baths and actually go tto bed rather early.  We had to get up not-too-early on our departure day, Sunday, but we knew it was going to be a long slog, which it was.  We wanted to try to ensure that everyone got as much sleep as they could. I even slept reasonably well, which is not my typical move, on the night before a trip. 

Since we were these Airbnb folks’ first guests, as I noted before, they didn’t really have checkout instructions or much detail at all for what we needed to do with the linens, towels, running of the dishwasher, etc. Eric and I did do an outdoor exploration for their compost bin, which we asked about and were told was on the east side of the yard behind some trees.  Their yard was gorgeous, once we were out looking around it! Someone has a green thumb!  Their rhubarb plants were amazing!  And so much more. 

I wanted to note that the kids were totally taken by a book the little girl had, one book out of a series by French authors, called Barbapapa,  from the mid-70s. Have you ever seen these books?  The characters might look familiar.  The one they were reading was a picture book called Barbapapa’s New House, which perhaps someday we will find in English. Rowan in particular loved the illustrations of the house.  This family also had some utensils and a puzzle with these characters on them.

I also wanted to note that everywhere we went in Scandinavia, as I am sure most everyone knows, they are very strict about sorting garbage for recycling purposes.  But, there were some variations across countries, like, in Iceland, we saw no bins for aluminum or tin, nor for glass. The most extreme example was in Stockholm, where the woman whose house we rented had like five different containers under the sink and even more in her garage. My friend Ryley in Norway is fastidious about it too, as I Imagine most folks are, and sets aside items and collects them, to take in to the center, that they are confused about how to recycle. 

One last observation for now, before my culminating, final-thoughts post, which I will write in a day or two.  In it, I might remark on the kids’ desire to name cars on this trips, particularly our new car (”Marimekko”) and our rental car in Iceland (”Rentilly”).  OK, so my last observation concerns Kleenex or “facial tissue.”  I am not sure whether Scandinavians/Nordic people use toilet paper to blow their noses, or hankies like my Grandma Rose did, but they do not appear to use paper tissues that come in a box, which perhaps is an effect of ecological-mindedness. If anyone can clue me in to what is going on with this, that’d be great. 

OK -- so that is all for our post about our Saturday!  Next up, my “concluding thoughts” post, in which I will detail our flights home, too!

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Here are a few photos from our last full day in Reykjavik, which I still need to write all about. These pics show our puffin-watching boat trip, our gelato-eating visit to the Perlan, and our hike and hot-river-soak in the Reykjadalur Valley.

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A few photos from Friday, when we went to the Harpa, the adventure playground, and the Cat Tour!

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All About Friday!

Our Friday was scheduled around Cat Tour starting at 2 p.m. :)  This was an Airbnb excursion that really excited the kids, so, for a first-time thing, we booked one of the tours!  We were not sure what to expect, but I will get to that part of our day in a little while. 

We had a relaxing morning and then we went across Miklabraut, the street in Reykjavik where our Airbnb is, directly into a beautiful, large park, where an art museum sits on the far side.  We did not, sadly, get to go to this art museum, but we did walk through the park and stop at the playground.  There is a very long zip line at the playground, so we stopped for a little bit and played on it.  Then, we continued toward the harbor, and walked along the sea.  It was still cold and windy, but sunny.  We took a few quick photos at the Sun Voyager statue/sculpture, which is a pretty famous Reykjavik sight. Then, we continued on to the Harpa.  The Harpa is the concert hall/opera house and it is just totally amazing. I have walked inside the Harpa many times, on all of the floors, but I have never seen a performance there -- though I would love to!  Someday.  Anyway, here is a link to their website and a brief video about it.  The way the sun glints off of all of the at-various-angles panes of glass is just so impressive. Neither kiddo remembered it very well, though Rowan did a bit.  There was new shop on the ground floor, featuring Icelandic design, and it was verrrrry cool. 

From there, we walked past the flea market hall, which is only open on weekends, so we didn’t get to enjoy that, but we went to eat lunch at Vegan World Peace and it was amazing.  We ordered so much food and all shared. From there, we walked down to what was the “adventure playground,” which the kids loved so much when they were littler, but now, it seems to have some issues, like two of the small hills they loved running up and down are fenced off, perhaps undergoing some sort of work (though I don’t know what kind of work one does on a perfectly good-looking small hill).  But, there was a cool climbing wall and a swing-set and a neat playhouse.  The boat-shaped sandbox was devoid of sand, but only Cece still really loves sandboxes.  We only had about twenty minutes to play; we had to scooch!  We needed to get on over to our Cat Tour. 

At 2 p.m., we met the guide, and four other folks who had signed up for the Cat Tour of Reykjavik.  Now, to have a great "cat tour,” one must have good luck, because cats are unpredictable.  So, some of the cats who we were supposed to visit on the tour were not in the shops where they generally live.  The kids were still basically ecstatic the whole time, though.  The guide, Daniel, told us some Icelandic lore about cats and about cats in Icelandic history.  That was all interesting. We also went into some shops that featured cat art and we went to a cat cafe and had traditional Icelandic donuts and visited with like five cats.  The cats were cute, but they did not necessarily love the overwhelming adoration expressed by our kids ;)  We did have to tell them to back off a bit.  One cat decided my rain coat was the perfect napping spot, which was not ideal, since I am the one allergic to cats ;)  It did not bother me, though, luckily. I put into words very well just how much the kids loved the two-hour tour; Eric and I were more “meh” about it, but it was still enjoyable. 

After the tour, we walked home with another brief stop at the park, when we all had some balance-obstacle-course fun.  Once back to our Airbnb, we did do a quick turn-around and we went to the mall (gasp!) and checked out this shop called Hagkaup, which we have seen several different stores of.  We were so curious as to what it was.  So, from what we can gather, it is like a department store plus Whole-Foods-level grocery store and a Target, sort of all rolled into one.  It has high-end things and things that are more “economical,” if one can apply that in Iceland?  I think there might be some Hagkaups that just have groceries, but I still haven’t totally figured that out. 

There are just some things about Iceland that make us scratch our heads, like how in the world, with a population across the whole nation of just over 300,000, do they have a capital city that seems really so big??  I mean, it does not seem massive, but it really seems like it alone has like 400,000 people in it, and it has like  a zillion grocery stores and sporting venues of all kinds and beautiful museums and galleries and more  ... we just are always incredulous about the population size. 

So, to end the day on Friday, we went to the pool again and yours truly stayed in the hot tub again -- well, actually, not entirely.  I was in the shallower pool with the kids for a while as they were asking me to throw a small plastic box that held Eric’s earplugs into the water so they could swim down to the bottom and get it. But, it actually didn’t sink very well, so that game was kind of a failure.  They ended up on the slide, again ;)

And that brings us to TODAY -- Saturday-- our last day in Iceland!! Sniff!!!! I will write a post about our exciting final day very soon.  While it has been colder and windier than I remember either of our previous trips being, we are still such fans of this place, as it is gorgeous, full of so many activities for big excursions and smaller city-based days, and unceasing opportunities to have a feast for the eyes on the wonders Mother Nature can present. 

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A few Thursday first-half-of-day photos!

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Our Thursday and a too-windy hike!

Hello! On Thursday, we started off with big goals; we wanted to hike about a 4.5-mile roundtrip up Mt. Esja and see the amazing vistas of Reykjavik over the bay.  Now, this length of hike, with its amount of ascent, is totally within our capabilities, but there was one factor that was quite an imposition on Thursday morning: gale-force winds (well, “gale-force” in probably a non-technical sense). 

We arrived at the base of a hike in an area with a considerable network of trails and we started up a pretty steep initial ascent, on a trail with very high white and purple wildflowers (the purple ones are all over Iceland and on the sides of highways  and al over the place in Sweden and Norway; I believe they are lupines). So, the first part was windy; my attitude was not great, but I was keeping it together.  I happen to be very sensitive to wind; it is my least favorite weather, I think, because I get horrible ear aches from the wind, so I typically carry a hat. Anyway, our attire was  suited for the occasion, and up we went, up, up, up 1000 feet. So, within 250 feet from the point where we turned around, there was no respite from the onslaught of the wind and we saw some people coming down who applauded the kids but also said it was only going to get windier at the top.  The winds were probably 30 mph with gusts of 40 mph and it was really hard to even walk against them.  Though we all would’ve loved to have gone up farther, it was unsafe, in my opinion, to do so.  So, we trudged back down. But, we got some gorgeous photos along the whole, windy way. 

After our hike, we took a detour that was actually a do-again for me, heading towards the westfjords of Iceland, which my dad, the kids, and I did when Cece was 15 months old.  What I really remember about the beginning of that drive, then, was a very long tunnel.  So, getting to do it again. we were able to time it.  Now, a 5-minute,15-second, tunnel may not sound that long, but it is when you’re in it!  After the tunnel, we went to a small town on the coast called Akranes. There, we went to a black sand beach and one thing we really noticed, though I failed to take a picture, was that among all of the kelp and seaweed there was a ton of plastic, broken down a bit by the water and tumult of the sea, but, still, super obvious.  It reminded me of a book I had as  kid, and that Cece and Rowan have, called Serendipity, about a pink sea monster who throws all of the garbage humans have dumped into the sea back upon them on the shore. 

From Akranes (which also has a really cool, early-twentieth-century movie theater), we went back to Reykjavik, and the kids and I walked into the city center and went to the Laundromat Cafe, a place we went to on all of our previous trips (well, both, I should say, which isn’t really an “all”).  We loved that place when the kids were younger because in the basement, they had a play room, with these cubbies in the wall the kids could climb up into, and a Moomin mural, but, alas, I think that area went the way of the wind due to Covid.  It was all blocked off.  We ate at the Laundromat Cafe anyway, upstairs like grown people and we we enjoyed ourselves.  Then, we did some walking around on shopping streets, and we stopped, near the end of our jaunt, at a shop called Dimmalimm where they sold these adorable puffin-print shirts, designed in Iceland but made in Estonia.  

After our walk in the wind in central Reykjavik, the kids and I went to the Perlan museum, which was totally amazing -- it showcased Iceland’s natural wonders and has a planetarium, where we watched a 25-minute film about the aurora borealis, and it has a 360-degree walkway around the base of the glass dome at the top of the museum, and the views of Reykjavik were stupendous. 

Afterwards, we met Eric at the Sundlaug Setjarnarness, a pool that has a slide, a shallow kids’ pool, lap pool, multiple hot tubs, a cold tub, and steam rooms. We’ve been there on our other trips.  The kids had such fun on the slide.  It was suuuuper cold and windy (probably with temperatures of about 40 degree Fahrenheit) but that did not deter them from running up over and over to the top of the platform to go down the slide over and over.  I stayed tucked down in the hot tub ;) 

We didn’t get home until quite late, so, again, the kids had skyr and toast and fruit for dinner. I feel kind of like maybe I should’ve made a proper meal one of those nights, but, then again, the kids had so much fun at the pool and were wiped out. I was tired, too, from the hot water (geothermal heat, oh yeah) and the chlorine. Eric loves water, swimming, soaking so much, that he had a total blast too. What a full day -- again!!

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Scenes from all around the Golden Circle, to go with my post from earlier today! And, no, Eric is not walking in a glacier ;)

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Wednesday and some Golden Circle Sights!

So, we had a slow morning on Wednesday, as the kids enjoyed a few hours of playing with toys and we chatted with our host a bit, when he brought some more towels and another set of keys (the one to the apartment door still did not work, for what it’s worth). Anyway, at about 10:45 a.m., we finally hit the road, towards Geysir and Gullfoss.  We’ve gone to both before, when Cece was 15 months old and my dad was visiting Iceland with us, when Eric and Alia were doing the Laugaveggur hike.  But, since Cece and Rowan were both so young then, they did not remember at all.

We drove to Geysir first, and took a quick stop at Þingvellir National Park.  Now, the last time we stopped there, we were taken aback by how many flies there were all around, and that made it a bit hard to be out of the car.  On Wednesday, the fly concentration was lower, perhaps because it was colder and windier.  When we stopped at a lookout point, there was a small road down towards the lake, so the kids took off down that road, and we followed.  As we descended down a bit, it grew less windy and --as kind of goes without saying -- it was a beautiful view. 

Next stop: Geysir. You can read all about it all this Wikipedia page.  We walked a loop and up to the top of a hill with amazing view down on all of the geysers, small and large, and some steaming streams and hot pots.  Rowan really wanted to wait to see the huge geyser erupt, which luckily it did every 4-5 minutes, and we could see it very well from the top of the hill we walked up. Once we were done with our geyser loop, we ate lunch at the restaurant there and it was delicious and ample. Cece is such a picky eater these days -- or, well, all days -- but she was coerced into finishing half of the tuna sandwich she chose. Rowan found his favorite food, quiche, and I had soup, which actually came with a refill so I got to try two soups, and Eric had a salmon sandwich. We went into the very nice gift shop, which has an old tractor in it, which the kids played on when they were very young, and we remade those photos. If I can dig that up, I will link to it, and we can compare then and now!

After Geysir, we did the short drive over to Gullfoss.  Now, THIS waterfall is seriously amazing.  I think  of all of the stops on the famed Golden Circle, this is the most amazing one. The power of the water and the massive amount of mist it kicks up is just unreal.  From a distance, you can see the mist spewing high into the sky and you can hear the waterfall.  I’ve been to Niagara Falls, once and very briefly, and I know it is massive and impressive and I would love to go back.  But, the way Gullfoss just sort of falls out of the floor of the earth, just out of the landscape that otherwise would not lead you to suspect that such a massive and powerful natural wonder is right there, just makes one’s mouth gape. It is also somewhat nerve-racking.  I kept the kids very close, even though they have everything roped off, but people still, once in a while, fall over (maybe they’ve done this on purpose -- and that is the end for them). The sheer power of the waterfall is just something I cannot put into words. 

Next up was a new adventure for us.  Eric remembered last time going to the end of the road that Gullfoss is on, which I think is the 35, and it turning to a dirt road.  Last time, we had a small compact car.  This time, we have an SUV -- and so, this seemed to Eric to be a signal that this was our chance, with relatively calm weather, to see how far we could safely go on this road, towards one of the glaciers (which of course we would be responsible and ecologically minded people and not go on -- I just figured I should put that out there). We did go maybe twenty minutes down the road, and then we turned on a road that leads to a snowmobiling operation, and pretty soon the road becomes impassable because of snow and ice.  Now, for some reason, the kids both decided they were going to do a variant of a Polar Bear Challenge and walk across a snow expanse barefoot.  This began because Rowan was out of the car with Eric and his Blundstone boots got mud-bogged, and so he took them off and ran to the car barefoot.  Both kids can be surprising hardcore sometimes, and so much tougher than I ever was as a kids or am now ;) So, I have hilarious video of them running across this expanse of snow barefoot, quasi-giggling and screeching.

We went back down this road, to the main dirt road, and took a quick turn to the northeast to a lake.  Now, I should say, this road is very lightly traveled, but we did see about four cars during our 1-hour foray in this direction. This lake was like opaque blue and very wind-blown -- it was called Hitárvatn.  I’ve just now looked up the lake to link it here and it has lore of its own.  It is near Iceland’s second-largest glacier, and we could get some pretty decent views of the glacier, but we were pretty far away from it. Now, if one was going to drive the interior of Iceland, to try to get to some northern Iceland towns and not have to drive the 1, the ring road the makes a circle around the outside of the country, one would drive the road we were on.  But, from the reading I have done before, even in the summer it is sketchy to do this, because the road is so lightly traveled, there are no services, cell phone coverage is unpredictable, and the weather in Iceland is also so unpredictable.  If we’d taken the road north, we would’ve reconnected with the 1 in about 5 hours, but we, obviously, did not do this and were not planning to do this.  It was just interesting to know that we were on that interior, bisecting road. 

We had one more stop that was on the kids’ list of things to see -- a crater lake called Kerið that we had learned about from a YouTube video about a quick, self-drive Golden Circle tour, by two British vlogger-types. The kids really were excited about seeing it; here is some information about it. We got there, and it was the one sight that was pay-to-play, so we paid our fee and then walked the loop around it (and were not amused by the loud buzzing of someone flying a drone over the crater lake, despite the signs saying not to, and, in fact, every place we went had signs saying use of drones was prohibited  . . . because they are so loud, disruptive, and annoying -- though, truth be told, they do generate amazing footage).  We also walked down stairs to the crater lake itself and it was so cool and we checked out the fish that were living in it, and joked about how they had all the bugs they could ever want to eat that day, as it was pretty buggy outside.

What a long day of sightseeing! We didn’t get back to the Airbnb until about 8:30 p.m. or 9:00 and so, the kids had a quick dinner and eggs (Rowan actually ate five eggs, believe it or not) and yogurt (actually, skyr) and toast, and off to bed they went. 

I wanted to say one more thing about an oddity we encountered when we got the Airbnb on Tuesday.  The lights in two of the bedrooms did not work and there was no power to those rooms at all.  I guess a circuit had blown so Eric had to explore the circuit box.  The owner told us, after a while of back-and-forth, to unplug and replug one thing from one of the bedrooms, and try again, and voilá!  Power restored.  It’s always an adventure staying in other people’s homes!

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A full report on Tuesday

Here are a few photos from Tuesday (two of our rad apartment in Reykjavik and one of a box of graham cookies that we love!), which was a travel day, so I didn't take many snaps!

So, I'll write a bit here about our journey to the airport Tuesday morning in Oslo, our plane flight, our experience getting to the Reykjavik Airbnb, and our evening just settling in (in the rain).

Our Uber was a tight fit! We ended up fitting all of our luggage in, but it made for a bit of a cramped backseat ride for the kids and me. Now, I don't know if you've ever flown from a large European airport, and I can only speak to this phenomena at airports in a few major European cities and to how it was in Chile, but when you check in in the main departures lobby, there are dozens of numbered check-in counters and a big board that tells you which one to go to. It's not like the airlines always have set ones, like at U.S. airports. And historically, we have found ourselves on the wrong end of some very long lines at these Euro check-in counters!

Anyway, this is a story of one of those times ;)

What happened with us is that I checked us in online and had to only print our baggage tags, but apparently there was an error (and I later discovered what it was) and we actually had to get in one of these massive queues... and it was so long it appeared we'd miss our flight to Reykjavik if we didn't find some intervention.

So, I went to the SAS help counter specifically for asking for help and the lady was very flat and firm that she could do nothing nor even look into any matter concerning baggage. So, back we went to the long line, and we waited a bit longer and the clock was ticking down. Then after a while I went back to the baggage tag printing area and tried again; I got the error again. Ugh! Another customer was asking for help and this other roving help lady was very helpful and recommended we ask some guy at a desk near the massive queue for help since our plane was leaving soon...and help he did! We made our way after a relatively short wait to a desk and the agent there revealed my error: I'd accidentally checked all four bags to Cece's name. So it was due to my hastiness that we ended up with the stressful situation of line-waiting and nail-biting. Anyway, we got through security, got to our gate, had still to wait a bit, and then got on our plane. It was a smooth and easy 2.5-hour flight to Reykjavik with relatively non-bumpy air, which I still contend is more common than in the U.S. which, and I have no idea why but I stand by this theory, has more dramatically bumpy air space.

We landed at Reykjavik, got our bags without event, and called Thrifty car rental and waited for their shuttle. Now, we'd really struggled finding a car booking that wasn't a million dollars a day 😆 ... prices had been so high for daily car rentals in Reykjavik! But so too are they everywhere!! So, one day a few weeks ago I was looking on Expedia, *again*, and we saw a listing that was $17 dollars a day through Thrifty!! Soooo, this was clearly an error, but we snatched it up and took a bunch of screenshots.

Well, within two days, we got the fateful email from Thrifty that said, well, we've caught our error, but too bad for you! It continued, we will give you a discount, mobile wifi, and an upgrade. We felt frustrated, but had no option but to accept. As I said, rental car rates in Iceland are insane.

Ok, so we got our rental car on Tuesday when we arrived and made our way, 45 minutes, from Keflavik airport to Reykjavik. But, you know where we stopped? Somewhere we've always been a bit curious about in Iceland. Don't laugh. Costco! This may seem like a really American thing to do, but, really, we were so curious. Turns out, and this might be very unsurprising to you, it is very similar to a U.S. Costco -- same muffins even ;) The kids were transfixed by the lady decorating sheet cakes behind plexiglass so they watched her for about twenty minutes while Eric and I got some skyr (Icelandic yogurt), milk, soy milk, berries, and, for Eric, beets. After Costco, we tried --unsuccessfully-- for like thirty minutes to find our Airbnb! This was these folks' first time Airbnbing out their place and they didn't have the address input correctly on their Airbnb owner’s side so when Airbnb populated the directions, it took us to the wrong place :( Ugh! We called them in Italy and we ultimately found it!

Ok -- and here is where I am picking back up after ending here before . . . 

So,  the couple, and their two daughters, that live in this apartment are in Italy right now, so they’re Airbnb-ing their place out; their parents/parents-in-law live downstairs and one of the sisters lives below that in another apartment.  This row house is really a family thing!  The Grandpa-aged guy-- so, the father/father-in-law of the people whose apartment we’re staying in-- is the contact for us.  And we met him when we checked in.  Such a cool Icelandic dude!  He introduced us to the keys which, unfortunately, did not work.  He said his son and daughter-in-law had had them cut right before they left, but didn’t check them.  So, he couldn’t even get the apartment door key to work.  But since it is basically all family up and down in this house, except for the top-floor apartment, which has a renter in it, we have just had to resort to leaving our apartment door unlocked.  We can, after the Grandpa-aged guy used WD40, use a key to open the door that goes to the street. So that is a success ;)

Since we are the first people to stay in this apartment as an Airbnb, they did not have everything figured out -- like, they did not have an instructions sheet, with wifi and laundry information, on it ready for us when we arrived. We got all of that figured out within a few hours, though.  As you can see in the photos, this apartment is beautiful and it is so large!  Now, we are staying a bit out of the real city center, where we’ve stayed before; we are a bit east.  But, we can still walk to the main drag -- Laugavegur -- in about 25 minutes.  This apartment, since it is home to a kindergartner, has a lot of toys, so the kids really would happily just stay in the apartment during our whole time here and play ;)  We have tried to create time for them to do just that. 

One fun tidbit: the Grandma-aged woman of this house has actually been to Albuquerque!  Of all people, it is the Unsers who she worked for as an au pair many years ago! 

I will write again tomorrow to fill you in on our Wednesday when we did SO MUCH sightseeing and adventuring.  And now, Thursday has come to a close, so I have to find time to write about that too, when we did SO MUCH MORE!!  I have oodles of gorgeous photos to share, so I will pop a few of those up on the blog soon.  Bye!

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Photos from Monday evening at the Oslo Opera House!

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The rest of our Monday!

Wow, I am so behind.  I am writing this from Iceland, after our first full day here, but any description of today’s adventures is going to have to wait a bit! I have some catching up to do!

OK, so I left off just before the kids and I went to the Oslo Opera House to see Alexander Eckman’s A Swan Lake.  Here is a short promo for it!  So, the kids and I decided to walk to the Opera House, which was about a forty-minute walk total, but we broke it up halfway by having dinner at Nordvegan.  Rowan was so concerned that we would be late to the Opera House, but Nordvegan was so quick -- and so delicious.  I had a noodle bowl into which I could add in five ingredients.  Rowan and Cece both got vegan fried dumplings and Cece got corn and broccoli on the side and Rowan got noodles and potato salad on the side.  They served it right up -- no wait.  And the kids got to share a dessert and they chose apple pie, which they declared the best apple pie they’ve ever had.  They were so pleased with their dinners; we ate in the back garden and the weather was so nice, the perfect temperature!  From there, we walked another twenty minutes and got to the Opera House with forty-five minutes to spare. 

Forty-five minutes gave us plenty of time to “play” at the Opera House and wait for Ryley and her daughter Maren to get there. When Rowan and I went to see a ballet at the Opera House during our last trip, Cece was only four, so we left her at home with Eric while went.  This time, she got to enjoy the beautiful space -- with all of its sloped outside structures that seem literally made for kids to run up and down on and the angular marble floors inside, at the corners, which seem, also, made for children to play on (Rowan slid on them last time, and this time, Cece got to join in on the fun, as did Maren, and many other kids we observed).  

Here is a quick little video about the Opera House.

So, the ballet itself was so inventive, so different!  We knew it would be, because we’d watched some promotional information in advance, because we knew it would not be the traditional ballet. My first comment is that the first and second acts are so very different from each other. Ryley and I actually couldn’t quite figure out what the first 15 minutes were actually about, but this gist was that someone was proposing to create a ballet about, of all things, swans, and it was very over-the-top and had some opera singing, some exaggerated door-slamming, some dancing, and a really interesting set -- I mean, I can barely describe it.   Then, there was a long intermission, because they filled the stage with water!!!

We knew about this in advance, too.  The kids were all very excited about this. The dancers slid, splashed, flung wet clothing, danced with small rubber duckies, sprayed water, and so much more.  It was athletic, inventive, energetic, and like nothing I have very seen.  It really was a clever re-interpretation of the ballet and a humorous offering about the possible (but really just imagined) back story behind such an iconic ballet. 

The kids and I said “bye’ to Ryley and Maren after the ballet ... and Ryley is in fact going to be in Albuquerque in a week for her high school reunion (she went to a different high school than us, where Eric actually wishes he’d gone).  We hope we can see her, and not be in Cloudcroft then, but that remains to be seen! When we got home, Eric let us in (he’d gone back to the awesome pool for some lap-swimming), and then we got the kids to bed, because we had a relatively early morning the next morning to get out the door for the 45-minute drive to the Oslo Airport, which, like Denver, seems unreasonably, suuuuuper far out of town.  I actually woke up before my alarm on Tuesday morning because, I suppose, I was anxious about getting all of us and all of our stuff out the door on time for our flight out of Oslo for Reykjavik.  

Aaaaand, in the next post, I will write about our travels to Iceland and our first day!

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All About Monday

So, on Monday, we did not hit the ground running very early, but once we did get going, we really got going! Since Monday was to be our last day in Norway, we wanted to be outside, since the weather had been so nice.  So, we chose to do a hike that our Airbnb host recommended, which started about twenty minutes by train from where our place was.  The hike was called Vettakollen and the Airbnb host said the views were magnificent.  They were!

I know no one will believe this, but I did no shopping in Norway.  Sad face.  But, it’s not like I needed to.  I basically cleaned Sweden and Finland out of fabric ;)  But, when we were walking to the T-Bahn station to go to our hike at Vettakollen, I saw several shops I would have loved to have gone into had we had time!

So, the Vettakollen hike start basically straight up, up a very steep road that is a residential road (with very nice houses on it) and it ascends and ascends and ascends.  We did about one mile up, and from there, the views out across Oslo are incredible. I posted a few pictures in another post.  From there -- after talking to a young man who was from Oslo but was studying engineering at a university in Toulouse -- we did an oval-shaped loop back, and ended up making it a 3.5-mile hike, with some serious mud-bog action throughout. It was so mud-boggy that Cece lost her Croc temporarily and got a muddy sock about 2/3 of the way through.  This was effectively foretold by a German grandmother who we chatted with on the train who was surprised that Cece was about to go hiking in Crocs.  I basically made it be known that the girl will honor no words uttered by mama that Crocs are not ideal hiking footwear.  She cannot be dissuaded!

I am really glad we did the hike, though we had some challenging kiddo behavior -- in addition to the muddy foot -- on the way down.  I think we were all, actually, a bit tired and our sunny personalities did not shine. Anyway, we got home after the hike and I had to spend a solid hour doing some repacking I had planned since we were going to be getting on a plane. I explained in another post that I really had to consolidate things to make it possible to travel by air!  But, I did get the job done.  

And, then, it was time for the kids and I to get cleaned up so we could head to the Oslo Opera House to see the Norwegian Ballet do Alexander Ekman’s The Swan Lake, a spoofy, modern, abstract, absurd, and ingenious send-up/reinterpretation of Swan Lake.  It was crazy!  I will write all about it in a separate post. 

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A few photos from Monday: our 4-mile-hike at Vettakollen and then our delicious meal-- well, the apple pie part!-- at Nordvegan.

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Here's a late-night Father's Day picture to start us off! Plus, a few photos from the Frognerbadet plus a photo of me, Rowan, and my penpal Rachel!

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Sunday, funday!

Hello!  We hope everyone back home had a great Father’s Day!  I’d like to thank Tina Engberg for tipping me off about it being Father’s Day when I had totally lost track of things ;) 

We had a leisurely Sunday morning -- featuring toast and strawberry jam and mango-passionfruit yogurt parfaits with blueberries, raspberries, and Finnish granola that we’re still toting around.  Then, we met my penpal Rachel and her family outside of the Frognerbadet! But before that -- when we were leaving our building -- we saw a man coming out of one of the lower apartments/flats who had a large dog, and we started talking to the man and his dog, which was a Schnoodle (very large!), and the man was clearly American.  Turns out he’s lived in Oslo for 25 years with his Norwegian wife and they have three kids, ages 11, 17, and 21, and he works as an accountant for the state oil/gas company.  He was so cool and nice.  He walked with us all the way to the Frognerbadet. He was from Atlanta originally.  It was really interesting talking to him, hearing about his skills with the Norwegian language, his buying of a car and what that entails here, how much he loves Norwegian summers, and the summer cottage he and his family have in another part of Oslo.  He also raved about the fjord, which, unfortunately, we are not going to get to really see in full. 

So, my penpal Rachel is from outside of Manchester and she married a Norwegian, Magnus, and they have two little kids, a toddler (2.5 years) and a 6-month-old baby.  Both kiddos were adorable.  It was so fun to meet all of them.  I really enjoyed meeting Rachel, hearing about living in Norway for her, her Ph.D. program at the University of Oslo, and learning from Magnus what his experience of growing up in Oslo as the son of an orthopedic surgeon who’s transitioned into being a psychiatrist (and what being a doctor in Norway entails), and what Norwegians think of the other folks living in the region ;) -- like the Swedes and the Finns.  I also learned that Norwegians -- like my friend Ryley, too, who was messaging me at the same time while doing some shopping in Sweden-- do whatever shopping they can in Sweden, because the taxes are lower and the choices are better (I think?). 

Frogner Park, which we visited on our last visit, too, is just gorgeous, and again, we had beautiful weather.  Magnus and Rachel told us all about the sculptures in the park and showed us the most famous one, of a cross little boy :) There was a huge play structure that, with all of its diverse features, was really entertaining for kids of all ages.  My kids used more of the jungle-gym-type aspects, doing agility-type of activities.  They played on the structure for a really long time.  Then, Magnus and Rachel had brought a a frisbee, so Eric played with Rowan with the frisbee.  Cece, meanwhile, had made a new friend in the sandbox, and she was determined that we give this little girl’s dad her contact information. 

After we played at the park for a few hours, our family of four went to the Frognerbadet itself -- which is a huge public swimming pool.  It is actually multiple pools and platform and spring-board diving areas.  It was crazy busy, on such  beautiful day and on the first weekend after school got out.  There was a whole huge shallower pool, where we stayed much of the time, and then an Olympic-sized lap pool, where we were briefly.  Eric and Rowan went over to the diving well and watched crazy people jumping off the 10-meter platform!  So crazy.  I even managed to figure out how to order the kids’ food from the snack bar; it was actually a system I’d never encountered, with a series of iPads to order on and then they email or text you when it’s ready.  This would’ve been easy in a language I understand but I had to use Google Translate a lot to get through it ;)

We walked back to our apartment and then needed to turn around as quickly as possible to get to Ryley’s for dinner.  But, while we were at home, we realized that the dryer was beeping and--again--we had to use Google Translate to figure out what the heck the dryer was trying to tell us.  It said “Cupboard”; we concluded that the water-extraction reservoir was full because the clothes we put in were verrrrry wet.  Indeed, when we slid out the water reservoir, it was sooooo full; this was something we had never encountered in a U.S. dryer and then, we dumped out the water, and off the dryer went, happily, and fully, drying the clothes now. 

We had a ball at Ryley’s.  I’ve known Ryley since 1st grade, which she confirmed yesterday, though I wasn’t sure if it wasn’t until third grade that we met.  My memory of that whole period of my life is not great!  Some people recall soooo much!  Like Ryley and my Auntie Kathy!  Anyway, Ryley also had Mrs. Koskovich for 1st grade, who was a true gem of a woman. Eric went to middle school with Ryley and they were friends, and so all three of us have lot of memories.  

Ryley’s husband Roar is a real grill-master, so we had such a delicious dinner and lots of appetizers and delicious salads to accompany dinner.  The kids ate well and also ate a ton of candy ;)  Ryley and Roar’s kids had been to an amusement park in Sweden the day before and came back with lots of treats and huge boxes of Snickers and Twix that they’d won.  Cece was following after Ryley’s daughter Maren like a magnet and then all the kids were playing outside in the courtyard of their building with other kids and for a while, at least, Cece was working on riding a skateboard.  At one point, Rowan also stuck his hand in a bush to get out a ball, and got poked by stinging nettle.  After a little time of having hydrocortisone cream on it, it was all better. 

We got home late -- about 10 p.m. and the kids got to bed by 10:30.  Everyone slept late today!  Rowan, as usual, was the first up, and he used the time to finish a book.  I am not sure what we’ll do today but it looks like another gorgeous day!  At 7 p.m. tonight, the kids and I, and Ryley and Maren, are going to the Opera House to see The Swan Lake, a very modern interpretation of the ballet that includes a vast amount of water on the stage in the middle act!  I will report back tomorrow.   We fly to Iceland tomorrow morning!

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Some photos from Saturday: about to board the museum ferry from the pier; scenes from the Fram Museum; a few shots of the Astrup Fearnley.

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A few quick snaps from our hotel in Örebro, particularly of the breakfast buffet. These pictures do not do it justice because, relative to where the kids are standing, there's about 2/3 more! The one with the brown bags shows all different kinds of muesli and little individual pots of yogurt with either passion fruit or rhubarb compote in the bottom. Then, there is a picture of all my little troopers getting off the train in the rain in Oslo!