NICEland (tee hee)

Iceland is a place of outstanding natural beauty -- really really incredibly gorgeous and unpopulated. We weren't there for very long, so after Reykjavik, we beelined it to the Snaelfesness Peninsula, which Cait, aka Vanna, is helpfully pointing out on the map below:





As soon as we hit the penninsula, beautiful things started popping out at us. When we saw this waterfall, we screeched the car to a halt and took about a billion photos because we were awed at how pretty it was.What we didn't realise, of course, is that gorgeous insanely cool glacier-fed waterfalls are a dime a dozen and stopping to take photos of every one of them is impractical. It would be like stopping to take a photo every time you saw a Tim Horton's in Canada, or taking a picture of every stretch of flat field you see in the Belgian countryside.



On our first day in the Penninsula we stopped in one of the biggest towns to have lunch. We bought everything from the grocery store, including Skyr which is this sort of thicker version of youghurt, whcih is also magically low fat. Those vikings can do ANYTHING.

Nice job on taking a photo of me with my mouth full, Andy.

This was a waterfall that came down right in the town where we stopped for lunch.
It was very very pretty.

Because we are fearless explorers, we decided to climb up it:

We had to ford streams, just like Maria Van Trapp! We were totally brave pioneer-types.

Harry is a professional phtographer, so he took lots of pictures:

I'm pretty sure his will be a lot better than mine:

We made it!




The view from the top was spectacular:

This is me, leaning over the precipice, taking a photo downwardly of the falls... Kind of didn't turn out, but it was quite frightening taking the photo, so I'm damn well including it.



Post-climb relaxing




My shins are GIGANTIC... fear them, tiny people of Iceland... Fear them.

Andy, indulging his inner-duck and wading in the stream.

This shot is interesting, because that white thing in the far distance is a GLACIER.

The town of Olafssun, where we had lunch. Only now we tower above it. Mwah ha ha!

Next post: Rotten shark! Feats of strength! Bone chilling cold!

A few stolen moments...

I am capitalizing on the fact that Andrew is still in bed to grab the computer for a few minutes. He's trying to finish up his book to send to the publishers for the fall, and so has been a total computer hog lately. This means that on the evenings and weekends I can never access it, which in turn means that I haven't been blogging much. (I try to keep the weeks free to work on the thesis, oh and to have lunch with friends and take tennis lessons, la la).

Anyway, I don't have enough time to upload all of the Iceland pics, but I DO have enough time to tell you about our exciting, glamorous Saturday night in the "heart of Europe."

Last night we went to the park and played Ping Pong. It was us and a group of Spanish tweens on the two tables. Then we bought half a pint of Ben and Jerry's ice cream (New York Super Fudge Chunk, thank you very much). We went home and played Scrabble. Then we watched some episodes of The Office Season Two that we had rented. Then at midnight we went to bed.

I know I should be sort of ashamed at the geeky nerdiness of the whole thing -- both Ping Pong and Scrabble are kind of shorthand for social maladjustment-- but I'm not. In fact I'm defiant and proud. It was fun, damn it!

(My feelings might also have something to do with the fact that I beat Andrew in BOTH Ping Pong and Scrabble -- suck on that, Horrall -- and that Jim and Pam kissed at the end of the final episode of The Office).