And the front of the building which looks out onto Tjornin and the city.
It's snowing great big flakes of fluffy snow right now! It feels like Christmas!
Monday, October 29, 2007
The first snow!
This is the view from my room window:
And the front of the building which looks out onto Tjornin and the city.
It's snowing great big flakes of fluffy snow right now! It feels like Christmas!
And the front of the building which looks out onto Tjornin and the city.It's snowing great big flakes of fluffy snow right now! It feels like Christmas!
Saturday, October 27, 2007
Perland revisisted
Yesterday I took a walk to Perlan, my second visit. You may recall my first somewhat disappointing visit. I decided I need to have a coffee with a nice view. Before:
And after:
That little glass cup of pink sweetness was strawberry mouse. Many cafes have them in a variety of flavours, including chocolate and pistachio. Here are a couple of views from the observation deck at Perlan:
Last night also marked the occasion of our first "Second-floor-get-together" in the "common room". The "common room" is a big room where the hotel guests (this residence operates as a hotel during the summer) have their free breakfast. This is Theo and Camilla deep in conversation:
And here are Lucas and Todd:
That oval dish with the white things on top was made by our only Italian exchange student, Claudia. It was delicious. Those are eggs on top. It's Sardinian and called pane frattau. It's made with a crispy bread called carasau. The bread is dipped in steaming water, laid on the platter than covered in tomato sauce and parmesan for about 6 layers, then the eggs are placed on top. Claudia went back to Sardinia during the school break and smuggled back the bread, cheese and some delicious Sardinian sausage. Yum!!
I forgot to talk about something Mark and I did while he was here: our swim in the Blue Lagoon. From Wikipedia:
"The warm waters are rich in minerals like silica and sulfur and bathing in the Blue Lagoon is reputed to help many people suffering from skin diseases such as psoriasis. The water temperature in the bathing and swimming area of the lagoon averages 40 °C (104 °F).The lagoon is fed by the water output of a nearby geothermal power plant. Superheated water is vented from the ground near a lava flow and used to run turbines that generate electricity. After going through the turbines, the steam and hot water passes through a heat exchanger to provide heat for a municipal hot water heating system. Then the water is fed into the lagoon for recreational and medicinal users to bathe in."
It's really a huge hot bath. There are little stations where you can scoop out handfuls of silica mud and rub it all over your face and body and then just keep floating around and rinse it off whenever you want. We stayed until closing; the air temperature was 0 degrees and we couldn't see 5 feet in front of us because of all the steam. Those little islands with the grey boxes on top are where the hot water is pumped from, so the closer you get to them, the hotter the water is; so hot I couldn't float within a foot of them for very long.
And finally, here is a video for Hello Seahorse's song I Won't Say Anything - it's really catchy and the whole album was mixed* by Mark!
*what is mixing? mixing is when the volumes of different instruments, voices and other sounds in a recording are balanced to sound good (good could mean anything to any different person though). after something is recorded, it doesn't necessarily sound very good, the instruments' volumes are all out of balance. the singer might feel her voice is too quiet for example and so the mixer must adjust it.
And after:
That little glass cup of pink sweetness was strawberry mouse. Many cafes have them in a variety of flavours, including chocolate and pistachio. Here are a couple of views from the observation deck at Perlan:
Last night also marked the occasion of our first "Second-floor-get-together" in the "common room". The "common room" is a big room where the hotel guests (this residence operates as a hotel during the summer) have their free breakfast. This is Theo and Camilla deep in conversation:
And here are Lucas and Todd:
That oval dish with the white things on top was made by our only Italian exchange student, Claudia. It was delicious. Those are eggs on top. It's Sardinian and called pane frattau. It's made with a crispy bread called carasau. The bread is dipped in steaming water, laid on the platter than covered in tomato sauce and parmesan for about 6 layers, then the eggs are placed on top. Claudia went back to Sardinia during the school break and smuggled back the bread, cheese and some delicious Sardinian sausage. Yum!!I forgot to talk about something Mark and I did while he was here: our swim in the Blue Lagoon. From Wikipedia:
"The warm waters are rich in minerals like silica and sulfur and bathing in the Blue Lagoon is reputed to help many people suffering from skin diseases such as psoriasis. The water temperature in the bathing and swimming area of the lagoon averages 40 °C (104 °F).The lagoon is fed by the water output of a nearby geothermal power plant. Superheated water is vented from the ground near a lava flow and used to run turbines that generate electricity. After going through the turbines, the steam and hot water passes through a heat exchanger to provide heat for a municipal hot water heating system. Then the water is fed into the lagoon for recreational and medicinal users to bathe in."
It's really a huge hot bath. There are little stations where you can scoop out handfuls of silica mud and rub it all over your face and body and then just keep floating around and rinse it off whenever you want. We stayed until closing; the air temperature was 0 degrees and we couldn't see 5 feet in front of us because of all the steam. Those little islands with the grey boxes on top are where the hot water is pumped from, so the closer you get to them, the hotter the water is; so hot I couldn't float within a foot of them for very long.And finally, here is a video for Hello Seahorse's song I Won't Say Anything - it's really catchy and the whole album was mixed* by Mark!
*what is mixing? mixing is when the volumes of different instruments, voices and other sounds in a recording are balanced to sound good (good could mean anything to any different person though). after something is recorded, it doesn't necessarily sound very good, the instruments' volumes are all out of balance. the singer might feel her voice is too quiet for example and so the mixer must adjust it.
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
Photos and videos
I fixed the link that leads to ALL the pictures taken during my road trip. Here it is again. There are some videos too! Or you can watch them below. I admit to feeling apprehensive about showing them; you can hear my voice and Mark cussing! I know, I'm a prude.
ICELAND
1. The highway out of Reykjavik. It's four lanes, but that's only in and around the city. It changes to two lanes later. You can see steam coming from bore holes. The further east we went, the less steam we saw coming from the ground.
2. Mark praising the European grocery store and me dissing him.
3. Sideways Selfoss.
4. Sellfoss (waterfall) off of the highway which you can walk behind. I'm obviously impressed in the video!
5. Jökulsárlon, the iceberg glacier. It was FREEZING and WINDY!!
6. Sheep walking on the "highway" - imagine if that happened on the 401? And horses and farms and mountains.
7. In Skaftafell National Park - Europe's biggest national park!
8. Mark's arty video.
9. At the top of the mountain next to Skogarfoss and me talking about that guy August who lived in Akureyri.
10. Gullfoss; notice how icy the part where the tourists, including us, are standing. I doubt tourists would be allowed anywhere near something that dangerous in Canada!
11. Sideways Geysir.
12. The shore near my house.
ICELAND
1. The highway out of Reykjavik. It's four lanes, but that's only in and around the city. It changes to two lanes later. You can see steam coming from bore holes. The further east we went, the less steam we saw coming from the ground.
2. Mark praising the European grocery store and me dissing him.
3. Sideways Selfoss.
4. Sellfoss (waterfall) off of the highway which you can walk behind. I'm obviously impressed in the video!
5. Jökulsárlon, the iceberg glacier. It was FREEZING and WINDY!!
6. Sheep walking on the "highway" - imagine if that happened on the 401? And horses and farms and mountains.
7. In Skaftafell National Park - Europe's biggest national park!
8. Mark's arty video.
9. At the top of the mountain next to Skogarfoss and me talking about that guy August who lived in Akureyri.
10. Gullfoss; notice how icy the part where the tourists, including us, are standing. I doubt tourists would be allowed anywhere near something that dangerous in Canada!
11. Sideways Geysir.
12. The shore near my house.
Sunday, October 21, 2007
Finally some pictures!
Here are some of the highlights of my week off with Mark. If you want to see ALL the photos, click here.
Skogarfoss is one of the waterfalls we stopped to admire. This is the map of the entire village of Skogar, about 4 streets.
Here is Mark in front of the waterfall:
This is the path up the mountain along the side:
Here is the view from the top of the path. This is the kind of thing we constantly saw from the road. Farmhouses nestled at the foot of these mountains.
And me leaping!
We also visited Jökulsárlón, which is a kind of iceberg lagoon. Pieces of the glacier calve away and float out to sea.
Me freezing cold! I wanted to enjoy it so much, but it was incredibly windy and chilly!
When we drove up to the first hostel we stayed at, there were two sheep sitting on the front porch. It was surreal. I wasn't sure if they were real or not.
On our way home, we stopped to see Gullfoss and Geysir, both of which I've visited before, but this time it wasn't raining.
Me waiting for Geysir to erupt!
We stopped to relax at this empty beach:
There's our little Chevrolet Matiz in the distance!
Another lovely waterfall and me on the path to see it.
A couple of hot dogs:
And Plants and Animals at 12 Tonar in Reykjavik.
Skogarfoss is one of the waterfalls we stopped to admire. This is the map of the entire village of Skogar, about 4 streets.
Here is Mark in front of the waterfall:
This is the path up the mountain along the side:
Here is the view from the top of the path. This is the kind of thing we constantly saw from the road. Farmhouses nestled at the foot of these mountains.
And me leaping!
We also visited Jökulsárlón, which is a kind of iceberg lagoon. Pieces of the glacier calve away and float out to sea.
Me freezing cold! I wanted to enjoy it so much, but it was incredibly windy and chilly!
When we drove up to the first hostel we stayed at, there were two sheep sitting on the front porch. It was surreal. I wasn't sure if they were real or not.
On our way home, we stopped to see Gullfoss and Geysir, both of which I've visited before, but this time it wasn't raining.
Me waiting for Geysir to erupt!
We stopped to relax at this empty beach:
There's our little Chevrolet Matiz in the distance!
Another lovely waterfall and me on the path to see it.
A couple of hot dogs:
And Plants and Animals at 12 Tonar in Reykjavik.
Friday, October 19, 2007
It's too much!
When I'm walking about in the Plateau or Mile End with my boyfriend, it's inconceivable that I should *not* hear these two words spoken in the most matter-of-fact tone: "Mark Lawson". This is because Mark Lawson knows lots of people, helps a lot of people out with their projects and is just an all-around easy-going, nice guy. So imagine how surprisingly little surprise I felt when we were walking towards Geysir in Iceland of all places and I hear, "Mark Lawson". Naturally, we ran into Andrew Rose and Plants and Animals. And why shouldn't we run into them. Mark wasn't surprised in the least, "It was bound to happen." Of course they were all clutching their styrofoam cups of coffee and smoking cigarettes, as we had done (minus the cigarettes) while enjoying Gullfoss just 20 minutes earlier. I think it's safe to assume that anyone you see holding a cup of coffee while gazing at natural wonders is probably from Montreal.
Those were 3 of the BEST days of my life! I have hundreds of photos and a few videos to show you, but they are all on Mark's camera, so I have to wait until he gets home before I upload everything. From the minute we drove the car out of the car rental parking lot until we returned it, we had one adventure after another! I couldn't have asked for a better time.
We rented a car for three days and travelled along the South coast to Höfn and back.
Those were 3 of the BEST days of my life! I have hundreds of photos and a few videos to show you, but they are all on Mark's camera, so I have to wait until he gets home before I upload everything. From the minute we drove the car out of the car rental parking lot until we returned it, we had one adventure after another! I couldn't have asked for a better time.Monday, October 8, 2007
The votes are in!
It looks like I'll have to get a Lopi cardigan rather than the traditional sweater. I was leaning that way anyway.
This past Saturday turned out to be a beautiful day. I don't think the temperature got above 6 degrees, but the sun shone the whole time which made it wonderful. At 9am, left Reykjavik for Borganes.
Not so long ago, one had to drive around the Hvalfjödur fjord to get there, but since the completion of the Hvalfjarðargöng tunnel 1988, one can take a much more direct route. The tunnel is just under 6km long! In Borganes, I took a short audio tour of Egil's Saga at the local museum. I don't know a lot about the Icelandic Saga's, but now I know a little bit more about Egil's. It was probably written by Snorri Stulurson (more on him later) and tells about Egil's long life in Iceland and his travels to England and Norway. He was spirited and energetic (weren't all vikings?) and most importantly he buried his silver treasure somewhere in Iceland and apparently some are still looking for it. This is the view behind the museum:
After the museum, we drove to a tiny church typical of Iceland. It made me think of Kill Bill, but that's another story. These little churches are everywhere!
Next up was Barnafossar waterfall...
...and then Deildartunguhver, the largest hot spring in the Northern Hemisphere, which pumps 180 litres of boiling water every second. Not only does it provide hot water for the region surrounding it, but also pumps hot water through a 64km pipeline to Borganes and other towns. Here you can see some of it's steam:
The extra water serves local greenhouses from which I bought some tomatoes, yum!
We also visited Snorri's pool - the water was luxuriously warm! This is me trying to get into the tunnels near his pool. I wasn't successful.
On the way towards an abandoned whaling station, we got this view of an old NATO base:
Finally, we stopped at an abandoned whaling station. It closed in the 1980s. The most interesting part of it was imagining the whales being hauled out of the fjord by the huge cables up the concrete ramp. I peeked into some of the empty sheds and found one containing rows of what I thought were hockey sticks, but were actually knives with long wooden handles - the fate the whales met after being hauled out of the fjord. This fjord, if I understood correctly, is where Keiko, the whale who was the inspiration for the Free Willy movie, was captured. According to Wikipedia, he was sold to an aquarium in Iceland and then sold again to Marineland in Ontario, where he developed skin lesions. Eventually he was returned to Iceland but got away and escaped to Norway! 
On the way home, we took the long way around the fjord and skipped the tunnel. It was worth it. Fjords are so beautiful. The water was calm and the mountains majestic.
This past Saturday turned out to be a beautiful day. I don't think the temperature got above 6 degrees, but the sun shone the whole time which made it wonderful. At 9am, left Reykjavik for Borganes.
Not so long ago, one had to drive around the Hvalfjödur fjord to get there, but since the completion of the Hvalfjarðargöng tunnel 1988, one can take a much more direct route. The tunnel is just under 6km long! In Borganes, I took a short audio tour of Egil's Saga at the local museum. I don't know a lot about the Icelandic Saga's, but now I know a little bit more about Egil's. It was probably written by Snorri Stulurson (more on him later) and tells about Egil's long life in Iceland and his travels to England and Norway. He was spirited and energetic (weren't all vikings?) and most importantly he buried his silver treasure somewhere in Iceland and apparently some are still looking for it. This is the view behind the museum:
After the museum, we drove to a tiny church typical of Iceland. It made me think of Kill Bill, but that's another story. These little churches are everywhere!
Next up was Barnafossar waterfall...
...and then Deildartunguhver, the largest hot spring in the Northern Hemisphere, which pumps 180 litres of boiling water every second. Not only does it provide hot water for the region surrounding it, but also pumps hot water through a 64km pipeline to Borganes and other towns. Here you can see some of it's steam:
The extra water serves local greenhouses from which I bought some tomatoes, yum!
We also visited Snorri's pool - the water was luxuriously warm! This is me trying to get into the tunnels near his pool. I wasn't successful.
On the way towards an abandoned whaling station, we got this view of an old NATO base:
Finally, we stopped at an abandoned whaling station. It closed in the 1980s. The most interesting part of it was imagining the whales being hauled out of the fjord by the huge cables up the concrete ramp. I peeked into some of the empty sheds and found one containing rows of what I thought were hockey sticks, but were actually knives with long wooden handles - the fate the whales met after being hauled out of the fjord. This fjord, if I understood correctly, is where Keiko, the whale who was the inspiration for the Free Willy movie, was captured. According to Wikipedia, he was sold to an aquarium in Iceland and then sold again to Marineland in Ontario, where he developed skin lesions. Eventually he was returned to Iceland but got away and escaped to Norway! 
On the way home, we took the long way around the fjord and skipped the tunnel. It was worth it. Fjords are so beautiful. The water was calm and the mountains majestic.Friday, October 5, 2007
Click here to find out what I'm doing tomorrow!
This is Ráðhús Reykjavík (Reykjavík City Hall) and Tjörnin, the lake. All mere steps from my house.
This is Ráðhús Reykjavík (Reykjavík City Hall) and Tjörnin, the lake. All mere steps from my house.
Tuesday, October 2, 2007
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