We're on the Way Home

Of all the countries we visited, Iceland is the one that calls me back.  Partly this is because we had so little time here and partly it is the amazing natural beauty of the country.  We only saw a little bit of it.    On the bus on the way back to the airport, early in the morning, the sky put on a magnificent show...

...and before we knew it we were at the gate heading for Boston Logan.

Hard to believe that our three weeks are over, gone in a flash in retrospect.  Next trip!?  Across there USA and back next spring?

Our Last Stop, Reykjavik

We decided with the help of our hotel receptionist, Jetta, that a day long Golden Circle bus tour was a good investment especially since we had only one day.  Here, Rick is waiting for the tour bus.  It was a cold and windy day and I personally was wearing two t-shirts, a jean jacket, a fleece and a scarf.  It was still cold.  Surprisingly, Reykjavik is warmer than New York City in winter.

As the bus headed for our first stop, the landscape outside the window was stark, moody and gray, the sun attempting to shine through the wind blown clouds.

About the only traffic we experienced was this large herd of hundreds of sheep being moved from summer fields to winter grounds.  We sat on the bus and watched from a distance in a long line of vehicles for maybe 15 minutes while they crossed the road.

The ground is covered with rubble and faults, the most unusual landscape I've ever seen--very beautiful in its own dramatic, rugged way.  Iceland power plants drill holes in the ground to access steam to generate electricity and 90% of homes use this geothermal heat.  There are small earthquakes here almost every day and houses are built to withstand magnitude 7 quakes which are as big as they get in Iceland.  You might remember the major volcanic eruption here in 2010 which disrupted air traffic with massive clouds of ash for days...

The fault line you see below is located in the lobby of a snack shop where the mid-Atlantic ridge runs right under the shop.  It is several feet below ground and covered with glass so visitors can witness the power of the now semi-dormant volcanoes.  The building was planned to be four or five stories in height until this hot crevasse was discovered--now it is one story high.

The knitted items in this store are beautiful and expensive and we had delicious "meat soup" made with veggies, rice and lamb.  Here, Rick decided to channel his inner Viking.  Very scary....

 Our next stop was an amazing geyser area with a hot spring throwing steam in to the air.

 The Structif Geyser erupts every 5 minutes, unlike Old Faithful that makes you wait for an hour.  :o)

Below are the amazingly huge 312 metre Guilfoss waterfalls where a kind stranger took our photo.  Great glacial floods at the end of the Ice Age carved out its channel.  In some instances, flash flood waters have filed the gorge below to overflowing--up to 70 meters deep in some places.  In 1907, an Englishman wanted to harness the power of the Guilfoss for electricity generation but the owner, a local farmer, declined the offer saying "I will not sell my friend."  It is likely that the Guikfoss was so named because of the golden evening hue which often colors its glacial waters.

 

We had hoped to get to the Blue Lagoon which was recommended to us by everyone who ever went to Iceland.  BUT it was fully booked the day we were in town so we went to another thermal bath called Fontana.   Here, we watched as a loaf of dark bread was buried in a hot bed for 24 hours.  The loaf from the previous day had baked and we all had a taste of it....

The thermal baths themselves were wonderful.  Submerged up to my neck in lovely warm/hot water, I could feel all the hurrying world recede away....

As we headed back to Reykjavik, the sky and land put on a spectacular show of light and dark....

Our last dinner in Europe, wonderful cod in a cream wine sauce at our hotel...

We both are sad to be leaving tomorrow morning.

Copenhagen to Reykjavik

Breakfast at the Savoy Hotel.  Oh wow--one thing I will miss about Denmark is the Danish pastries at breakfast.  Yummy, flakey puff pastry and delicious sweet fillings topped with icing.  Dangerously good....

As we leave for Iceland, I want to reiterate how many bicycles there are here--this is a shot of the train station in Copenhagen.  Not a car in sight....

I've finally figured out how to walk everything across town through the train station and airport--with my Baggallini inside my backpack and my backpack secured to my suitcase.  Piece of cake.  Except for the cobblestones....

Lunch at the airport on the way to Iceland was pickled herring for Rick...

...and (another) shared pizza, this time with gorgonzola and pesto.

Exit Copenhagen...

This is the view out the window of the bus taking us from the airport to the hotel in Reykjavik--flat volcanic residue as far as we can see and distant water.

But our hotel in Reykjavik is the best yet!  King size bed...

and a kitchen--which of course we will never use...

We'd happily come back here.

Green Copenhagen

Copenhagen was chosen the 2014 European Green Capitol and it intends to be carbon neutral by 2025--no small feat for a city of this size.  One of the keys is its main form of transportation is the bicycle.  As an example, this is the "parking lot" outside the library...

Our first stop of the day was the Little Mermaid--a requirement when you go to Copenhagen.  Over the years, she has lost one head and one arm and has been spray painted more than once, but she always recovers...

We decided to take a canal boat tour and along the way we saw, among other things...

...houses reminiscent of Amsterdam...

...the Opera House...

...and Restaurant Norma, the most expensive restaurant in the world...

When we stopped for coffee, our waitress, Ane, told us how hard it is to find affordable housing in the city.  She was excited to have found an apartment outside the city which she will share with two friends...

After our $82 lunch (!), mine a fabulous chicken caesar salad...

 Rick stopped to charge his phone en route to the...

...new Copenhagen University Library, an architectural wonder...

...looking down...

...and looking up!

Next was a hike to a Rick Steves' recommendation, the Christiana Commune, capitol of hippiedom since the 60's...

It's a pretty wild place where you can purchase assorted illegal drugs from masked sellers and the graffiti goes beyond the everyday, like these...

Next, we headed for Tivoli Garden, the amusement park upon which Walt Disney based Disneyland...

 ...peacocks...

...and rides...

...and even a Ben & Jerry's stand!

Also at Tivoli Garden was the very ritzy Nimb Hotel.

And the Nimb Bar, supposedly the 4th best bar in the world, although I don't know how they decided that.  It was a very classy place where Rick had a beer and we shared the salted almonds and enjoyed the atmosphere, crackling fire included.

That night we found a Turkish restaurant called Ankora, and had a yummy buffet with many salads, lovely tender lamb and chicken dishes and perfectly cooked rice pilafs.  A very long day....

Berlin to Copenhagen

We’re on our way to the art museums!  I have given up on the blog until we get out of this hotel after a very frustrating time last night, sending and re-sending photos and typing and re-typing entries that disappeared without saving when the wi-fi cut out every few minutes.

It’s another sunny day in Berlin and we got Rick’s phone (which was kaput this morning) re-booted at the T-Mobile store on the way to the train station.  So, technologically, things are looking up!

I hope that Denmark has something besides schnitzel, which Rick had for dinner again last night…

I personally went wild with a giant meatball, much like meat loaf…

Disappointment--this is the line for the Alte Museum at 10:10 am.

We bailed on the line and went to the fairly boring Egyptian Museum and saw the bust of Nefertiti.  This is Diana, the only piece of artwork I was able to photograph when we came out...

...with (by the way) still a long line behind her—longer than it was at 10:10!  
Berlin is a city of the old and the new, always under construction as it seems is every European city we've visited…

Off to the airport again, this time for Copenhagen and in the evening, dinner of pizza and salad at Mothers Restaurant in the up and coming meat packing district.

Jetta, the receptionist at the Savoy Hotel, said she can feel a family of four adults for a week with what we paid for dinner.  Interestingly, Copenhagen is the fourth most expensive and the fourth happiest city in Europe.  On the way back to the hotel we came upon this refugee relief site--clothes donated for the huge European refugee population....

Finally, back to the hotel and our "matchbox" sized room.  We were upgraded to this room from a smaller one which had a bed and a couch, which is hard to imagine, but this was the most comfortable bed so far and thinking about the refugees being held in enclosures all over Europe, we are much blessed....