Flashback: Jökulsárlón

This image from the glacier lagoon in Iceland actually came out really well.

There's my accomplishment for this week!

Flashback: Iceland

Another picture from Iceland: a road near Thingvellir.

Maybe you have to have grown up out in the Fog Belt of San Francisco to find this an appealing hike, but I do -- I'd love to lace up my hiking shoes and see where this road goes.

Or maybe it would look good to anyone who's been mostly stuck inside for the past two months.

Travel flashback: Iceland

I went to Iceland in 2016, so I've only had four years to go through the photo backlog.

As usual, most of them aren't that interesting, but here's a much better shot of the beautiful caldera Kerið than the one I posted originally.

Last look

Here's a last look at the curvy spires of Reykjavik.

More urban poetry

Yesterday the chairs, today the tables. A Sunday evening after the rain, in Reykjavik.

Urban poetry

Cafe chairs stacked outside a restaurant in Reykjavik.

Random things I saw in Reykjavik

Reykjavik street art

Viking ship

This stunning sculpture, by Jón Gunnar Árnason, is called Sun Voyager (Solfar.) It's on the esplanade along Reykjavik harbor, one of many public art pieces there.

Also, that hair just slays me

Horses

On our way back to Reykjavik on the last day of the tour, Gunnar asked if we'd like to stop and see some horses.

Since everything we had seen that day was cold and very very wet, and the horses were dry and inside, the response was very enthusiastic.

Icelandic horses are a very pure breed, descended from the horses brought by the early settlers a thousand years ago. They're small -- not much bigger than ponies -- but extremely strong. So although they can easily carry an adult man, human legs dangling off those little bodies can be very comical.

We saw a short film and then got to wander through the stables making friends with the inhabitants. They're gentle and curious, snuffling sweet horsey breath at our outstretched hands and allowing themselves to be petted and gushed over with calm dignity.

Skogafoss

Fossar

Or waterfalls. There are many, many waterfalls in this very small country, and even when it wasn't pouring rain, they provided ample opportunity to get thoroughly wet.

This is Gullfoss, a spectacular double waterfall, not far from Reykjavik.

Sunday bird blogging

A gannet, taken from a distance on a whale watching cruise I took my first day in Reykjavik. It was more like a wave watching cruise, as there were no whales to be seen so late in the season, but we did see a lot of dolphins, and they were leaping and frolicking in a most satisfying, if unphotographable, manner. (You just couldn't tell where they'd appear. Out of at least fifty shots, I got one picture of two very blurry fins.)

But the guide did start to sound a little desperate about two hours into the three hour cruise, when the dolphins had yet to show up and she was trying to sound as though we ought to be excited about all the gannets and skuas we were seeing. Which I was, of course, but I was clearly in the minority.

Harpa II

The back of the Harpa building, jutting over the more traditional views of Reykjavik harbor.

Saturday reflections

This is Harpa, the concert hall in Reykjavik. Those honeycomb windows are somehow set so that one of them will capture reflections from the street below, while the windows next to it don't, so it looks like a few of the windows are broadcasting videos of traffic, people walking, city life.

Eruptions

There was one geyser that erupted every five minutes or so, and I stood there with camera ready through a couple of cycles before I realized that there actually wasn't much point in trying to take pictures of them.

There was so much steam my lens fogged up immediately and even with manual focus there wasn't much there to see, or photograph, besides a very large white blur.

This picture, taken from a distance, is one of the better ones.

More Geysir

Geysir

Geothermal

The upside of being a volcanically active country is that you can get 100% of your energy from the earth. Geothermal energy provides all of the heat and electricity for Iceland, and although the hot water frequently has a distinct smell of sulfur, you can linger in a hot shower until your fingers and toes prune up without feeling guilty about it. Which is fortunate, because I found that I needed some very long hot showers to warm up after the long drizzly days.

This is Geysir, source of one of the few words that has made its way into English from Icelandic. There are, unsurprisingly, many geysers there, along with streams and pools of boiling hot water that create a permanent layer of steam wisping over the landscape.