Remember back when I was in Iceland?

So here's a thoroughly random, out-of-sync post. I just came across a video I made for the blog on my first day in Iceland last year, but somehow never actually posted. It's actually in two parts, because the first one I made randomly stopped recording after about a minute and a half.

Part One

                      Part Two                      

Final Europe Updates: Teaser

Just to let everyone know that a few final updates from my spring in Europe are coming! I still have Giverny, the second half of Iceland, and my friend Clarissa has finally posted all of the pictures she took from our time in Scotland, so I'll grab a few favorites from that and toss them up here as well!

Stay tuned!

Teaser:

Giverny

Iceland

A Geological Marvel: Iceland, Part I

Leaving Paris was hard, harder than I thought it was going to be. But more on that later. For now, let's talk Iceland!

I arrived mid-afternoon yesterday (Saturday), and by the time I reached my hotel I already had two new travel buddies- Helen and Melonie. Helen is Canadian, and I met her at Charles de Gaulle, where we discovered that we had the exact same itinerary. Exact. As in, flying both in and out of Iceland on the same flights. Helen then met Melonie on the bus from the airport into Reykjavik. Melonie is a med student in Munich, here on holiday.

The craziness that I lugged all around Paris and Reykjavic. Heavy and awkward, but impressively small, considering that I lived out of the contents for 5 months.

First things first, we met up for dinner at a famous Hamburger Factory. This is where Gorbachev and Reagan ate after negotiating the end of the Cold War, apparently:

The hamburger place keeps a running tally of how many Icelanders there are. It was only 319,321 when we got there. How exciting! Though it does raise the awkward question of what they do when an Icelander dies....

You can see the picture of Reagan and co.

I tried a cheesecake made out of an Icelandic specialty, skyr, a sort of yogurt-cheese thing. It was actually quite good! While at dinner, we made plans to take a Golden Circle tour the next day (today). It would take us around to geysers and various other geothermal and geological treats.

It required getting up far too early this morning (compounded by the fact that I forgot to adjust my alarm to the new time zone, so it went off at 5:30 Islandic time instead of 7:30), but we were off!

Geothermal electricity generators, capturing the steam that rises from under the surface

Lava field! Now covered in some sort of moss/peat/lichen type vegetation.

Our first stop was in a little town famed for its greenhouses about 30 minutes out of Reykjavik. It's over an area with a particularly significant amount of underground heating, I gather, and so residents started to put up greenhouses to see what they could grow, and it just sort of expanded and now the University of Horticulture is there, and it's a whole big thing. 

Large puffin in the tourist greenhouse 

The next major stop was the Gullfoss Waterfall. Gorgeous....

We then made our way over to the Geyser area. As it turns out, "geysir" is actually the Icelandic name for one particular steaming/erupting hot spring, which became so popular and well known that now almost every single other language uses the name to describe the phenomenon. Geyser no longer erupts without urging (apparently you can coax an eruption from a geyser by pouring soap in it. Not recommended for home experimentation!) unless an earthquake has happened quite recently, but it's neighbor Strokkur goes off every 6-8 minutes, with a really intriguing sort of dome thing in the first few seconds. 

Continuing on our way...

Completely random statue at the Geyser place

It had to be done

I didn't quite get the dome in a picture, but here is Strokkur starting...

...going for it...

....drifting away in a cloud of steam....

...and water rushing back in to fill the crater.

 The final stop of the day was a two-for-one: the original meeting place of the Icelandic parliament (the longest-running parliament in the world, it was started as a general meeting of all Icelanders once a year in the 900s, and was held outdoors, in this spot, until the 1700s, when it was moved to Reykjavik), and the best place to see the effects of the Mid-Atlantic Rift.

Fissure that is part of the Mid-Atlantic Rift and the drifting apart of the tectonic plates. 

Lake that is in large part a result of the sinking of the land over the Mid-Atlantic Rift

 If you accept the extremely simplified version of the geology, I am standing in the Mid-Atlantic Rift here, between the Eurasian and American plates. 

Sadly, Melonie is leaving in the morning, but Helen and I booked our tickets for the famous Blue Lagoon for tomorrow afternoon, and will spend the rest of the day journeying about Reykjavik. I've heard great things about both!

Talk to you soon!

Edinburgh, Entry I

We reached Edinburgh a little before midnight, and I checked into my hostel (Clarissa and I figured that 10 days of sleeping in the same room might wear on us, so I got my own hostel for 3 nights, then slept on her floor over the last weekend). A pretty cool place, right in the center of things. If I even decide to spend a month or two in Edinburgh (not out of the question, though I don't know what life circumstances would lead to such an event transpiring), it would be an excellent long-stay hostel.

Edinburgh was a much more relaxed time than running around to a new city each day. I slept in on a regular basis, and generally just walked around. 

My first day, I decided to orient myself with a bus tour. The guide had such a thick Scottish accent that I probably got just as much out of his narration as I do when I'm being guided in French! Which is to say, I followed it, but definitely missed out on many nuances. 

A proper-sized bustling hub of a city!

Aforementioned tour guide

This is where Robert Louis Stevenson lived!

Police box and a telephone booth! Love it. 

Clarissa and I met up for dinner and spent several hours catching up (apparently in 5 days of constant contact, we had barely tapped the barrel of available conversations) the first night. She kept trying to get me to order to vegetarian haggis, but I outsmarted her and got a Reeses shake instead. I was so insistent that they completely load it with Reeses that they actually served it to me with an entire monster Reeses on the side! 

Never did get to the castle, but it's on a list for future visits. It's good to leave some things unexplored, right? I need an excuse to go back! Something else I sorta meant to do but never actually did is take a Writing Tour of Edinburgh. So many notable writers spent formative and productive time in Edinburgh. Among them are Sir Walter Scott, Robert Louis Stevenson, and JK Rowling. I added myself to the list (self-aggrandizing, I know) with a day working on my writing in the main park that runs between Old Town and New Town.

An interesting part of my timing in Scotland was that it was in the two weeks leading up to the Royal Wedding. Every tabloid was all about it, and they had lots of engagement-ring knock-off jewelry in the stores. I actually considered a pair of 4-pound earrings based on The Ring, because it would be such a timely, topical souvenir, but I just couldn't bring myself to spend money on a copy that was so cheap the "sapphire" was see-through and light purple. Still, it was much good fun. I was in Greece for the wedding itself, and watched it with all of the other girls there. But more on that later...

Writing

Though I wasn't there for the Wedding, I was in the UK for another wonderfully UK-ish (British? Scottish? What on earth do you call something which refers to the entire UK?) thing: the premier of the new season ("series") of Doctor Who. Clarissa has a small viewing party that she would go to in the fall for new episodes of Merlin, and they decided to start it up again for Doctor Who. It was a fabulous time- we ordered pizza and flopped around on a couch, yelling at Dan whenever he messed with the TV, discussing various fandoms, and positing theories on the episode, while it was happening. It's been such a long time since I watched a TV show with someone. It's so much fun! 

The other main to-do of Edinburgh was our rainy climb of the craigs and Arthur's Seat, a dormant volcano. But that involves lots of pretty pictures, and my internet is quite slow right now. So it will get it's own post, then it's onto Glasgow and Greece!

Iceland update: booked the hotel, now to look into what adventuring I want to do. Add another European volcano to my list? Whale watching and glacier spotting? Geothermal hotsprings?