Iceland: apparently I never actually posted anything but Reykjavik?!

I would have bet (and lost) some serious cash money that I had written a second post about Iceland, but the archives don't lie. I realize no one but future-me has been waiting with bated breath for this, but future-me will indeed want to see these pictures, so apologies, current-everyone-else! Not at all timely trip recap post ahoy!

I know I mentioned it in my other post, but the fact that there are only a few hours of daylight in Iceland in January was both really hard to get used to, and at the same time really easy to get used to, since there wasn't anything you could do about it. But I did amuse myself by taking photos to timestamp the progression of daylight while there, since it was so foreign.

For example, here is a shot from our tour bus as we picked up folks around the city for a Golden Circle tour, at full-on 9am:

By 10:30am, the sun had started to rise while the moon set:

And this is about an hour later, with the sun as fully up as it was going to get:

That pinkish glow just.. stayed. All the time. It was incredible.

Our first stop was a town called Hveragerdi, which is (I think?) the only town in the world built entirely on a geothermal hot spring. There are literally columns of steam rising from cracks in the ground throughout the tiny town - like, just in people's yards, or on the side of a hill - and like most of Iceland, the entire town is run on geothermal power. I have virtually no good pictures of this, since we rolled through town in the bus and it was still pretty dark, but the picture above with the setting moon is from just outside the town, and you can see the steam just sort of randomly pouring from the ground. There's even a restaurant there that cooks the food entirely using steam - not, like, with steam POWERED ovens, actually cooks the food IN the steam. That is on the list to try if we ever go back.

Our next stop was the Faxi waterfall (which means horse's mane, named after the appearance of the falls). It was VERY COLD AND WINDY here.

But see how it looks like sunset even though it was like 11am? It actually made for challenging photos, since I always wanted to capture the brilliantly-colored sky at the same time as whatever I was actually taking a picture of in the foreground (and I need more photography chops to do that effectively) but it's hard to screw up these views too badly no matter what you're doing.

Next up was another waterfall, Gullfoss:

This one is famous because it's apparently quite rare for falls to make a 90⁰ turn between two tiers of the ravine like this:

If I thought it was cold at Faxi... I was wearing two pairs of pants, two wool sweaters, a giant winter coat, and snowboots here at Gullfoss, yet felt like I was wearing nothing more than a pair of cotton pajamas, the way the wind cut right through me. After a few photos (me: "GOOD ENOUGH!") we beelined it inside for some incredibly wonderful lamb soup to warm up.

After lunch we hit one of the most famous stops on the Golden Circle tour: Geysir park, home to the original & famous geyser (literally named "Geysir") that unfortunately does not regularly erupt anymore... but also home to many smaller and more regularly-erupting geysers for the viewing pleasure of tourists.

It smelled VERY strongly of sulfur here. Overwhelmingly, nearly gaggingly so, if one happened to be, say, around 8 weeks pregnant at the time.

Strokkur is now the main attraction, erupting about 30 meters into the air every 7 minutes or so:

Because the water erupting from the geysers is literally boiling, it causes an interesting (and slippery) dynamic around the park: the ground just below Strokkur was covered in standing water from the frequent eruptions, but everywhere nearby that wasn't getting doused in boiling water every 7 minutes was just covered in a nice thick layer of slippery ice from the runoff.

I fell a lot. Chris did a lot of arm-grabbing-and-hoisting to keep me from slamming into the ice too badly.

As we had been driving around the countryside all day, we routinely passed fields full of adorable, shaggy Icelandic ponies. We asked our driver if we could stop to get a better picture of them at some point.

Boy, did he deliver. He pulled over next to a fence at the side of the road and called out to the horses, who all came trotting obediently over to the fence, hoping for treats.

It was so awesome.  They were adorable and wild and shaggy and had chunks of ice and snow woven throughout their manes and coats and didn't seem bothered by it in the slightest. I really wish we had had some apples or something as thanks for letting us get so close and pet their sweet faces.

By this point it was getting late in the day, in terms of sunlight (you know, like, 3:30) so we hopped back into the bus to try and hit one more sight, Thingvellir National Park.

Incidentally, this is what virtually all roads we were travelling on looked like. This was not a "bad" road; it was apparently just the normal state of roads in the winter.

None of the cars or buses or vans had chains on their tires or any apparent special snow/ice equipment. Everyone just.. drove on the roads like this, at normal speeds, and did fine. Coming from the DC Metro area, which shuts down schools for weeks at a time at the faintest suggestions of snow, rain, or ice... well, color me impressed, Icelanders.

By the time we arrived at Thingvellir, we were catching the very last of the daylight (...at like, 4pm) and the landscape took on a stunning monochromatic aura as a result:

We hiked up a short pass through the hills to the site of Iceland's first Parliament, established here in 930 (and where it remained until 1798!).

That last photo is after manipulating the saturation and exposure in the original to normally unheard of levels in order to eke out the very last of the light and colors available in the near-darkness.

And.. that's it. We were only there for two days and two nights, mainly in an effort to see the Northern Lights - which didn't happen. The first night out we had ostensibly perfect conditions, with reports of activity to the north of us, but the lights never migrated south enough for us to see them. I specifically booked us on a tour that would allow us to try again another night if the lights were a no show, but by night two I was so exhausted from jetlag and cold (and being 8 weeks pregnant!) that I couldn't handle the thought of spending another night freezing my tuchus off instead of snuggling in a warm bed and getting some desperately needed rest. So after we got back from the tour, we warmed up with a quick nap and then had a lovely, quiet dinner in downtown Reykjavik before packing up and heading to the airport at an ungodly hour the next morning.

I'd absolutely, totally go back. Just maybe in the summer, next time. :)

Reykjavik!

Baby update first:

We had our first regular ob/gyn appointment yesterday now that we've officially been released from the IVF world, and everything looked great. The fetus was measuring exactly 9w2d, which was precisely how old it should be, and we finally got to hear the heartbeat this time instead of just peering uncertainly at a grainy flicker on the screen. The doctor assured us that our risk of miscarriage at this point is down to about 3%, since the fetus is measuring appropriately with a strong heartbeat. This would be slightly more reassuring if it weren't also the super-low, never-gonna-happen probability I was going to get OHSS ;-) But still, I'll take it! Even though I'm 35 and thus technically of "advanced maternal age" in fertility-land, our doctor has decreed me low risk. On the one hand this is good, since it means everything looks exceedingly normal to him, and that I'm in good health, etc. On the other hand, it means I'm down to monthly appointments and won't get another reassuring peek into what's going on in there for FOUR MORE WEEKS!! Considering I was going every other day for a good stretch there, this is going to be an awfully long month.

On to Europe!

Iceland was positively enchanting. Freezing cold, but enchanting. I'm not sure I'd do another January trip in the near future, but I absolutely would go back, in a heartbeat. We sadly didn't catch the lights while we were there, but partly because after an unsuccessful first attempt, I was far too exhausted the second night to try again. My warm bed was just too tempting for a nauseated, nap-needing pregnant lady.

And Ireland... man. A heretofore dormant part of my somewhat dubious Irish heritage apparently clawed its way out of the depths of my psyche while we toured around the Western countryside, because I found myself thinking preposterous thoughts like, "I could totally see us settling down in a thatch-roofed cottage and owning sheep! This just feels... right!" Note to self: you would hate that. But Irish alter-ego made a pretty good case for becoming sheep-herding country folk, at the time.

I, of course, took roughly 40 billion photos, so rather than vomiting them all into one post I think I'll go slow and steady over the next week, focusing on one thing at a time. For starters: Reykjavik!

We arrived at something ungodly like 5:20am, but by the time we got through customs, got our bags, and were transported nearly an hour from the airport in Keflavík to downtown, it was after 7am. Most hotels in downtown Reykjevik seem to be apartment style (or B&Bs), meaning it's a bunch of dorm-style rooms, often with with mini kitchens, but no front desk. So upon arrival we called the number at the door to have the landlord / owner come let us in. It ended up being quite a to-do (despite emailing multiple times, and then calling and confirming that arriving so early would be OK, whoever I talked to apparently never passed that message on to the owner, who was in quite the kerfuffled state at our arrival time) but the owner came careening up the street in his ancient, tiny, Mexican-made car that seemed altogether unsuitable for 6" of freshly fallen unplowed snow, and ushered us into the vehicle rather than into the building, since he had another hotel/apartment where we'd be able to sleep until noon instead of 10:30, and where he also had to start making breakfast for other guests in approximately 5 minutes. So off we careened down the dark snowy streets, in a complete stranger's car, hoping for the best.

It of course was fine, and he deposited us into a bare-bones but workable room in his second location, where we promptly passed out for 3 glorious hours, awakening to the view above. Light! And goodness.. that's a lot of snow! Those snow boots I panic-ordered 3 days before the trip were an immediate and welcome payoff!

Our intent was to head to the main downtown area for lunch, stopping by what I had read was the best bakery in Reykjavik on the way, but as we started our trek I was catching glimpses of the harbor through the cross streets, with this amazing pink light reflecting off the water, the snowy cliffs, and sky. I was like a moth to a flame: I had to go down to the water.

Since the sun is only up for about 5 hours a day at this time of year, it also never actually gets very far up in the sky. So for the entire duration of daylight, the quality of light is this magical almost-sunset glow.

I couldn't get enough of it. I'm not sure these pictures are even doing it justice. I was basically just wandering around the path at the edge of the water with a dopey heart-eye-emoji expression permanently plastered to my face.

And then, within seconds... it was snowing. Heavily.

Sure, whatever Reykjavik. You do you.

But that building up there? That's the Harpa, a nearly-brand-new concert hall that I had read was really cool on the inside and worth a poke around, so we popped in to take a look (and get a break from the cold!)

::cue me standing immobile, jaw hanging open::

I mean. Would you take a look at this place.

It is GORGEOUS. I don't think there's a single right angle in the place. The ceiling is entirely made up of layered mirrored plates, and the walls are these three dimensional honeycomb-like plates that diffuse the light in the most amazing way.

Ahhhh.

Anyway! After that we did actually make it to the main downtown area, where neither the streets nor the sidewalks were plowed or cleared in any way whatsoever, nor did anyone seem to think that odd.

After a lunch stop (a giant bowl of lobster tails for Chris; fish and chips for me) we headed out on what ended up being a highly non-viable trip to what was supposed to be the hip new area of town, but was more like wandering around one of those sprawling big box Costco complexes on foot (eg, not ideal. Everything is really far away from everything else and all other visitors were in cars. Also there was even less snow trampling there than around the rest of the city due to the lack of pedestrians, so we were tromping through a good foot of snow at that point). While the initial goal was not realized, we did end up at another sea wall with more amazing views.

So, totally worth it.

OK! That's a good start.. I'm almost done editing the 18263517243 photos from our Golden Circle tour, so hopefully those to come soon.