Showing posts with label museum. Show all posts
Showing posts with label museum. Show all posts

Sunday, June 2, 2019

Day 15 - Golden Circle

This last morning we hit a couple of museums.  Skógasafn is a three part museum.  Folk museum, Open Air with buildings and the transport museum. As usual, we could have stayed longer.  The second museum, the Lava museum we did manage to hit all the interactive exhibits.  They had a movie, with bean bags in addition to regular seats.  Just a nice touch.  Lunch was my last meal in Iceland, I made sure to have some of that fish.

If I thought the airport at Iceland was a quiet little hub, boy was I wrong. Apparently it's a huge airport for transfers.  Once you got through the relatively small and calm check in area to the gates the chaos ensued.  It looks small from the outside, but behind the gates there were masses switching planes.  I thought I had plenty of time, but after the first security check, they had a second international check, then a third TSA check for 'special' people flying to the US. At that last stop I had to throw away my powder tooth paste I specifically bought so that I didn't have to deal with liquids.  Can't win.  I barely had time to grab a sandwich before I decided I should wait in the line that nobody said I should wait in but which seemed to be the thing to do.  I find the proactive service in Iceland generally non-existan, us American's are actually spoilt a bit in that regard. The flight was good.  I saw a little bit of Greenland as we followed the sun west.  I had another stop in Portland before heading home.

Ready, set, let's go again!  Loved this trip.

 Skógasafn













Suckers with priority access waiting in the wind while the rest of us pulled up in a bus.


Greenland

Mt Rainier


Tuesday, May 28, 2019

Day 10 - Heimaey, Vestmannaeyjar - Part 1

The Westman Islands are beautiful. Being further south, and spring a little earlier than the previous places we’ve been, Heimaey of the Westman Islands was ‘lush’ and green.

The bus tour was great. It rained a little but not long and not heavily. We started at the local museum documenting the history of the fairly recent volcanic eruption and then we drove all around the island. We proceeded to visit the location of a local annual festival as well as a Viking era replica that had stood in that place.

The tour also took us to an overlook of bird cliffs. I’ve been to a few, and the windows were crowded. I enjoyed the baby sheep the most, they didn’t run away from us on this trail but they did keep their distance from us tourists.

After lunch we did the zodiac tour in the harbor and had a steady drizzle for the first half. A seal teased us a bit, poking his head above water. We saw lots of birds, and checked out some shallow caves where we were serenaded by the onboard opera singer. It was a nice effect, the motors off and the echoey cave.

Back on board it was packing, eating dinner and managing to see the first sunset on the trip as we headed to bed close to midnight. 


Pulling into harbor





Bus Tour