My Life in the Southwest: Iceland

Saturday, February 2, 2019

2018 Year in Review

I'm so late on this! It's already February! But better late than never I guess?

January

Well the year started off on a bad note when I had my first emergency room visit EVER. I was in the worst pain I’ve ever had in my life. I will never forget sitting in a wheelchair, tears streaming down my face, holding the giant cup of CT contrast I had to drink wondering how on earth I was going to manage it without throwing up or passing out. They got things figured out with the tests and sent me on my way with pain pills.

We also got a king size bed. Normally this isn’t something I would include in a ‘year in review’ post, but getting this king size bed has been life changing. I can’t even believe the space we have and I’m sleeping a lot better now.

February

Surgery! To fix the above mentioned issues. My uterus was trying to self-destruct (hence the horrible pain). I wish I were exaggerating, but this is exactly how my surgeon described it to me. They took out just about everything they could (but left some important things too). It went well. I stayed one night in the hospital. I was home recovering for 4 weeks. Everything went smoothly and I feel SO MUCH BETTER.

The addition started on our house (my mother-in-law’s kitchen). About a week into it, they discovered a major plumbing problem. Which they fixed. And then the addition resumed.

March

March was all about surgery recovery, organizing, and just life.

April

We had our 8^th anniversary. We went to dinner at Cheesecake Factory and kept it pretty low key because we left for Iceland the next week. That was our gift to each other.

We also had our French Memorial.

May

Iceland! We went for a week. It was unbelievable. I still just can’t stop thinking about it. And I want to go back so bad! In fact, a 2^nd trip has been discussed (in 2020). We shall see! I’ve traveled to other countries, but none of them have had the same effect on me that Iceland has had. I wish I could describe it without sounding like a loon. It’s just IN me now. I look back at my pictures and I just get this feeling of longing and sadness that I’m not there. I drink a cup of my precious Arctic Thyme tea that I got there (arctic thyme is a plant only grown in Iceland) and I take a whiff of it and I am immediately transported back. Our little cabin. The crazy weather. The crazy landscapes. The smell (it’s good). The fresh air. The fresh water EVERYWHERE. The people. The music. The slower pace. The peacefulness. The remoteness (it felt like we were the only ones on the island). I loved everything about it. It was just a pretty perfect trip. I think Belgium comes in 2^nd as far as the ‘feeling’ of a country. We’ve discussed another trip to Belgium at some point too. With Belgium I think we were just so surprised by how much we loved it. It’s a tiny little country, but boy does it pack a punch. Okay I’m getting off track.

June

June was our Regional Convention, which meant the visit of my seeeeester! It was lovely.

July

In July, our ductless heating and cooling was installed. It was a huge relief to get that done. My house was in shambles and had tubes and wires and HOLES in the ceilings for about a week. I never knew what or who I would be coming home too. But the love I have for these ductless units now….amazing.

My nephew came to visit as well. We had a nice time! We didn’t do anything too touristy, except a hike that I thought was going to kill me (Tent Rocks). Spoiler alert…it didn’t kill me. Ha ha.

We also had some painting done in July. The addition was slowly wrapping up (I won’t even go into that because I’ve been trying to block it from my memory).

August

In August we had a couple stay with us for a week for PS School. It was nice to have them and they were easy guests.

We also had concrete work done. We had a path poured out front, a patio for my mother-in-law poured out back, and the concrete leveled out on the West side of our house.

September

In September my parents came to visit. We went to a lot of bookstores. It was so much fun! We had a nice visit with them.

We also made the bittersweet decision to switch back to English from French. We miss our French family, but moving to English was a great move for us. We love our new congregation.

October

Nothing out of the ordinary in October…just incredibly busy at work. Balloon Fiesta. Also, my husband tore up the carpet in the man cave. There was linoleum that looked like wood underneath. We’re leaving it alone for now.

November

In November hubby went to Chicago with my nephew for a couple of Blackhawks games. While they were gone, we had our new piece of fencing installed…the FINAL part of the addition project.

Also…Black Friday!

December

I traveled to Nebraska in December for my niece’s baby shower. It was so much fun. I got to see all of my family and go to help out with the shower. And it was cold, but not SUPER cold.

Uncle Bob also came for an impromptu visit (funeral).

It was a stressful year (surgery, the addition, and our house being tore up, etc) but it was also a great year because we got a LOT accomplished. The addition is complete. Our heating/cooling is complete. We visited a country that I still just can’t believe exists because it is so amazing. I got to see a lot of family and we had lots of visitors. All in all, a really good year.

Travel: Colorado, Iceland, Nebraska

Visitors: 7 (my sister, my nephew, my parents, a couple here for PSS, and Uncle Bob)

Tuesday, May 29, 2018

Iceland

I was going to split this post up into a bunch of smaller ones, but that just seemed overwhelming and would take WAY more time than I have.

So....we went to ICELAND!

First things first...it was by far the most beautiful place I've ever seen. It beat Alaska. It beat Hawaii (by a smidge). It was just.....everything. Dramatic coastlines, dramatic inland, dramatic everything.

We left on a Saturday late afternoon and arrived Saturday morning local time. I love taking pictures from the plane. I can never sleep on planes, so I'm always on the lookout for good photos. Flying above the clouds over the North Atlantic ocean:

And when the pilot announced our descent to Iceland, I got some good shots as I got my first glimpse of the country.

Our first stop was the Blue Lagoon, because it's just 20 minutes from the airport. It's a geothermal spa located on a lava field.

The water is full of silica (a mineral) and the water is soft and healing. The water temp is between 99-102 degrees.

Our tickets included drinks at the swim up bar which was quite lovely.

Tickets must be purchased in advance, because the Blue Lagoon only allows a certain number of people in per hour because they don't want it to get too crowded. Their plan works. It wasn't too crowded.

After the Blue Lagoon, we drove to get groceries. Eating out is incredibly expensive in Iceland and our cottage came with a kitchen so we decided to cook a lot of our meals at home instead of eating out.

Then we drove to our cottage. This cottage was amazing. It was about an hour north of Reykjavik.

Here's just a few pics of the inside:

And the views from the outside:

And here's an odd picture of the inside of the fridge and some of the groceries they got. Iceland makes this amazing yogurt type product called Skyr. We had it every day.

We sat on this couch every night and took in the views, watched movies, and just RELAXED.

Sunday we drove to two of the four waterfalls we saw in Iceland. They were beautiful of course:

After a scenic drive home (basically on a volcano), we took a walk along the beach by our cottage.

Another thing about Iceland in the late Spring...it never gets dark.

Monday was a busy day. We woke up and drove for 4 hours to the south coast of Iceland.

On the way there, we stopped at a wool market. Icelandic wool is a HUGE deal in Iceland. First off....knitting is a huge deal. Children are taught to knit in school. Women knit. Men knit. Children knit. EVERYONE knits. So we wanted to buy either a sweater or scarf or hat or something. Our Air B&B host said to make sure that whatever wool we buy is truly Icelandic wool and hand-knitted in Iceland. Because a lot of tags will say 'designed in Iceland' but it's actually made in China.

Anyways....we stumbled upon this little store in the town of Hella (if you can call it a town) and decided to take a look around.

We walked in and there was an older lady sitting in a chair, knitting, of course. She was somewhat grumpy and pretended not to speak English but she KNEW English. :) We perused the store and picked out some wool hats, knitted by local residents with pure Icelandic wool. And let me tell you...that hat saved my ears that day!

Our first stop was the village of Vik.

It's a black sand beach with a 'treacherous' ocean. There aren't many signs in Iceland as far as trails or 'keep out' or anything like that, but there ARE signs on Vik beach telling you NOT TO TURN YOUR BACK ON THE OCEAN. Multiple signs. They aren't messing around. Apparently this waves here can be so strong that it can whisk you away if you're not paying attention.

And yes, I realize the irony of this because during this picture we had our backs to the ocean. However, I could SEE the ocean in my phone as I was taking this picture. Does that make it okay? :)

On our way back to the cottage, we stopped at TWO more waterfalls. The first one was my favorite part of the whole trip.

Skogafoss.

It's a 200 foot waterfall that you can pretty much walk right up to and stand near the bottom. It falls into a stream. But it is so incredibly powerful. And the fact that you can get so close to it is just....surreal.

There were just a handful of other people there. The beauty of traveling off-season. There was a couple from Texas that were there so we took some pictures for them and they took some pictures for us.

Except for these, which my husband took. This was right after I stood as close as I possibly could to this ginormous waterfall and let it spray me directly in the face. I was laughing. It was just one of those moments that I will never forget!

Even though it was cold and we both got drenched....it was completely worth it.

After we were happy and drenched, we stopped at the cafe that was near the waterfall for some traditional Icelandic lamb stew to warm up (it was really good!). And beer and hot chocolate (of course).

And then we drove to Seljalandsfoss.

Impressive, right? But the super cool thing about this waterfall is that you can WALK BEHIND IT. Again....there are a couple of signs that say 'at your own risk'. Because you're basically climbing a bit and on slippery rocks. With nothing to hang onto. But we couldn't go to this waterfall and NOT walk behind it!! So we were careful and we walked behind it. It was amazing.

We got wet, but not as wet as we did at Skogafoss.

And just pure prettiness on the way home.

Because Monday was such a long day (8+ hours in the car total), we decided to take it easy on Tuesday.

We slept in, had breakfast at the cottage and just RELAXED.

Then we went to Akranes, the closest 'city' to us (maybe a 15 minute drive?). There are about 7,000 inhabitants that live there. We went to the lighthouses and climbed to the top of one of them.

Again...hardly any people were up there. In fact, the lighthouse keeper (is that what they call them?) said 'if you're the last ones up there, close the hatch please'. So my husband closed the hatch on a decades old lighthouse on the Icelandic coast. :)

After we got home, we soaked in the hot pot (a.k.a. hot tub, they call them hot pots in Iceland). With this view:

On Wednesday, we went to Reykjavik. Reykjavik is the northern most capital city in the world. It is home to about 150,000 people, about 1/2 of the population of Iceland.

We walked around the city center, snapped some pictures, went into a couple of shops. And then we went to the mid-week meeting. It was wonderful!

Thursday was full of more beautiful things. First, we made a pit stop in Borgarnes. This was literally the view right outside the market.

It's just....unreal.

Then we had to make another pit stop when we saw these beauties near the road.

This was another one of those surreal moments. Feeding carrots to Icelandic ponies. Gah!!!!

Then we made it to our destination: Arnarstapi.

Oh my.

Just....so much beauty. We hiked and just when we thought it couldn't get prettier, it got prettier.

On the way home, we stopped for lunch at this amazing hotel pretty much in the middle of nowhere. We were the only ones there for lunch. There were, however, two men in the 'lounge' room knitting.