Iceland, Again

 We just couldn't get enough of Iceland, and the way our tickets were booked, we could take a 4-day layover in Reykjavik for no extra charge ... so we did! No rental car this time, we just spent time in town. Science nerds that we are, we spent an entire day at Perlan (earth-science museum), and also hit the museum for the northern lights, Icelandic history, maritime museum, and a lava show. That still left us plenty of time to just walk around town and enjoy food and drink, and even a bit of shopping -- where else could we count on getting super-warm wool clothing? Here's just a quick sampling of photos from the "land of fire and ice."

  

In the ice caves at Perlan

Friends who’ve known us a long time, know we judge a town by its ratio of bars to bookstores. (We like to see both; a bit of nightlife and a bit of braininess.) What to make of a town that has twofers?

In the cork museum in Portugal we learned that cork granules could be used for special effects to represent explosions. (Photo 1) Then here in Iceland we saw drone photos of volcano eruptions and indeed they did look like cork! (Photo 2)

Viking rubber duckies

Rainbow Street

Church designed to echo the shape of basalt columns, with statue of Leif Erickson in front

Sun Voyager sculpture

Not the real thing, sadly, but we learned a lot at the Northern Lights museum

A little joke to see who's paying attention -- can you find it? 

Memorial to those lost at sea

Goofing around with a fellow visitor to the Saga museum (the armor is heavy!)

Lava from Katla (?) eruption, remelted to educate visitors to the lava museum

Heat-resistant suit for working with molten lava (I didn't, but did we did get some pieces after they'd cooled down)

Time for one final adventure: on the way to the airport, detoured to the brand new lava fields from the eruption that just ended day before yesterday! Lucky for you, these are photos from a cellphone and not a smell-phone because the whole area smelled like burning car brakes.

And finally, the last leg of the flight home. We napped a little, but with views like this, it was too exciting to miss.

Glaciers meeting the sea in eastern Greenland

Baltimore sunset, and the wreck of the Key Bridge

Large mugs of American-style coffee, how I’ve missed you!! Europe does many things very well, some better than the US, some not. (Yeah, I’m thinking of YOU, weird bathrooms either up or down a flight of narrow irregular spiral stairs hard to get to from an otherwise charming pub or coffee shop.) But when you remember that American love of coffee came specifically as an alternative to British tea I guess it’s not so surprising. On the Galeon I’d put about 1/4 cup of espresso in a mug and top it off with hot water to get my coffee fix.