Wednesday 31 May 2006

The Bridge

Yep, we popped off to Northern California for a week's stay pretty much the day after I turned in my last assignments at University. We took the very first direct flight of the season to San Francisco, a trip that takes a relatively easy seven+ hours if all goes as planned. It's a Major Improvement over stopover flights and made it especially easy to travel with Óðinn (Valentina is always easy to travel with.) At six weeks old, he basically slept the entire time there and back. Dad calls him a miracle baby... : )

SF is always beautiful, and we particularly lucked out on this day since it had rained buckets the day before. We took a break from shopping and hiked up to the top of Buena Vista Hill, overlooking lower Haight, meeting a few squirrels, a little black dog and some sweet old Italian tourist ladies on the way. Valentina thought it would be fun to run down the hill but I nixed that plan; instead she cartwheeled the entire descent. Crazy girl!

The beauty of this one-week trip was that we didn't have to say too many big goodbyes: my parents are moving back to Reykjavik after forty years in Northern California in just two weeks time, and my sister's clan will be coming late summer. One week was actually just perfect...we got off the Lava Rock for a much needed reality check (otherwise known as a shopping spree, American style) and found that we were more than happy to return home. And that's exactly how a vacation should be!

Monday 29 May 2006

BBQ

Once again, just a short post...

I encountered this wacky group of young people having a grill party at the base of sculptor Einar Jónsson's Úr Álögum, (anyone want to translate that for us...my brain's on holiday) just the other side of the Reykjavik town lake. Alas, I was late for a very important date and so couldn't stop to find out who these spunky rebels were.

Now, as charming and Sunday-in-the-Park-like as this looks, I'm sure it wasn't legal, so I applaude them for doing it anyway. They were happy and casual and I'm sure they packed their trash, so I hope they got to down some hot dogs before being asked to leave. This town needs more good old-fashioned public outdoorsy stuff like this to make better use of our greenways and bring social life out into the sunshine while we've got it. Croquet, anyone?

Saturday 27 May 2006

May Sunset

I'll let this one speak for itself...

(p.s. this was taken from our balcony at around 11 pm in early May.)