In between the strikes and the meetings madness I had a long weekend in Iceland - a slightly delayed birthday present. There are too many impressions for me to be coherent, and the surface of this weird, wonderful country was barely scratched. It's beautiful and bleak; American and European (culturally and literally: I stood in the tectonic plate rift, a foot on both continents); Nordic and Celtic, cute and terrifying, liberal and conservative and many other binaries. The food is wonderful, the architecture goes from sublime to traditional to banal, the weather is gloriously changeable and I must go back. There were bookshop cafés and geysers, waterfalls, lakes and wool shops, dried fish heads and cinnamon buns, sagas and whale-watching boats moored next to whaling ships.
My pictures are
here but here's a taste - click to enlarge.
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| The Chuck Norris Grill |
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| Selfie by a fish-drying house |
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| A geyser about to blow |
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| Gullfoss |
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| Gullfoss |
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| Gullfoss selfie |
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| Hallgrimskirkja dominating the harbour |
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| Hallgrimskirkja |
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| Hallgrimskirkja organ - the only decorative relief in the bare concrete Lutheran church |
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| Failed to visit this - bit of a cock-up really |
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| Reykjavik from Hallgrimskirkja tower |
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| Harpa: all Scandinavian capitals have big glass concert halls on the harbour edge. |
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| A mountain-top selfie |
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| Thingvellir: the ancient parliament site and the rift between the continents |
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| Waterfall at Thingvellir |
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| Painted on the side of a shop |
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