Two duos

I slept until 0800 this morning and did not hear the bus during the night, arriving to take passengers towards the airport. It stops under my bedroom window!

I had a late breakfast. It is very good at this hotel (the best of the trip).

At lunchtime I ventured out because I had booked on a guided tour of the city centre. I ate a delicious beetroot salad at the Reykjavík Kitchen, then walked as briskly as I could to the starting place. It was over a mile away.

The weather had been wet in the morning, but fared up. I was either too hot or too cold all afternoon, so my coat was in and out of my back pack 4 times!

There were more than 20 in our group. It was a free trip but you pay what you think is fair at the end. We had a cheerful, knowledgeable guide who worked well with the large group. We heard a lot about the history of the city and of Iceland.

Trees are important because there are so few. Every year a tree is awarded “Tree of the Year” in the city. We saw the oldest tree and the 2016 winner.

I was very tired after a couple of hours on my feet, so I found the nearest coffee shop for coffee and cake. On the next table sat Josephine and Wendy. J was knitting a slip over vest in a gorgeous variegated wool, possible 3 ply. Wendy was making a crochet square. She is learning the art.

They are from Macau and start a cruise around Iceland tomorrow. We talked knitting, yarns and Icelandic landmarks. They looked at my Blips.

After I said goodbye, I walked to see the concert hall by the coast. I had to pass the Ministry of Foreign Affairs where a group of protestors were banging pots and pans in protest at the treatment of the Palestinians.

The two women in my blip were happy to be photographed but it was too noisy to talk to them.

My walk back to the hotel took in the Sun Voyager sculpture by Jón Gunnar Árnason. A small child kindly climbed in for scale.

I may have been on a landscape workshop, but sooner or later people appear in my Blips!

A few of the things I have learned from the holiday:
- become a coffee drinker and wait to have tea again back home
- always remember your plastic sink plug; even smart hotels don’t always have a plug in the bathroom
- learn to enjoy popular sights without being irritated by huge numbers of fellow tourists
- enjoy the cacophony of languages that bathes your ears
- enjoy excellent food in a variety of restaurants
- lamb is the main meat which suited me very well
- after a long day of photography, even a sulphurous shower is inviting!
-learn a lot about energy conservation from a country where natural resources are plentiful
- the wild flowers at this time of years are wonderful and are very similar to Upper Teesdale
- you do not need any cash; cards are accepted everywhere

There will be more, but my stream of consciousness has stopped flowing!