Iceland

We spent four days in Iceland, the land of fire and ice. Iceland has about 330,000 inhabitants and nearly 1 million tourists each year. It is one of the youngest land masses on the planet, still actively being created as magma squirts up in the rift between the North American an Eurasian tectonic plates. We saw plenty of volcanoes, waterfalls, geysers and glaciers. It is strange that a place can be so stark yet so verdant. The vegetation is working hard to build up soil and get a toe hold. Several times we drove half an hour without seeing a tree and in some cases little more than moss.

The Blue Lagoon - the biggest hot tub I've ever seen. We got off the plane and came here for mud baths and a long soak.

Jack at Oxararfoss near Thingvellir

 

Jack below Oxararfoss

Lupines

Zoe with a rock pile she built

The basalt cliffs of Almannagja near Thingvellir. This the easternmost edge of the North American tectonic plate. The Eurasian plate across the rift valley to the east is moving away at 2 cm per year. The valley floor slowly collapses into the gap between until magma flows to the surface filling it in

The basalt cliffs of Almannagja near Logberg, (law rock) at Thingvellir. With a few exceptions, this was the location that the Icelandic parliament met for almost 800 years starting in 970 AD. There is a lot of history here for such a young land mass.

Flosagja Canyon near Thingvellir

Another canyon near Thingvellir

 

 A small hot pot in the geyser field where "Geysir", namesake for the word "geyser" is located

 

Stokkur, another geyser erupting near the original Geysir

Stokkur beginning to erupt

Gullfoss - you could hear this waterfall from a kilometer away and up close you could feel it through your feet and percussing in your chest

Gullfoss

Seljalandsfoss

A view from behind Seljalandsfoss

Near Seljalandsfoss

Skogar

Skogar

A terminus of the Mýrdalsjökull glacier - this is flowing down from the active the volcano Katla , just east of the Eyjafjallajökull volcano that erupted in 2010

Jack on the glacier

The Mýrdalsjökull glacier

Black sand beaches from a promontory west of Vik

 
Same promontory looking northwest toward the volcano Katla 

More lupines - some  places mountainsides appeared blue with lupine 

A basalt bridge on the same promontory west of Vik

Looking west at more black sand beaches from a different promontory

Natural arches at Dyrholaey

Laugavegur Street in Reykjavik

A view of Reykjavik from the Hallgrimskirkja bell tower

 

Hallgrimskirkja  

Another view of Reykjavik from the Hallgrimskirkja bell tower

  

Jack and Zoe woke up on the wrong side of the bed - there are a lot of quirky things in Reykjavik

 

 

 

England

After Disneyland, the children would prefer the trip to be over, but they have soldiered on to London. Ann-Kristin found us another conveniently located apartment in Westminster, roughly between Parliament and Buckingham Palace.

We covered a  lot of ground in London, mostly on foot, but also via the Underground, double-decker buses and a Thames River cruise.  London is not very bicycle friendly, nor pedestrian friendly for that matter. It may require 4 separate, seemingly unsynchronized pedestrian crossing lights to get across a single street.

Jack took to reading late in the trip and was happy to find books sold in English.

The kids on the Westminster Bridge

The clock tower holding Big Ben, a huge bell that's pleasant to hear

Buckingham Palace

The British Museum - the kids had some "Night in the Museum" agenda here that we were happy to follow

A giant scarab at the British Museum, one of many items pilfered from Karnak and elsewhere in Egypt

Some of the marble metope sculptures taken from the Parthenon by Thomas Bruce, Earl of Elgin. The ones we saw in Athens were reproductions. Elgin removed them from rubble when Greece was part of the Ottoman Empire in the early 1800s. Portions of the original pediments are also in the British Museum.

Piccadilly Circus

Westminster Abbey

We spent a beautiful and memorable day with Peter and Ingrid Bentley in the village of Layer Marney, Colchester, Essex. Ingrid is another of Hakan's cousins and sister to Lawes and Bengt. We ate well and I napped in the sun.

Thee Bentley's pond

The Layer Marney Tower, a Tudor palace a short walk from the Bentley's

The Bentley's gardens

"Mind the Gap" - We've made good use of the Underground. Before we found out we were traveling in 150 year old tunnels, we had been commenting amongst ourselves how some of the lines seemed cramped compared to other subways we had been on.

The Baker Street Underground Station, one of the first dating to 1863 and just blocks from 221B.

The National Gallery and Trafalger Square

Inside the National Gallery

St. Paul's Cathedral

The Tower Bridge

The north bank of the Thames at the Tower Bridge - the building on the right is the Swiss RE Tower (aka the "Gherkin")

The ramparts outside the Tower of London

The actual Tower of London, built by the Normans ; )

Armor in the tower - we saw the crown jewels, but no photos allowed. The 530 carat Cullinan diamond in the Sovereign's Sceptre was as big as Jack's fist

The Tower Bridge - tides on the Thames varied 7 meters this day

The "Shard" from the Thames

Big Ben and Parliament from the Thames

The London Eye from the Thames

Big Ben again

Westminster Abbey - different day and angle

The south bank of the Thames at the Tower Bridge - the building on the left is City Hall and the pointy one on the right is the "Shard"

 Jack and a lion at Trafalger Square

 

The family on the Tower Bridge