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Iceland Megatrip 2005 – Day 4

June 28, 2005

This was our laziest day to date. I mean we did jack all.

In the morning we must have hit up Smaralind, the local shopping center and cruised round the shops waiting for them to open, withdrawing mula from the ATM and hitting up the Hagkaup to get some lunch supplies so we weren’t always stealing Karl’s food as well as buying a bath towel for me to use in Iceland (I had intended to leave it behind when I left but it was pink) and buying The Holy Grail of chocolate bars – Prince Polo. Helen + Prince Polo = very happy 🙂

In the afternoon we went over to Tóti’s and had a blast of course.

Bringing home the photo fights, Matthew, Silja and Birta going camera crazy.

Nei Birta, Nei Birta Thumbs up Comparing Cameras Hello Camera

This is what happens when Birta gets too close to the lens. Hello distorted perspective 🙂

my what a big face you have

The following photos are some of the photos that Birta took when she was in charge of my camera. As soon as Birta and Silja but mainly Birta learnt how to use my camera it was almost in their hands more than mine. Not that I minded 🙂

Hello Helen Afi Palli Flowers on the patio The playground

After the four of us rough housing around in the girls bedroom we moved out onto the patio where there was much more room 🙂 The first photo is of Birta and me – duh! and the second one is a crack up beacuse Birta wanted me to give her the camera back but I said it was my turn 🙂

me and you, you and me má ég taka mynd

The evening ended with the girls giving us a concert with Tóti on the guitar. Some of the songs we recognised as they are songs we have in Australia as well, some Mum remembered from when she was living in Iceland and it was just the perfect ending to a fun afternoon.

Sisters

That was our day. Just like I said a pretty non-adventurous day. 🙂

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Iceland Megatrip 2005 – Day 3

Hello Iceland! June 27, 2005.

The previous night before going to sleep we had pulled all the blinds down in the living area because it would take a while to get used to the idea of 24hr daylight. I had no problem with getting used to the reverse of say 6 or 7 hrs of light when I was there in Winter because then you still had a defined night and a defined day but when you just have various stages of daylight for 24hrs, that is pretty interesting.

Understandably Reykjavík and Iceland in general has changed since my parents were left in 1980, you know new roads are put up; new buildings are built all the usual things that happens with time.

For Pabbi however this was the cause of utter confusion. You see my father and a map, my father and memory of streets yeah they aren’t a real happy equation. You ask my father to go anywhere in Brisbane even which he hasn’t been to 10000 times before, yeah you are looking at chaos.

So here we are, we have just picked up a rental car and we are following Tóti back to Karl’s place to pick up Matthew. All we have to do is go back the way we came and Tóti would be just ahead of us in the traffic anyway. Dude, total chaos. I think we can just leave it there. Matthew, Karl and I all got our navigation skills from our mother, take me somewhere once and that is pretty much all I need. This can be a point of conflict especially when we start provoking each other.

Anyway we get back to Karl’s and pick up Matthew who had wisely decided not to come with us to get the rental car. We then head off to the Reykjavík Cemetery to visit the grave of our Amma, her sister (our great-aunt) and our brother. This cemetery was unlike anything I had ever seen before. It wasn’t at all like the one we live near and I walk past daily nor was it like the ones I saw in the town I lived in when in Germany. It was almost like an open forest which was littered with graves each lovingly tendered. I met my Amma once when I was 3 and spoke to her a couple of times on the phone since then. It is is an interesting thing having never really gotten to kn ow her but still knowing her very much through how my parents talked of her or the cards she would send each Christmas with Gleðileg Jól on the front and a parcel of dried fish if were lucky. We always knew was inside the parcel before we had opened it as it would have been opened by Customs and then closed up with all sorts of stickers saying “This parcel has passed customs”

After the cemetery we headed into downtown to have a stroll round and to show Mum, Pabbi and Matthew the ultra cool 3d scale relief map of Iceland in the Reykjavík City Hall. Hafþór and Sigga had brought me to see the map when I was in Iceland in 2002 so I knew I had to bring the others to see it because it really is ultra cool!

Looking South West 3d map of Iceland Helen with Axarfjörður at her right shoulder close up of the North East

After we had poured over the map and further planned our travels we headed out for a walk round the area. Matthew and I lagged behind the “grown-ups” and he was even in a silly enough mood to tell me to take this photo of him with this wall of graffiti.

Just across the street from where the photo of Matthew was taken is Austurvöllur and a couple of days before we had arrived an utterly amazing fantastic photography display by Ragnar Axelsson from his book Faces of the North had been installed in the square. This is an utterly amazing document of life in Iceland, Greenland and the Faroe Islands.

In the gardens bordering the square there was one thing that left me bemused and one thing that made me smile.

Ornamental Kale Pansy Town!

The first was Ornamental Kale in the gardens, this really had me stumped as I could not figure out why on earth there were cabbages planted in the garden bed, then Mum told me that they were designed for eating. The second was this bed of Pansies; a flower that very much reminds me of Iceland because a) you see it everywhere and b) it was one of Amma’s favourite flowers.

Cue some more cruising round the old town and then we were off to Tóti’s house to meet up with his family, look at photos, chat, laugh and giving me some time to be a 7 year old again. It was just so great seeing his family again, so great.

Birta Girl Silja and Birta Silja playing silly

I got roped into playing a game of bingo with the girls and to hell with the language barrier it still worked out fine. When the one of the girls was spinning the dial the other would make sure that I put my piece on the right tile and when I was spinning the dial I would just make the noise or movements of the animal. It was a barrel of fun.

After hanging out at Tóti’s we made our way home via Hafþór’s where we all got to meet the ultra cute little Daníel Smári in all his 23mth glory for the first time, Matthew and Mum got to meet Sigga and Sóley as well for the first time and I got to hang out Sóley who is my “twin” and happens to be my niece and a few years younger than me…

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Iceland Megatrip 2005 – Day 2

June 26th 2005, our plane lands at London Heathrow just after 6am.

Since all four of us would be coming back through London at different times, we split up to make the trip out to London Stansted. Matthew and I took the tube into to London and then caught the train out to Stansted whilst Mum and Pabbi caught a direct bus from Heathrow to take them to Stansted.

Matthew and I hopped on the tube at Heathrow and then got off at King’s Cross/St Pancras at roughly 7:30am on Sunday June 26, 2005, to say the station was dead would be an understatement. Since we only had one trip tickets and had already passed through the turnstiles trying to find a map we decided that since we had plenty of time to kill why not just put our bags on our back and walk to Liverpool St Station, because what a great way to see the sights and to save money! Right …

We exited King’s Cross and walked across the street and picked up a bite to eat in the McDonald’s, we then found a street map of the local area and planned our route.

We walked up Pentonville Road, before coming down Goswell Rd, then along London Wall till we reached Old Broad St and then Liverpool St Station was right before our eyes.

Our route

Some of the interesting things we saw on our walk included a mastectomy wear shop (Nicola Jane at 150 Goswell Rd, London EC1V 7DU), a strange looking ATM and way too many Starbucks and McDonalds.

Nicola Jane Mastectomy Wear cash machine and phone booth

Whilst we did not have many streets to travel on, it was still quite an adventure, at each bus shelter we would check our progress on the map and we would stop every so often to readjust my bag which is not designed for carrying on your shoulders for great lengths. It is a large duffle bag and the straps on it are just seatbelt webbing so when your bag has 20kg plus in it, those straps really start to dig into your shoulders! The pain in my shoulders from the straps would stay with me all day as we waited at the airport.

Matthew walking through London

Matthew was luckier as you can see in the picture above, he has an actual hiking pack but his daypack was not nice to him and one of the straps broke which meant that we had to do some running repairs on the road.

Matthew just near Liverpool St Station outside The Railway Tavern.

Matthew outside The Railway Tavern

The whole walk ended up at about 3.2km and took us about 1hr or so with us each porting at least 20kg.

We arrived at the station at the right time as a couple of minutes after we had bought our Standsted Express tickets, our train departed 🙂

The train ride was quite a nice ride, Matthew fell asleep fairly soon after we took off which left me to have my eyes glued to the passing scenery and as we left Greater London and entered the Essex countryside it was super cool to see rabbits hopping through some of the fields we passed!

Whilst Matthew was sleeping I took this picture of his reflection.

On the Standsted Express

Once the train arrived at Stansted, we disembarked and started our way up the endless sets of stairs to get up to the entry of the airport. It is when you are travelling up/down stairs with luggage that you really appreciate having a backpack as you just power up the stairs whilst everyone else struggles pulling their suitcase up the stairs.

By potluck a couple of minutes after we arrived inside we saw Mum and Pabbi walk past and were greeted with awful news, our plane had been delayed. I was ready then to leave my bags with my family and hop tail it back into to London to see some sights or hit up some shops and as we would later find out, that would have been a really good idea.

Because with our plane been delayed and delayed we ended up sitting, lying or walking around Stansted for 13+hours.

delayed, delayed, delayed

The delay did mean however that we were given food vouchers 🙂 and as the plane was delayed for a second time we ended up getting a second set of food vouchers. The food vouchers I think were each worth £7 and had to be used in full each time, so we spent a considerable amount of time before we used the vouchers scouting all the food shops to see where we could get maximum utility value.

Self portrait at Standsted waiting, waiting, waiting

We spent our time waiting, waiting, waiting by reading, reading, reading, sleeping, window shopping and walking around aimlessly. Later on in the afternoon when most of the passengers on our flight were sitting in the same area awaiting our next update we spent some time chatting with the passengers around us exchanging travel plans and offering tips etc.

We ended up arriving in Keflavík just after midnight on June 27th and thanks to the wonderful thing called midnight sun it gave my heart the biggest smile when we passed over breaks in the clouds and I could see the lava, moss, roads and lakes below and when we stepped off the plane and had were greeted by the Icelandic air my heart started doing back flips 🙂

Once we had passed through immigration, received the stamp in our passports, collected our luggage and visited the toilet, we were greeted by one of the most heart-warming sights in the world of three brothers with large smiles on their faces and then lots of hugs. The bummer was though because our plane was delayed and delayed only Karl, Tóti and Hafþór came to collect us as the young children were all tucked up in bed fast asleep. This was the cause of much heartache for Soley and in turn for me, as she was looking so forward to seeing me and if our plane had arrived when it was due she could have made the trip out to the airport with Hafþór. As a consolation however she drew me a picture and wrote me a letter which Hafþór brought to the airport with him which said that I am her favourite aunt 🙂

We then piled into the cars and made the trip to the flat where Karl and Anika lived which is where Matthew and I would be staying, Hafþór picked up his car to return to his flat and Mum and Pabbi headed off with Tóti to his house.
Then after a bit of chatting amongst the four youngest Pálssons we hit the sack after a very long day.

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Iceland Megatrip 2005 – Day 1

Well just a little over a year ago, the four members of the Palsson family “stranded” in Brisbane, Australia started off on a trip bigger than Ben Hur to go to the quinquennial clan gathering in Reykir and to see the land. I didn’t blog as much as I wanted to whilst on the trip as I was to busy living it up, so I have decided to blog about it a year on 🙂

Day 1

Sean drove us to the airport (BNE) and by the time we got to the check-in desk for Singapore Airlines we were already bickering overs omething – who had the frequent flyer numbers, who should go first etc etc, which gave the desk attendant a good laugh. After checking in we broke up to have a look round the duty free shops and we then met back up with Mum and Pabbi to grab a bite to eat. After sitting round for a while we finally able to go through Customs/security and down to the gate. So we bid farewell to Sean and made our way down stairs. Where we were greeted by this fantastic fountain.

Fountain at BNE


Once we were all through Customs/security we looked at even more duty free shops, mainly just marvelling at all the different types of alcohol which we do not see in our regular bottleos and of course at the price (cheap), after a while though this of course got boring so we made the short trip to our gate and broke out our entertainment.

the family awaits

As we made our way onto the plane we were greeted by our delightful stewards and stewardesses and the complimentary newspapers which I grabbed to have a read of the news from the SE Asia perspective, it was quite nice to read the Straits Times and some others which I can’t recall.

Air travel with Singapore Airlines is very, very nice, just after take off the warm face washers came round which would then again come round just before we landed and before the meals. Very, very nice. We also had quite a range of entertainment with Movies and TV shows on demand, Nintendo games, puzzles, radio stations and a wide range of albums which meant that you could program your own radio station.

Flying north over Australia was amazing and I spent a fair bit of time at the back of the plane looking out the window at the land below, it was just great to see the landscape.

After about 8 hours of flying we landed at Changi Airport Singapore (SIN).

One of the first things we had to do here was to make a hurried call to Sean to get him to pick up Mum’s notebook that she had left behind with all the plans and addresses in and post it to Aunty Margaret in Tasmania who would be joining us a week into our trip.

showing how it is

No one could say that Matthew is an average person, he rocked his way around SIN in the above get-up and the toothpick in his mouth was there almost the entire time. Matthew and I split off from Mum and Pabbi and browsed the duty free shops, looked in the 7-11 to see if they had slurpees (no :)), had a blast on the free internet access and I ended up buying a bottle of Lemoncino.

When we got on the plane again, we had the same service as before, so no need to go in to that. I loved watching our plane make its way over Eurasia and again spending more time looking out the window to see the land below, though since we were flying through the night it was just limited to the lights which were still amazing. Flying over India we could see the long strait highways which were covered with trucks making their way across the land.

Eventually we saw this on our screen and that meant that the first leg of our trip was almost over, we were almost at London Heathrow Airport (LHR).

almost there

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Hello Holiday

So the Socceroos didn’t get up, we only lost by two against Brazil and Japan-Croatia tied with no goals, which means that we still look good for the next round.

I did my last exam for the semester yesterday, now I just have to wait for the results to come rolling in, even though grades are not announced until July 5, I already know that I have gotten two distinctions (6) and I think I might get another two yet and one credit (5) if I manage to pull this off, it will be my best semester at uni ever. One of those distinctions would have been a high distinction if I had not done miserably (11/20) on the mid-semester. Bring on next semester (which is my last semester of my undergraduate Bachelors degree)!

I watched three DVDs yesterday. The first was with Mum – Hope Springs, quite a nice romantic comedy and the character played by Minnie Driver was just a total piece of work. The second was with Mum and Matthew – Do You Remember?: Fifteen Years of the Bouncing Souls, which was a really great doco about The ‘Souls which made me think I really should have gone with Matthew and his friends to see them when the played the other month. The last one I watched was Speak, this was an incredible movie, I didn’t think it would be anywhere near as dark as it was but it was just incredibly moving.
Bring on five weeks of holidays and try to forget that this time last year we were busy preparing for the Palsson Grand Iceland Tour of 2005, I guess though in four years times we will all do our best to make our way back as a family for the quinquennial clan gathering.

I have plans of grandeur to fill my holidays with, which include the following.

  • Make this top – Simplicity 4589, view A
  • Make pasta
  • Finish the final testing of a new blog template
  • Attack the ever increasing pile of recipes to try and make a good number of them
  • Learn how to knit – Continental style (Mum was taught English style like most Australian’s but thinks it would be better for me to learn Continental style as it is so more efficient, she talks of when she was in Iceland and like most of the other women spent a lot of time knitting by hand or with their machines and how the Icelandic women were just powerhouses with their knitting, maybe I can talk her into paying for me to go to Iceland these holidays to learn how to knit?)
  • Get a fair stack of scrapbooking done
  • Make a couple of bags
  • Get my bike serviced so I can start riding again
  • Go on a couple of mini photographic expeditions
  • Go see Trivia at the Metro Arts
  • Go see Death Cab for Cutie at the Arena
  • The Brisbane Flickr meet up on Sunday
  • Get a couple of photos printed and mounted for a long overdue birthday present
  • Have fun
  • Work a heap
  • Organise some sort of filing system for the clippings I collect
  • Hit up the shops/life with Andrea
  • Party hard(ish) with Sam
  • Play copious amounts of Gamecube with Matthew
  • Organise something with The Girls from school
  • Read all the books in this monstrous stack I have – five different trips to the library and the four I need to finish beside my bed (if you click on the photo you can see it full size so you can have a “browse” of my library shelf)

books to be read

The real question is how much of this list will I actually get through and how much I won’t finish.

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as young as we act

only as young as you actI handed in my last essay yesterday. Now I just have classes today and tomorrow, swotvac (study week) next week and then four exams in the two week exam block that follows.So between catching up on some TV (McLeod’s Daughters, ER and The Glass House) and working on a little surprise I did a page which ended up been so much simpler than I had planned. As you can probably tell it is only 1 photo, 1 piece of “paper”, a font and a little dose of Helen.

These are two of my sweet nieces, like every day I spent in Iceland I can play this day out on the TV in my head but this day something very special happened. Birta, Silja and I were waiting in the car whilst my brother went to get something, which meant we were just going crazy singing along to Icelandic Pop. Then my brother came back and said a few sentences, which left the girls in shock. They had just made the connection between me been their father’s sister and that meaning I was their aunt. It was classic.

We then met up with my sister-in-law and then spent the rest of the day at the Reykjavik Children’s Zoo and Park. This meant that big kids and little kids alike got to have fun watching animals and playing in one big and very cool adventure playground. 🙂

If someone came up to me tomorrow and said “here is a ticket to Iceland”, I would take it and run!

I have four nieces, five nephews, two sisters, four brothers and a scores and scores of aunts, uncles, cousins and the like in Iceland. Who are all in my mind each and every day.

If I was magical I would pick Iceland up and move it to just off the coast from Brisbane and then I would put a magical dome over it so it would retain all its Icelandic weather and stuff. Then Iceland would just be a short trip from Brisbane. How much would that rock?