behold the magic of eurovision

Maybe the first or second night we were in Reykjavik we were out walking and noticed that there were parties going on everywhere. We found a place to eat and noticed that the staff were all tied to the television in the next room, cheering along at some sort of international contest. That contest was the Eurovision song contest, which pits nations against each other in the ultimate battle - the battle of pop music.

Here's 2006's winner, from Finland, introducing the 2007 contest. I have a feeling Rod and Jess might already have this album.



Here's Iceland's 2009 entry, which came in second..



And here's the 2009 winner, from Norway. The contestant, Alexander Rybak, is kinda what you might get if you combined Ricky Martin with Mickey Mouse. And yes, he always makes those faces.



Anyway. Although Iceland came in second, we later witnessed more than one car driving around town with their Iceland flags out the window, honking and celebrating.

We plan to introduce the Amero-vision Song Contest (featuring a song from every state) later this year.

at the whale museum

as per your requests...

here's a link to something like 1600 iceland photos as taken by me, dave, and franey.

i almost forgot

i suppose this image might sum up quite a few things about iceland.

a thing: one day one we were trying to find a restaurant. instead of walking around the side of the building with the entrance, we walked (mistakenly) around the back, and into what appeared to be someones house. we didn't see a restaurant. we almost went upstairs, still looking, before we decided to try looking outside again.

later in a different city we attempted to visit a pizza place that looked to be closed from the outside. we tried the door. open. we walked up a flight of stairs into a pizza place that was not only closed, but probably closed for business. there was no one there. the door was unlocked.

the photo here is a baby carriage. it contains a real live baby. the parents of this baby are inside the cafe to the right, eating, and watching the baby through the window. we saw this happen more than once. in reyjkavik.

pretty rad, right?

that's over

here's a basics on iceland: the cities are sort of lame, and you create your own adventure. every day i'd see something that'd make me say "that's the best thing we've seen". we drove around the entire island, having only one really bad weather day. we experienced a few washed out roads. we got a land rover stuck in a snow bank miles from any sort of civilization. it smells like sulfr everywhere. the food is kinda crap. the beer is prohibitively expensive. the gasoline is too much money.

i was flying home on the connecting flight from boston, looking through my pictures on the laptop. i shut it off. the woman on the seat across the aisle said "where did you take those pictures?"

"iceland"

"are they for a calendar?"

"no..."

"you're shooting a movie?"

"no... it just looks like that everywhere"

i'd say the people are friendly, but we didn't do all that much interaction. it's a country as beautiful non-inhabited stretching wasteland. it actually looks better in motion pictures than it does in still. it's neither under nor overwhelming. it's whelming. my expected scale of things was all out of wack, it was everything i expected and more and less. it's a check on a list i've exhausted again.

lastly, this trip was something i don't think i'd ever had thought i'd do maybe even 10 years ago. the only way these things get done is for me to say i'll do them, book a flight, and just go. and i'm fortunate enough that that can happen. maybe not in the most financially smart sort of way, but they can happen. and for this i am thankful to everyone who ever helped shape anything i ever was, am or will be.

internet sucks here, i'm done posting pics

more when i get home, probably.

 
as is the case so far, it wasn't long until a busload of germans showed up.

actually, it's so amazingly uncrowded here that you get spoiled, and if you don't have entire geographic features to yourself, you start to get grumpy about it.

which is totally stupid.

top

 

so this is after we climbed up. that was... tuesday? wednesday? we started at the cave in the crevace, climbed this thing...

this is before we hiked up

this is what you'd call a crater caused by vocanic activity.

of course there's a better name and explanation but i'm blanking right now.

everything has a name here, and i can't pronounce any of them

so this is a bit later

nevermind, the internet is not cooperating..

we're in the lake myvattan area now, and there's all these thermal features going on - the latest volcanic activity was in 1984. this photo is me sitting in a cave created by a split in the earth. there's a crevace and some water and... anyway, you can't see any of that. dave and i are taking turns photographing each other. franey gets to be in the most pictures because he's always running ahead and not taking as many pics... that's the benefit of not carrying around a dslr, i guess.

godifloss

 

anyway. so dave, franey, and i are in iceland. this picture is of godifloss, which is not actually iceland's largest waterfall... we tried to visit that one and the road was out. and the other road there was also out.

that was two... wait maybe four days ago? there's a lot to see here.

that smile on my face? that's me thinking "holy crap we're in iceland"

i have a suspicion that i won't really realize until we've left.