Moremixedstuffpicsblarant

After Mývatn and Sylvain's visit at the beginning of and mid-June, I went up North with Alice and her mum and aunt.

Mostly we stayed in the Westfjords and knitted with great glee and pleasure, all the more so as the weather was - let's face it- utterly revolting.

EXCEPT- and that's when we were lucky, on the night we decided to go and check out the midnight sun next to Hofsós.

Midday sun and fun, oh yeah!

Eiders chilling (there were seals also, but harder to photograph)

Yummy trout we fished with a net.

Well, in fact, it took 3 nets to get 4 trout, and only one of the nets belonged to the person we were with, the others belonged to some neighbours who couldn't be bothered to come and collect their one fish each, and so nicely gave them to us (so we had one each, yay!)

Anyway, it really got me thinking.. we're so lucky to have a broad range and multiplicity of food on offer; just think of the poor buggers who only had fish to eat or could only count on themselves/their skills to feed their entire family in the old days.

If you have, say 8 kids to feed and all you find in your fishing net on a cold morning is 1 fish, what dismay..

Always time to play for Emma..

J'ai nommé LE Midnight SunLeaving from Hofsós en route to the Westfjords, the car had a panic attack.

Or rather gave us one. At any rate, we had to wait for a couple of hours in the delightful carpark of Blönduos service station, whilst somebody was rooting through the engine and checking the brakes.

Once again I have to admire the flexibility and layed-backedness (I hate generalizing, but it's often so) of the people here.. somehow it's a bit like in South-America (Alice and her mum even say it's a little like Africa).. you sort of think things will never work out, but somehow, they always (mostly) (!) do.

This was Saturday afternoon at 5 you understand.

And had the nice man not promptly answered "yes no worries I'll be here in 10 minutes" when he was in fact off work, and consequently helped us fix the brakes, we would have been in deep sjit, and probably have visited Blönduos until Monday.

And it's not like in France or other countries where the automatic response to a simple question or demand is mostly greeted by a resounding "no" or "ah ben non, ca va pas être possible!"

+ at least, if it doesn't work, it always leaves space for hope, and that's half the job done.. :o)

Anyway. It also allowed us (at least Alice and I) to start developping our knitting skills on the said car park. Fun! (wait til I tell you about how I knitch-hiked back home!) :D

A pretty door, somewhere on Ísafjörður

A view from behind our orlofshús in Suðavík

Back in the "pretty-door village", somewhere else in the pits..

If there is another thing I really enjoy and love about this country, it's the randomness and practically constant presence of art in any form (and sometimes also quality, but let's hush on that one..)

Back in Reykjavík (a month later already.. WHAAAAAT???) I went cycling the other day and took a bunch of pics on the way.Around Gufunes, on the way to Grafavogur, on the outskirts of Reykjavík.. the cycling track goes through there, all the way to Mossfellsbær. It's really nice, and there are even trees, yay!!

In RVK
Again on the way to Grafavogur, from the bike path

On the way back from cycling, around 11pm, beautiful sundown as seen from Sæbraut.

Totally unrelated now: for a long while, I'd been thinking about shaving my head again..

Since I can't really do it yet because I have to look so beautifully corporate in order to do my job properly, I settled on having a normal haircut. So today at last I did.. got my first haircut since I shaved my head in Panama 2 years ago.

It has led me to spend a very narcissistic evening looking at hairy and less hairy pictures... :Þ

Here are just the before and after..

Above: this afternoon at 2.30

Under: this afternoon at 4. :D