Musing about family travel on the train to Bergen, by Alissa

It’s week 6 of our 8 week sojourn, and we’ve become Travellers. It's amazing, that being my overused, highly abused adjective to describe most of my time during the past several weeks. Cedar and Max are sturdy little backpackers, as we quasi-improvise our way thru Iceland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and the Orkney Islands. Cedar straps on her Hello Kitty pack and stares out resolutely on the bus platform, holding out a hand to hold and asking, “Are we going to our new home now?” Max dives into a new book and reads us passages from Roald Dahl while we ooh and aah at scenery speeding past us that looks like the Pacific northwest on steroids. A brass band in uniform awaits us at the Oslo train station, strikes up marching music as we pass them at 8 in the morning, while railroad employees hand out free chocolate and coffee. Of course. But what is going on?! Ah, the station has reopened for the first time in 6 weeks. A fellow traveler overhearing me explaining this to Andrew, quips, “They’re doing it for YOU!” Just another day of travel, Drury-Schwartz style.

In a bout of early morning insomnia brought on by Cedar peeing in her sleeping bag, I began to think about the challenges and serendipities that come with extended, semi-improvised family backpacking. Here’s my list: (Note to my Mom: It reminds me of the time Dad kept a list of my complaints when we first arrived in Israel for our sabbatical in 1986!)

Challenges:

1.      Spending more money than we’d like to. Things come up. ‘Nuff said.

2.      Orienting ourselves to a new place every 3-7 days: municipal transportation systems, currency exchanges, city layouts.

3.      Abandoning any sense whatsoever of sticking to routines that help our kids behave in a sane manner: naps, bedtimes, meals, etc.

4.      Days with little or no social connection with other people.  

5.      Trying to still our loud, spirited children on busses and trains, in museums, in the grocery stores, you name it.

6.      Being in semi-public view while staying in friends’ homes: dealing with tantrums, bedwetting, and bedtimes. 

7.      Running out of hair conditioner. Seriously. My hair feels so dry, and my scalp really itches. Why don’t I just buy some damn conditioner?!

8.      Trying to find toothpaste your kids will like. (This makes me feel like an Ugly American to even admit, but before the trip, my biggest fear was what I would do when we ran out of the kids’ toothpaste. My fears have come to fruition, and we are now on the prowl for Max-and-Cedar friendly dental hygiene products! I don’t think the kids have used toothpaste in a week.)

9.      Having less control over our physical needs than we usually do: food, sleep, exercise. Toothpaste, obviously.

10.  Being with our kids 24/7. See #4. We’re our kids’ playmates. A LOT of the time.

11.  Watching the kids bicker. I can’t complain though. Until they spent 24/7 time together for weeks on end, in close quarters, they had no history of fighting. Really.

Serendipities:

1.      Open-faced sandwiches. Good stuff on bread or crackers. ‘Nuff said.

2.      Unplanned, serendipitous connections with people. Bo and Marianne in Copenhagan.  Hans and Ingelise in Toftland. Niels and Kristin (of the witchy coven of musicians’ wives!) in Sundeborg. Alexandra and Tommy in Varberg. Anders and Anna-Kirin in Varberg (and their son Oscar, who Max may well visit next summer!) Nema and Simon in Kongalv. Audun and Jugud in Oslo. Etc.!

3.      Watching our kids find ways to amuse each other.

4.      Reading Max’s sci-fi book after he’s through with it; Max frequently checking in with me to see if I have any questions about what I’m reading. Doing math with Max on busses, trains, and ferries. Developing team-building activities together: Solid Fire Consulting and Son!

5.      Holding Cedar real, real close. Staring at her freckled nose and making her day by pretending she’s the baby bird and I’m the mama cow. Here’s a poem I wrote about my lovely girl a few days ago:

She eats a peach

with determined concentration

Naked, on the Swedish porch.

Juice runs down her chin, into the recess of her chest,

over her belly,

Tracing her leggy 4 year old curves.

She is part antelope and part Coppertone girl,

a volcano child with shiny, piercing eyes.

OK, that last line doesn’t really work with the rest of the poem, but she IS a volcano child!

6.      Going to the Bygdoy beach in Oslo after a day at the open-air Norsk Folkemuseum and Viking Ships museum. Two places Andrew and I loved so much from our travels 20 years ago. The beach is unexpected, however, and is all light and waves and rocks.

7.      Tromping around the Sagnlandet Lejre living museum. So many sensual details: salmon cooking on wood planks over a smoky fire, heavy woolen clothing, rolling green fields, iron-smithing, whittling.

8.      The vast moonscape of Iceland.

9.      Riding bikes in Copenhagen. Alongside everyone else in the city. So safe, so relaxing, so expansive. A totally different approach to city life.

10.  After a 20-plus year wait, finally getting to amble around Christiania, a quasi-free “state” in Copenhagen. Sure I only got a tourist’s brief glance, but I found it deeply inspiring and exciting. I wish we could all live more like this.

11.  Discovering that the dining car on the Oslo-Bergen train is EMPTY and lounging about on the padded seats, writing, and eating skillingsboller (cinnamon-cardamom rolls).

12.  Being unequivocally welcomed into friends’ homes, many of whom we had never met prior to our trip.

13.  Doing work as I travel. It’s satisfying and balancing and provides unquestionable justification for taking time for myself!

14.  Being a family together 24/7 without any exterior rhythms imposed upon us. Creating our own travel culture together.

I’m starting to develop a line of thinking that has been bouncing around in my non-verbal reptilian core the last few weeks.  Travelling for this long makes me feel a little bit like a sleepwalker. The word "somnambulist" keeps popping into my head. I think it's because I'm experiencing time, my body, my family, and my career in a different, slower way than I usually do with the usual daily grind back in Brooklyn of getting up too early, getting the kids and myself ready for the day, running them to school, working, dealing with pick-ups and afterschool activities, making dinner, playing together and taking care of household chores, getting the kids to bed, finding some time for myself and with Andrew, going to bed, and beginning again in the morning.

I don't think I'm sleepwalking at all, actually. I think I'm decompressing from a busy New York City professional mama life, and I LOVE it. The decompression and the life I’ve put a temporary pause to. Now I think I know what the most significant souvenir of the trip will be for me! 

Pannekoken Throughout Scandinavia, by Max

Apple Pannekoken created in Sonderborg, Denmark

Pannekoken is a dish that I learned to make in New York. It is like a very eggy pancake, also it is much thicker than the regular pancake. You can modify it for breakfast, dinner, lunch, lots of things.

Smoked mackerel pannekoken in Varberg, Sweden

Here is the recipe to serve 4:
4 eggs
¾ cup flour
¾ cup milk
1 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons butter

0.      Preheat oven to 400⁰ F (184⁰ C).

1.      Melt the butter.

2.      Whisk the eggs.

3.      Put the eggs and everything in a pot to stir.

4.      Butter a pan.

5.      Put the mixture (now in pan) into oven for 18 min.

6.      Eat.

P.S. I usually put nutmeg and cinnamon on top of it. I also sometimes put in apple or smoked fish. Also, eat with breakfast:

a.      Brown sugar

b.      Cinnamon sugar

c.       Syrup

d.     Jelly

The Scandinavia part means that I’m making it in every country we go to. So far that means:

ü  Iceland

ü  Denmark

ü  Sweden*

*Two times.

Apple pannekoken in Kongalv, Sweden

The chef himself!

This is my bliss, by Alissa

20 years ago it was a poppy field in Ystad, Sweden...

This summer, it's a wheatfield on the island of 
Kegnaes in Denmark...

This time, Andrew and I come with exquisite company!

Including Maximillian Viking Drury,
whose middle name was inspired by a young boy in Sweden
20 years ago.

I love my viking.

For my brother, by Alissa

Why's this post for my bro?

'Cuz Als is my bro!

Als is the island we've been staying on. They sell award-winning sausages there!

We leave Als tomorrow!

Danish Lamp Porn, by Alissa

From our friends' house in Toftlund.
They couldn't believe I  was so captivated by their  banal household items.

Look what you can do with folded planes! From our friends' house in Sonderborg

Darth Vader meets Danish winters! Also from Sonderborg.
 (No need to turn on until 10 PM in the summers!)

2nd Day in Jylland, by Max

July 17, Toftlund & Rǿmǿ

This was the second day at Inge-Lise and Hans’ house.  We started the day with rolls and jelly.   It was delicious.  Then we (me and Cedar) played with Nemo, the world’s greatest soccer playing dog!  Then we went on a walk to the great playground.  This was a playground with swings, slides, rock climbing, balancing truck tires, spinny things, a zip line, and a mini-rope course. We could have spent hours there, but we had places to go to. 

So we went back and started driving and we noticed these houses had roofs made out of layers and layers of brown, dried leaves.  It looked almost  like fur.  After a while, the car we were following pulled over and we were almost sure it would be a random dude who would ask why we were following him.  But much to our relief it was Hans, and he told us that we were at the historic house of the sea captain.  In the first room was a giant whale skeleton, of a sperm whale.  We saw that it had lots of teeth, and giant hands.

When we went in we first saw a hall with a rock floor and lots of wood stalls, the kind used for farm animals, but instead of animals in them there were plows, and in one there was a giant ladder for chickens to go up.  Most of the rooms contained furniture, like beautiful tables, or these great beds in the wall. To get to them it looks like you open a cupboard but inside is a bed! 

Also they had a small closed off room that Cedar loved, it just had a bed, a table, and a teapot.  The teapot had an interesting spout, it curved down and back up, and Cedar just stood there saying “A beautiful elephant teapot!”

The whole inside of the house was covered by blue and white hand painted tiles. 

 A long time ago Hans bought one of these tiles for Inge-Lise and it cost around 500 kr! (more than $80)  Also there was a room with very beautiful pottery, big vases made out of nice brown clay in a kind of jug style, just like the ones my uncle used to make. 

Also there was a room full of a really big chest, and little eating utensils. 

When we left we walked over to a tiny little building that we were told was the first school made when the law for “all people to have an education starting at age 6” was made.  All it had was 2 rooms, one small one for the teacher’s bed, and one bigger one made up of a long scratched up table, and a wood easel. 

Then we left to (we were told) go to a “little” playground.  We drove a bit and then we stopped at a truck stop, my mom looked around and immediately said “we are so getting the grandchild treatment.”  About a hundred feet away was about 13 blown up houses, to jump on and with obstacle courses, etc… 

there was also a bungee jump on a trampoline, and floating plastic bubbles on water. 

At first we thought buying tickets at the blown up places would pay for it all so Cedar and I both got tickets for that, but then I learned you had to buy the tickets separately so for me we got our money back and I went to the bungee jump.  When I got there I stepped on the trampoline and got strapped in and then hoisted up about 15 ft. and then it dropped me.  I was so fun, you would be in the air for 5 seconds!  When I was up there it felt like you could see for miles.

Also,  I could see Cedar going up stairs to a slide, and then sliding down the stairs. 

When I was done with that I went in the bubbles, they were my favorite thing there.  You would say you wanted to go in and so they’d pull one over and open it, then you would go in while it was deflated, and they would inflate it while you were still in it, you would stand up and not be able to touch the ceiling and suddenly they would push you off.  Once you were there you were always trying to stand up and run, the best I could get was 5 steps.  But the most fun was the falling, one second you would be in a position with heels over head, and it felt so good to fall, it felt like falling on plastic on top of jello!  But it felt like a green house in there!  So hot that you actually after a while want to come out!  So I went out and I walked over to where Cedar was and I saw Inge-Lise waiting for me with a slushie!  (Krap—see first day in Iceland). 

I stayed there drinking slushie, and eating scones.  I watched Cedar play a bit, and then she wanted to ride a pony.  When we got to the pony riding we learned that the parent led the pony around, so Cedar got on, and my mom led the pony around a third of the way and asked Cedar how she liked it, Cedar said it was great.  Two steps later Cedar was crying and forced my mom to carry her the rest of the way.  Then Cedar wanted to go in the bubbles with me, so we walked over there and Cedar said “actually, no.”  And she walked away when I went in for the second time. The man controlling it walked away, so my mom yanked me around, it was really fun, then we left. 

We got into the car to go to the beach.  When we got there we learned that here you’d drive to where you want to be, so the sand was as hard as pavement.  Immediately we saw kites, so we walked in that direction and saw kite surfers. 

Some people were going really fast, like 20-30 mph fast!  There was one person in particular who would turn around by jumping up 5 ft and angling her kite differently!  Then we got cold and had to leave. 

When we got back we had dinner and then a dessert of a red berry (cherry + strawberry + raspberry) porridge called Rødgrød med Fløde then we went to another room to have coffee and candy.

First Three Days in Copenhagen, by Alissa

After a week of travelling through the vast, rugged landscapes of Iceland and having only ourselves to talk to, we GORGED ourselves on social engagement in Copenhagen. Andrew played at the Jazz Festival, Max and Cedar quickly made friends at the first playground we encountered, we spent a good chunk of a day getting to know the folks who have graciously offered their home to us this week, feasted with more new friends, and spent Thursday with Brooklyn friends who are in Denmark, as well!  

Perhaps Andrew will write about the Jazz Festival. His gig was very late, so Cedar, Max, and I stayed home and contented ourselves with watching Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. We’re staying at the home of Bo Kruger, who I met through online professional networking I did prior to our trip. When Bo realized his family would be on vacation during our time in Copenhagen, he generously offered us the use of their home.

Yesterday, we had the great fortune of being able to spend some time with Bo and his family, before they took off. Bo and his wife Marianne Boye have a company called Moving Minds (www.movingminds.dk). They use many different kinds of interactive and improvisational techniques in meeting facilitation and training.  Bo has also written a couple of books about facilitation that make use of his Indiana Jones alter ego (www.kontoretsindianajones.dk). Thus, the entire Indie cinematic collection that Max is hoping to work his way through before the week is over!  
Max had a great time playing foosball with their 9 year old son, while their 12 year old daughter shepherded Cedar around and was greatly amused by her antics. Bo and I crammed in conversations about positive psychology, improvisation, and evaluation during any minute we weren’t needed by any of the four children!

Later that evening, we visited the home of Julie and Arne. Julie is a long-time friend of musician Jason Huang, and she hosted a beautiful traditional Danish summer dinner for us and about a half-dozen other friends.  We feasted on salmon, potatoes, peas-in-the-pod, and Rødgrød med Fløde, a strawberry and rhubarb pudding that is so difficult for outsiders to pronounce that it has become a favorite Danish pastime to ask foreigners to twist their tongues in their unsuccessful attempts. Julie and Arne’s son once travelled to England with another Danish kid for a soccer match and proceeded to have a hilarious time getting as many of the couple of hundred English kids they were hanging out with to contort their tongues around the impossible dish! Despite its inpronuncability and Julie’s insistence that her version didn’t have the right texture, I found Rødgrød med Fløde to be quite delicious.  

Hopefully Andrew will include a post detailing the many stories we heard from Julie and Arne’s friend Charlotte, whose husband was the founder of Copenhagen’s Montmartre Jazz Club in the 60’s. Wild, amazing stories of travelling the world with their 6 children, introducing new cousine to provincial Denmark (Italian pizza, French bread!), and generally approaching life with a deep sense of glee and adventure. Super inspiring.

We got home around midnight, stumbled into bed, and woke up early this morning for an outing to Sagnlandet Lejre (www.sagnlandetlejre.dk), a living museum and research center that has several “villages” illustrating life from the stone age, iron age, Viking times, and 19^th century. There, we met up with our Brooklyn friend Charlotte and her children, as well as Charlotte’s sister and children. Cedar was super excited to spend time with Charlotte’s daughter, who she knows from pre-school. Six children and four adults tromped all over, checking out blacksmithing, wool dying, traditional cooking techniques, wood carving, and many other crafts and skills. It was a feast for the senses.

Stone age hut

Cedar and I paddling away in a dug out stone age canoe

We interacted with both experts and ordinary families, on holiday in a most unusual and --especially from Max’s perspective-- entirely enviable manner. Families can sign up to live in one of the villages for a week, dressing, playing, and working in accord. Children run around barefoot in rough homespun clothing, while their parents cook and tend to daily needs. The center is open to the public for about 6 hours a day, but the families continue living in the past during the other hours as well. Max is now seriously envisioning our next vacation where he’ll get to hunt wild boar with his friends. Super fun!

The landscape was quite moving, too: rolling hills of new, green grain blowing in the soft wind, ocean-like in its wave action; forests of oak and scrub; cute little wild boar piglets (boarlets?) rooting around in the mud. 

Good times and we haven’t seen a lick of Copenhagen in three days! Tomorrow we’ll take it easy and do a little exploring.

First day in Copenhagen, by Max

July 10

After waking up and having a very nice breakfast of yoghurt (spelled joghurt), we got out of the house and found a good street to walk along.

Last night we had a tough time finding the right house (and the right street). Here’s the story: After getting off the plane we got on the Metro to get to the stop. With the Metro you can’t fall into the rails because of a plexiglass shield, just like an Air Train. The ride was incredibly smooth so it went by fastly, when we got off we saw our first view of Kǿbenhavn (Copenhagen). The first thing we saw were bikes, the station was surrounded by bikes, bicycles, vespas, tricycles, etc. There were so many bikes, they even had to put them on elevators like cars. Once we got away from the bikes we saw all the sidewalks lined by bikes, and LOTS of people on bikes.

Now that we’ve seen the bikes we need to see our house so we looked at our instructions: Langenlandsveg, Frederiksberg. We were in Frederiksberg so now we had to find Langenlandsveg.

The troublesome part was, we couldn’t pronounce it, but luckily we had it written down, but unluckily nobody knew where it was. But luckily, we found 4 men in an outside bar who were happy to help us. We asked “Do you know where Langenlandsveg (pronounced “langilansvey”) is?” And they looked at each other asking about it, and they didn’t have an answer, so we showed it to them on the instructions, and they said, “Oh, you mean Langelandsveg (pronounced lenglansvey). Let’s see.” So they searched on their phone and found it, they showed us how to get there and so we were about to leave, but then we remembered to say “Tusen Tak” (thousand thanks). And as a last thing they said they had just gotten their Bachelor degrees in philosophy! (yay). But then we left.

We found the house, got the keys, went into the apartment and looked around. At the table there was a note from the girl whose room I was staying in, in perfect English, saying that I could use any games, including the tons of Wii games they have (Tusen Tak). (Now there is an actual 3 hrs of night time.)

When we woke up we had a light breakfast and started walking on a street bound for the city center. On the way I ordered in Danish three chocolate buns for us to munch on. We learned that in Kǿbenhavn, restaurants are only open for dinner. By the time we wanted lunch we were pretty far from our house and right next to “Shawarma Huset” (the Shawarma House), so we had shawarma. Me, mom, and dad had shawarma wraps, and Cedar had a pig in a blanket the size of a hot dog.

Lopsided mary go round, all 4 people

Kept on walking (always seeing bikes), and we found a very nice little playground with a lot of the same ideas as in New York, a lopsided mary go round, a steel ball to spin on, and of course swings. There were also lopsided cups to sit and spin in and made me nauseous. I spent most of my time with a 9 year old from Texas on the lopsided mary go round. We were always running up hill on it so that it would spin, we would see how long we could keep at it until someone fell off. Later, two more kids joined us and there was a lot more falling. The kid from Texas was leaving tomorrow and he had a soccer ball that he didn’t want to take back so he offered it to me. Of course I said yes, so we went over to his house and saw that a grass field was in his back yard to play on. It was very fun, he was really good, but we had to leave.

Lopsided cup that made me nauseous

July 6 by Andrew

July 6, Reykjavik

Today we drove the “Golden Circle” tour--a drive east toward the inland valleys and mountains from Reykjavik beginning with Pingvellir.  Pingvellir was the location of Iceland’s first government circa 900 or 1000.  Actually I don’t know how to type the first letter in the word “Pingvellir”.  It looks a bit like a capital “P”, but it isn’t.  Actually if you combine a lower case “p” and “b” you’d have it.  Also I learned that the “P” letter is pronounced like a “th”.  “-vellir” seems to be pronounced something like “vit,” crunched down to one syllable but I didn’t hear it enough to get a fix on it.

Mercifully for speakers of English the second stopping point on the Golden Circle is Geysir and is pronounced, and in fact features a…“geyser."  Gulfoss is an amazing waterfall and is stop #3.  We skipped #4, Skahalt, a church or religious site of some sort.  It was a long day in the car, and a bit crazy making and tiring, but we saw some amazing stuff and had a good time.

Pingvellir is located an hour’s drive up a windswept, misty mountain valley where the European and American tectonic plates are pulling away from each other at a rate of 2cm per year.   The site has many “rifts” or cracks in the rock covering the ground. 

We arrived at the visitor center and found little historical information within easy reach so we looked quickly at the geological rift and, also being overwhelmed by small black flies, cut our losses and left.  Cedar was pretty antsy so it didn’t seem that an historic site (with swarms of annoying flies) was going to be our thing.

Driving away we couldn’t find a picnic place in two stops (Cedar was convinced  the same group of flies liked us and were following us) so we drove the full 30km to Geysir.  As we rounded a bend in the road we saw a big geyser spurt in the distance looking exactly as one would picture it.  It was pretty amazing to see such a thing.  I realized the only other geyser I’ve ever seen is Old Faithful, 20 years ago or so, so this was pretty special.

We parked at the visitor center and picnicked on a bench—some kind of Kaviar (fish paste of some kind but since the label is in Icelandic I don’t really know what it contains), an Icelandic cream cheese spread, on sliced dark rye bread or rye crisp.  While we ate the geyser erupted a couple hundred yards away about every 5 minutes, sometimes tall, sometimes small.   A tour bus driver in his 70s talked with us for a few minutes—I think he liked seeing people there who weren’t on a tour bus, a family picnicking old style on one of the few benches around—and told us he used to be a lighthouse keeper on one of the Westman Islands!  Now he was driving a busload of French tourists around Iceland before they would go to the North Pole.

After lunch we crossed the highway to walk a brick path next to a stream that we were warned not to touch since its temperature ranged from 80 to 100 degrees C!  I didn’t believe the temperature could really be quite that hot—it’s volume was very small and the stream ran over several hundred yards of dirt so how could it retain that much heat?  I didn’t test it though, nor did I voice my skepticism to my four year old. 

Given this potentially dangerous feature it was very interesting to me (coming from the litigious, fear mongering, hyper protective USA) that the path abutted the stream for the entirety of its length (the path’s bricks actually formed the stream’s bank at one point).  The only barrier between the stream and path was the smallest of ropes running about a foot off the ground and small signs staked into the dirt every 30 feet or so to remind people of the temperature of the water.

Across the stream all along the path were dozens of steaming holes, each with its own character, personality, and voice.   They were mostly hidden from our view too (it would be cool if there were some platforms built around there so people could get up a bit to get a better view.)  In some one could easily see a constant, gushing of boiling hot water, others were just steam.  It sounded like an overheated Brooklyn apartment in January—radiators venting off steam, pots of water boiling in the kitchen, hot bathtub filling up. 

This was all the warm up act though--at the upper end of this steamscape lay the two main attractions: the geysers Geysir and Strokker.   For some decades since an earthquake Geysir rarely erupts.  Skukkol on the other hand, while smaller, erupts every 5 minutes or so.  A large, international crowd was gathered around a rope circling Strokker, and we joined in.

Everyone’s attention was fixed on a pool of water about 6-10 feet in diameter inside a much wider concentric basin.  The water in the central pool sat still for several seconds (maybe 20 or 30 max) and then its level would suddenly rise a foot or two, spill out to the surrounding basin, and then recede back into itself, waters rushing back in from the basin.  It seemed like a living thing.  We decided the geyser was “breathing,” so regular were these changes in water level.

After what seemed like a very long time, the first time anyway, suddenly one of these changes of water level quickly far out measured its predecessors.  The breath rose magically it seemed, into a sunlit, translucent turquoise dome of water.  It seemed to hold it shape for a second, perfectly round, glassily smooth, and symmetrical—impossibly six feet tall and eight or ten feet wide…and then KA-POW!!!  All of its energy discharged straight upwards into the sky in a violent hissing explosion of frothy boiling water and mist maybe 100 feet high.  It was tremendously exciting, a pretty incredible spectacle--and quite startling, even scary, the first time.  We were standing a mere 25 feet from the epicenter yet the water in that dome contained a lot of heat and a lot of mass—it had to be well over 1,000 gallons--and it exploded so violently so fast and at a scale so much larger than us.  It was a little too awesome for comfort.  But the force of the geyser directed all of its energy straight up into the sky in a column, and remarkably thanks also to the wind direction, we didn’t even get the least bit moistened or inconvenienced by spray.

After seeing this one we stayed for at least 10 more rounds.  There seemed to be a pattern of a large tall eruption, followed by a “baby” eruption which was almost just a large fizzling gusher.  I was video taping one of these baby ones and caught Max’s very disappointed reaction: “Awww, THAT was TERRIBLE!” But before long we were treated to a double eruption—one big one followed by another before the first had completely ended.  It was magnificent.  We gorged on geyser eruptions and once full, with no sign that they would ever stop, we pulled ourselves away and headed on to our next destination, Gulfoss.

Not before stopping in the gift shop at the visitor center though.  It was full of beautiful Icelandic wool goods—sweaters, ponchos, hats, mittens.  All of them looked amazing.  There were lots of other things too, from snow globes to stuffed animals, to woolen clothes by Pendleton.   I had given Max a 1000 Icelandic kroner bill the day before and he decided he wanted to spend it on a leather wallet here.  Cedar became very attached to a baby lamb—a 6 inch stuffed lamb with very soft wool—and seeing how attached she was, and  how Max was coming away with loot, I told her she could have it.  So now she has a baby lamb for the Polar Bear she brought from Brooklyn.

10km up the road from Geysir we found another visitor center with tour busses and crowds.  Getting out of the car Alissa took in the view over the treeless plains to some mountains lurking 20 miles distant and remarked, “that looks like those mountains are covered in ice!”  “That’s exactly what’s going on,” I said. “It’s a glacier.”  We all checked out the glacier.  Even parking lots in Iceland are awe inspiring.

Purposefully avoiding the visitor center, we found a path and walked down 100+ steps (Max counted 111 steps after I asked him if he thought there were more than the 82 steps at the 4^th Ave & 9^th St subway stop in Brooklyn), and followed another path to a huge waterfall.  The waterfall’s edge broke at a 45 degree angle to the river that fed it, flowed flat for a few hundred yards or so, then broke on the opposite 45 degree angle into a very deep,  very narrow rift that led off to the south at 90 degrees .  The odd path of the river and the angles of the break of the falls, combined with the large amount of water flow, made this another awesome spectacle.  Gulfoss alone would have been well worth a day’s drive.

 

It was also a parental blood-pressure-raiser.  There was no fence or barrier on the rocks at the end of the pedestrian path of the upper falls, and what there was on the other parts could easily have been avoided by any enterprising 4 year old or anyone else who was excited, disoriented, drunk, or otherwise out of their wits.  And Cedar was at this point in the day, very well wound up which is to say excited, unfocused, and needing to let off her own steam.  But even Cedar in this state was no match for Alissa and I—we were a bit stronger in our admonition to hold our hands at all times.  It was a bit of a nightmare being there, and beautiful and spectacular as it was our fierce animal instincts toward survival and protection of the young were much relieved as we headed back up the path toward the parking lots.

On the way home we passed an unusual playground we had noticed on the way to Geysir, and Alissa suggested stopping.  It was located in a campground but we weren’t charged to drive in and play there for over an hour.  It still wasn’t obvious how to get to the playground though.  We went as far as we could on the road, parked and then walked across 50 yards of grass to get to a less well kempt area where the playground was relegated more or less in a state of benign neglect. 

Really, we discovered though, this was a playground for teens and adults, more a ropes course kind of thing than a playground.  It was designed in a circle about 70’ in diameter so that one had to try to travel around the circle without ever touching the ground by balancing and navigating over and through logs, tires, ropes, and chains.  Most of it was way beyond our general strength, balance, and abilities but it was a lot of fun trying.  My big, proud accomplishment was to successfully walk the length of a 30’+ log, 12” in diameter, that was suspended on each end18” above the ground so it could spin along its axis.  The spinning and the swing of the log made it very difficult to be able to make more than a few steps.  Then Max speculated that maybe it would be easier if one went fast on it and he went halfway across.  I then made it the whole way, to my amazement, and was also amazed at how my son thought of something that hadn’t occurred to me, and that it effected such different results.

In the middle of the circle were some tire swings.  This is where Cedar spent a lot of her time. Everything was hand fashioned from logs, lashed together with ropes.  The place had so much character and was clearly the devising of someone who was quite inspired and who had time and materials, and who had access to tools and some heavy machinery.  We stopped for ice cream at the nearby gas station and then made the beautiful drive through mostly vacant valleys back to Reykjavik.