We’ve had just on a week back at home in Wellington. We’ve both been recovering from colds caught overseas, as well as getting over jet lag and in my case, finishing off the requirements for Victoria University so my study in Siena will count towards my Graduate Diploma in Italian.

So, I submitted my essay last Wednesday and met with my lecturer on Thursday so that’s sorted. It all had to happen before 23 February – the end of the summer trimester so I squeaked in. Classes for 2019 start again next week so I’ve been making the most of this week to finish a couple of sewing projects, clear out and organise my quilting fabric, chose which project to work on next and just get sorted before much of my free time is taken up with study.

So here are a few final pictures from Amsterdam. We did a food tour in West Amsterdam on our final night, finding a few interesting bars and restaurants in this interesting neighbourhood well outside ‘tourist’ Amsterdam. Then it was the long flight home via Doha.

A relatively low impact day – John still has his cold (by now primarily a cough) and I think I’m getting it so neither of us was up for a big day, and it was a bit grey and uninspiring. Anyway, we checked out a few shops we remembered from our last stay, found a new and interesting area of local shops and cafes down towards the Hermitage museum, checked out the local antiques centre, and I did a bit more work on my essay for university. By evening it was clear so I took myself out to play with my camera again.

Today was a big walking day – a walking tour into the Jordaan and the area around our hotel, and the a trek down to the Amsterdam outpost of the St Petersburg Hermitage Museum.

Our hotel runs walking tours led by the former concierge around the Jordaan neighbourhood across the canal and in the ‘Nine Streets’ precinct around the hotel. So we did that this morning, learning a bit more about the origins of Amsterdam, the history of the Jordaan neighbourhood (where the workers who built the canals were housed), and finished with a cheese and chocolate tasting and an insight into how the hotel we are in (spread across 20 canal houses in two streets was created.

After a short break we trekked down to the Amsterdam Hermitage museum to see a temporary exhibit of objects on loan from St Petersburg HQ (thanks Vlad) and their permanent exhibit about Holland in its Golden Age. The various objects on in the temporary exhibit were varied – ranging from gothic religious objects, islamic tiles and objects, imperial Russian furniture and ceramics of various kinds (the tsars starting with Catherine the Great collected anything and everything!); the paintings were a bit less interesting – after all you don’t loan your star attractions! The Dutch exhibit was really well done and tied together a lot of paintings from the period by lesser known artists with commentary that explained Dutch society at the time.

John’s cold (which came on as we left Italy and dogged him all the way through Iceland) sapped his energy levels a bit today so we only ventured across the canal for dinner to a cosy bistro for dinner. Less busy day planned for tomorrow.

Early start yesterday – check-in was 5:40am for our flight to Amsterdam: needn’t have worried that we wouldn’t be able to get a cup of tea at the airport – everything was open and it was madness!

So we were in Amsterdam by around lunchtime, back at the same hotel we used last time so we know where we are and how to find things around town. A quiet afternoon tho: had a wander, found a spot for dinner, took the camera for a walk for some night photography. No snow here, but it’s still cool – but above 0C for the first time in a week or so.

We flew from Akureyri to Reykjavik early-ish this morning and then transferred to the Blue Lagoon for the day and overnight as it is near the international airport and we have a very early (5:30am) check-in tomorrow.

We spent a big chunk of the day at the Blue Lagoon – basically a big hot pool with facilities a 15 minute walk along an icy path from our hotel. Our package included entry, a drink, face masks (silica and algae), robes etc. It was busy as it’s one of the ‘things to do’ in Iceland. After a long soak we went back to our hotel and I soaked in a much less frenetic hot pool there.

Looking forward to wearing not quite so many layers of clothing in Amsterdam. Here are a few shots from around our hotel and the Blue Lagoon. Another very different landscape – lots of steam, ice and lava rock.

Today was our whale watching tour – spoiler alert: we didn’t see any.

It has snowed all day – alternating between heavy and light. Ironically the one break in the weather came as we got on the whale watching boat. We sailed almost to the end of the fjord where Akureyri is situated but alas the whales were shy. Through brief breaks in the weather saw some of the very snowy landscape. Living in some of the tiny villages we passed would be tough this time of year!

Towards the opening of the fjord onto the North Sea it got a bit rough – we were fine but some folk on the boat sat outside in the cold for a very long time trying to not be seasick.

So here are a few pictures from the trip down the fjord. Last night in Akureyri tonight – tomorrow morning we fly back to Reykjavik – and stay at the Blue Lagoon for a night before heading for Amsterdam.

Last post I think I said we weren’t optimistic that our Northern Lights tour would be successful. Thora, our chirpy local guide picked us up at 9:30 last night and headed east, through a long road tunnel into an adjacent valley. It was snowing – heavily. At times it was like watching sand blowing across the road as the powder was whipped by strong winds. Thora though, retained her optimism we would see the lights and after a couple of stops for her to call contacts to check on activity, we stopped and waited.

At against our expectations they appeared, and quite strongly. Not strong greens and pinks to the naked eye, but amorphous grey green waves, lines, streaks and blobs that move and spread across the sky, disperse and then fade.

So here are some very inexpert photos. Fiddling with my camera at -4C and in the wind proved a trial, but yes, we can say we definitely saw the Lights.

Today our tour to the geothermal area and Lake Myvatn has been cancelled – snow overnight has made driving unsafe. We will do a food tour in town instead. Perils of winter travel in this park of the world.

So, this morning we set off to go up the tower of the Hallgrimskirkja – it was the clearest day we’d had. Unfortunately it was closed for maintenance so we headed down to the waterfront again, to watch the morning light on the mountains across the bay. Then off to the airport for our flight to Akureyri. eventually we got here after an hour’s delay.

While it was sunny in Reykjavik after the stormy weather and snow of the last two days passed through, in Akureyri it has alternated between snowing slightly and snowing more heavily. The snow is thick on everything and at the moment there’s someone in a cherry-picker knocking snow off the roof of our hotel. Icicles are hanging off the buildings everywhere. We are supposed to be going on a Northern Lights tour in an hour (9:30pm). Not hopeful but it hasn’t been cancelled so 🤞.

So here’s some morning colour from Reykjavik and some snow in Akureyri.

So, we have spent the last couple of days seeing sights in Reykjavik. Yesterday was planned, but today due to bad weather (it wasn’t as bad as yesterday but still wasn’t good) our glacier walk and Northern Lights tour was cancelled so we had another day in town.

Yesterday was cold, but rain had started to melt the snow turning it into slush and ice patches. The wind though made things very unpleasant, and around the waterfront it was so strong we were nearly blown over.

Anyway, we still had a wander, visiting the Settlement Museum – a small museum built to house an archaeological excavation of the first known house in Reykjavik (more interesting than it sounds), the Harpa – the concert hall/conference centre on the waterfront, and the main shopping street which led to the Hallgrimskirkja, a large modern church. Oh, and there was some shopping along the way.

Today we visited the National Gallery, the Culture House (a small museum which did a great job turning a wide range of odd objects from the bigger national collections into something coherent and interesting), went for a walk on the waterfront and then back to Harpa to thaw out, and along the way saw more of the various sculptures in the little parks in the city, including the Sun Voyager , a very modern representation of a Viking longboat beside the water.

It was still icy in places, slushy, and windy – just not as much as yesterday. John wasn’t in as much danger from lumps of snow falling from steep pitched roofs today though – he narrowly missed a couple of direct hits yesterday: I promised I would dig him out but he wasn’t impressed!

Reykjavik is full of tourists – lots of chinese in particular, but also brits and americans. It is an easy place to be an english-speaking tourist as nearly everyone here learns it – alongside icelandic and either danish or norwegian. None of the ‘kiddies can’t manage multiple languages’ stuff here!

Anyway, here’s a bit more of Reykjavik than we necessarily wanted to see: tomorrow we head to Akureryi in the north of Iceland. Fingers crossed our tours there proceed. There will certainly be snow❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️

Big day of seeing sights yesterday: we were booked on a Golden Circle Tour – one of the big tourist routes in Iceland. As the sun doesn’t come up until 10am pickup was in our terms late – 11:30. And we arrived to find we were the only people on the tour – so for 12 hours there was just us and Harrold, our your Icelandic guide and driver.

So we set off for Pingvellir National Park – site of the first Icelandic Parliament and also an area geologically interesting as two continental tectonic plates meet. It was really cold but sunny, and snow blanketed absolutely everything. And on the way we passed the first of what would be a recurring event all day – cars that had slid on the road and wound up in snow banks. Best advice: don’t self drive in Iceland in winter!

Pingvellir was great – really cold as we did our walk from the visitor centre down to another area of the park and we had to adjust to walking on icey snow including on stairs. But it was beautiful and as we saw all day there were a surprising number of tourists.

After Pingvellir we were off to a ‘greenhouse village’ where we visited a tomato greenhouse for lunch. Sounds ho hum: actually best tomato soup ever; tried tomato beer, and got a bit of an insight into one of the many uses in Iceland of their hot water resource – growing veges. Icelanders are very proud of not having to import tomatoes, strawberries and sundry other veges as they use geothermally heated water for greenhouses.

Then we were off again to the impressive Gullfoss – Golden Waterfall. I don’t think my photos do it justice given the way the light was but it was amazing – bits of it frozen as well as really strong flowing water. Apparently they raft the river below in summer.

From Gullfoss we headed to the Haukadalur geothermal area which as some geysirs, including the sadly depleted original Geysir – which as become the generic name around the world.

From there we visited a dairy farm – again sounds a bit ho hum. This is a family business that has diversified into accommodation, a restaurant, fabulous icecream, and still produces the traditional product skyr (a very bland dry cheese – almost like a dry and crumbly ricotta but developed here as a way of preserving milk.

After dinner we were headed for a hot spa but instead went chasing and finding very faint Northern Lights. The photos actually show more colour than we saw. Conditions were not great but we saw them! Hoping for better conditions later in the trip🤞.

When the Northern Lights activity dimmed we headed back to the spa. It ‘s the furtherest we’ve ever had to walk in wet swimmers to actually get in a pool – and it was 4C. Prefer the japanese onsens we’ve visited but it was nice (eventually) sitting in a hot pool under very bright stars.

On the way back to Reykjavik we did hope for better Northern Lights but there was quite a bit of cloud so while we got a dull gray glow here and there it was a fizzer. Despite this lots of folk were out hoping, and we saw some enormous tour buses full of hopefull spotters. We arrived home about midnight, exhausted. And slept late this morning.