A parting shot from our room in Glasgow

We left our apart-stay at our planned time of 10:00 am. We decided to have one last Scottish adventure and take the airport bus (instead of a cab, like the way into town).  We noticed the airport bus stops right across the street every 15 mins.

We only had to wait a few mins before it arrived and we “jumped” on as much as one can dragging luggage behind.  We wound our way around the city. As you may remember, we wrote about the low emissions zone and streets closed off for pedestrians, so it was a circuitous route until we hit the M-way, as they say, and arrived at the airport in no time at all.

We found our way to check-in, dropped off the bags, and headed for security scanning. For our last few trips heading homewards, I have been flagged for special scrutiny. It appears it has to do with all the cables and electronics in my carry on. This time was no different. After getting my stuff back, we headed to our gate and waited to board the plane.

The egg sculpture at Keflavik Airport

 

It’s a short 2 hour hop from Glasgow to Reyjavik. They’re telling us there is a rain snow mix with temps around 30. Paul is trying to catch some zzz’s while I got this post started.

We’re going to have a car in Iceland so we can get out and about a bit. Paul hopes to get us out on the western peninsula in the evenings to try to catch some aurora action. In all the times we’ve visited, we’ve never seen it here. Fingers crossed for some clear skies.

 

Hallgrimskirkja Cathedral is the first stop on the light trail. This one is called “Melting Ice” and the light pattern movement continually changes.

While we’re here there is a special Winter Lights Festival going on.  In pagan times, folks noticed the days getting longer and the villages would light fires to help guide the sun back. Also lambing season started, in some places life was starting to emerge in sheltered places. Basically, a time of hope that the worse of the season was behind them. This is also St. Bridgets Day and in the modern Catholic church it’s Candlemas.

After we got settled into our hotel room, we went to find a dinner spot and after it we wandered around and started to notice interesting light features.  Most notable was the city’s large church.  Sure enough, we has stumbled upon a Light Trail!  Each location had a marker with the name of the light art. 

 

Paul discovered that the Mayor of the city, one Einar Þorsteinsson, was going to give a bit of a speech and officially open the light show.  So we headed down the street to the official opening ceremony. There were lots of people standing around so we figured we were in the right place.  Some uniformed people started to appear with instruments in tow and before you knew it a band was congregated in front of the building.  After a bit of organizing the band played some tunes before the Mayor’s speech.

The band playing for the crowd.

The Mayor speechifying. The Mayor is clickable if you want a better look at him.

How to spot a true Icelandic person in the crowd. This is not clickable since I am pretty sure you know what cold wet feet look like.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As we were leaving our evening restaurant, we saw this scene across the street.  I hadn’t seen anything like that happening since I was a kid growing up in Central New York State.  In case you can’t guess what’s going on there, the gent is removing the snow off the roof.  He put out safety cones, but most by-passers weren’t really paying much attention to him.  After we stopped to catch a photo, others did, too.  Not sure if they were having a childhood reminiscence like I was, or were just in the habit of taking photos whenever they see others doing so.

Snow being cleared from the roof

 

More exploring tomorrow morning, I am not sure I’ve mentioned that Reykjavik also is notable for their street art.  I have a nice collection started already from previous visits. But, I can see that many new murals have been created.  ln the late afternoon tomorrow, we have scheduled a food walking tour around the city. We’ll report back on how that goes.

First mural near our hotel, the whole building was covered.