{"id":2693,"date":"2024-02-02T03:29:32","date_gmt":"2024-02-02T08:29:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/debbiewebbie.net\/blog\/?p=2693"},"modified":"2024-02-02T04:05:30","modified_gmt":"2024-02-02T09:05:30","slug":"day-16-thur-good-bye-scotland-hello-iceland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/debbiewebbie.net\/blog\/?p=2693","title":{"rendered":"Day 16, Goodbye Scotland, Hello Iceland"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A parting shot from our room in Glasgow<\/p><\/div>\n

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). \u00a0We noticed the airport bus stops right across the street every 15 mins. <\/span><\/p>\n

We only had to wait a few mins before it arrived and we \u201cjumped\u201d on as much as one can dragging luggage behind.\u00a0 <\/span>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. <\/span><\/p>\n

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. <\/span><\/p>\n

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The egg sculpture at Keflavik Airport<\/p><\/div>\n

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It\u2019s a short 2 hour hop from Glasgow to Reyjavik. They\u2019re telling us there is a rain snow mix with temps around 30. Paul is trying to catch some zzz\u2019s while I got this post started. <\/span><\/p>\n

We\u2019re 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\u2019ve visited, we\u2019ve never seen it here. Fingers crossed for some clear skies.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Hallgrimskirkja Cathedral is the first stop on the light trail. This one is called \u201cMelting Ice\u201d and the light pattern movement continually changes.<\/p><\/div>\n

While we\u2019re here there is a special Winter Lights Festival going on.\u00a0 <\/span>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\u2019s Candlemas. <\/span><\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 <\/span>Most notable was the city\u2019s large church.\u00a0 Sure enough, we has stumbled upon <\/span>a Light Trail!\u00a0 <\/span>Each location had a marker with the name of the light art.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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Paul discovered that the Mayor of the city, one Einar \u00deorsteinsson, was going to give a bit of a speech and officially open the light show.\u00a0 <\/span>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.\u00a0 <\/span>Some uniformed people started to appear with instruments in tow and before you knew it a band was congregated in front of the building.\u00a0 <\/span>After a bit of organizing the band played some tunes before the Mayor\u2019s speech.<\/span><\/p>\n

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The band playing for the crowd.<\/p><\/div>\n

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The Mayor speechifying. The Mayor is clickable if you want a better look at him.<\/p><\/div>\n

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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.<\/p><\/div>\n

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As we were leaving our evening restaurant, we saw this scene across the street. \u00a0I hadn\u2019t seen anything like that happening since I was a kid growing up in Central New York State. \u00a0In case you can\u2019t guess what\u2019s going on there, the gent is removing the snow off the roof. \u00a0He put out safety cones, but most by-passers weren\u2019t really paying much attention to him. \u00a0After we stopped to catch a photo, others did, too. \u00a0Not 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.<\/p>\n

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Snow being cleared from the roof<\/p><\/div>\n

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More exploring tomorrow morning, I am not sure I\u2019ve mentioned that Reykjavik also is notable for their street art.\u00a0 <\/span>I have a nice collection started already from previous visits. But, I can see that many new murals have been created.\u00a0 <\/span>ln the late afternoon tomorrow, we have scheduled a food walking tour around the city. We\u2019ll report back on how that goes.<\/span><\/p>\n

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First mural near our hotel, the whole building was covered.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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). \u00a0We noticed the airport bus stops right across the street every 15 mins. We only had to wait a few mins before […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":2709,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[240,227,226],"tags":[32,153,265],"class_list":["post-2693","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-240","category-iceland2024","category-scotland2024","tag-glasgow","tag-reykjavik","tag-street-art","et-has-post-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/debbiewebbie.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2693","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/debbiewebbie.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/debbiewebbie.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/debbiewebbie.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/debbiewebbie.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2693"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/debbiewebbie.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2693\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2720,"href":"https:\/\/debbiewebbie.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2693\/revisions\/2720"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/debbiewebbie.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2709"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/debbiewebbie.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2693"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/debbiewebbie.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2693"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/debbiewebbie.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2693"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}