Saturday, December 16, 2017

Amsterdam, Day 2

Probably everyone knows that Amsterdam is the bicycle capital of the world. It lives up to its reputation as there are bicycles, bike riders, bike racks and bike lanes all around the city.






Dutch cyclists really know how to make a bike a utility vehicle to haul just about anything, including children, groceries, and Christmas trees, among other things. Below are some pics of the rigs we saw there.



We were considering renting bikes to get around the city and experience the culture. We decided to walk instead, and that was likely a wise choice. Cyclists in Amsterdam have many obstacles to be aware of, and we would have likely been highly stressed trying to ride around the city.

One obstacle to overcome would have been the other cyclists. Many of the cyclists had their cell phones out fiddling with them, either talking, texting, or listening to music while riding. A large majority of them did not give any type of warning when passing other cyclists in fairly narrow bike lanes. Safety does not seem to be a high priority for cyclists in Amsterdam. I only saw a very few cyclists wearing helmets, and those were usually the "spandex clad" cyclists.  Most of the cyclists looked as though their photo could be placed directly into a fashion magazine when they got off the bike due to the way they were dressed, stillettos and all. Rear view mirrors for cyclists must not be cool in Amsterdam as we saw none. 

Another obstacle would be the motorized vehicles that are allowed to ride on the bike paths. Scooters are allowed on the paths, and they did not slow down much when passing the cyclists within inches from them.  Photo below


There is also a small car called the Canta that is made in The Netherlands, and it is also allowed on the bike paths even though it can reach speeds of 30 mph.  We saw a few of those cars on the paths with the bikes. The drivers of the Canta's are not required to have a driver's license. Canta pic below


Then there are the pedestrians, primarily tourists, that are not paying much attention to their surroundings and could easily walk onto a bike path in front of a bike. There were times when we almost crossed bike paths without looking for oncoming bikes. 

And, of course, the cars.  In addition to the obstacles listed above, there are also a lot of motorists in Amsterdam to be on the lookout for while biking. Some of the roads were very narrow and required motorists and cyclists to share them. On several occasions, we saw vehicles pass cyclists within inches. Even if there was a 3-foot law in Amsterdam, some roads in the city are not wide enough for a motorist to give that much space for a bike. 

Lisa: and I don't even think there could even be a 3 inch law as we witnessed. But it did make for much entertainment as we walked around today (BTW, 28,200 steps today)

Today we found the I Amsterdam sign and finagled ourselves among the other tourists for a few pics:



We went to the Van Gogh museum, and as surprising as it may seem to some of my friends, (ahem, you know who you are), it was really good. I enjoyed getting to know the man with so much talent who had a very sad ending to his life. I have read that there is often a very long line to get in, and even though we had already bought our tickets, there was hardly a line to purchase tickets when we got there. So if you want no lines, I highly recommend going this time of year. I got to get as close as I wanted to The Sunflowers, which is one I recognized well, because the students at Big Ridge Elementary, when Alyssa was there, were taught by my friend, Caroline, and this was a painting they got to recreate while they learned about Van Gogh.


A little fountain:


Gentlemen enjoying a heated game of Chess.  They were really taking it seriously.


Amsterdam, it was great seeing ya'






Monday, December 4, 2017

Iceland and Amsterdam, Day 6

Monday:  We woke up early, cooked eggs and oatmeal at our Airbnb, and headed out. We returned our rental car, and got the much anticipated "car returned okay".  That is always a weight off our shoulders. The rental car we had, a 4-wheel drive Dacia Duster with a manual transmission, frequently had warning lights illuminated indicating low tire pressure and faulty warning light problem. Yes, this car had a warning light that indicated there is a problem with the warning lights. To me (Anthony), that's a bit ridiculous.  The folks at the rental car agency said it is a common problem in Iceland for those warning lights to come on without reason. They stated this is because of the weather there. 


We have felt very safe in Iceland. In fact, when we first arrived in the country and we're getting our rental car, I heard a representative at the rental car company (which is located a few miles from the airport) tell another customer that his car would be at the airport unlocked with the keys in it.  I'm sure the customer gave the rep a funny look because the rep then explained to him that "there is no crime in Iceland."

However, at the airport Anthony had to escape being eaten by a troll before he could leave:


Our plane trip went well to Amsterdam, but what we were supposed to do to get to our hotel caused some anxious moments.  Beforehand, we even watched YouTube videos to make sure we knew what to do. But it never is as easy as it looks. Finally we made it to our hotel. This is what we felt like, though, while we were on the train.


Tuesday:  We've had a nice day of touring the city, 26,500 steps worth as a matter of fact. But we have seen a lot.

Here is the token tourist in the Dutch clogs pics:


Here are pics of the city:


We were thankful to see normal amounts of prices for the food we ate today. I don't think I will want soup for awhile.

We visited the Anne Frank house.  It is very difficult to explain how I felt walking through the annex she was actually living in for two years to escape being captured, so I am not going to try. But let's just say that it seemed that with that many people that were walking around with us, it was a relatively quiet, somber tour. 


We also walked through some very interesting parts of the city in which you don't go into the coffee shops to ask for coffee. There were some interesting smells wafting through the air as we passed those "coffee shops".

We are looking forward to going to the Van Gogh museum and soaking in more of the sights tomorrow. 













Iceland, Day 5 (The Land of Fire and Ice, literally)

Saturday night our Airbnb host was Iris. She told us she is part British, and was born during the "war".  She is still quite spunky and active. She has fully lived life, and was a gymnast, dancer, hairdresser, artist, actress, and small hotel owner/operator in Sweden in her younger years. We stayed in a fairly small bedroom in her apartment in Reykavik. Below is a pic of the lights of Reykavik from her apartment balcony. 


Saturday night we went into Reykavik and took in the town, which to us means walking down a couple of streets people watching and looking at the buildings.  Reykavik is quite a bustling city on Saturday nights. 


Below are pics of Hallgrimskirkja, an Evangelical-Lutheran church, in Reykavik. Amnesty International was projecting names and images on the front of the church. 




On Sunday, we took an abbreviated route through Iceland's famed Golden Circle. First stop on the route was Geysir (pics below).




There were some interesting instructions on a stall in the men's restroom, or water closet as you say in Iceland, at a restaurant at Geysir.  Obviously, western toilets are different from eastern toilets. Being from the southeast, I may have to try the eastern way shown on the right side of the photo below. 


After Geysir, next stop was Gullfoss, which is a very impressive waterfall.  Below are pics of Gullfoss and some interesting information regarding attempts to harness its power for electricity. 




After Gullfoss, we stopped by Dingvellir, where the tectonic plate of 2 continents, North America and Eurasian, are separating a little each year. At Dingvellir, we had our first real ice incident. We were walking up a pretty steep incline, inching our way up slipping and sliding on ice the entire way. We came upon some icy steps, and barely made it up 2 steps before deciding our current European trip was too much in its early stages to break an arm or leg falling on ice. We turned around and slowly headed back to our car. On our way back, we came across an Asian family having a hard time standing up on the icy path. We stopped and talked to them and told them the path got slicker on up ahead. As Lisa was standing there talking to them, she decided to demonstrate to them what could happen if they continued on. Out went both of her feet from under her and she commenced to slide into the Asian father, almost taking him out, but he was able to stop her slide, and we got her back on her feet. A visual is worth a thousand words. No bruises or serious injuries. 






We made it to our Airbnb in Keflavik for the night close to the airport, and were able to wash clothes and get everything ready for our departure from Iceland and travel to Amsterdam tomorrow. We have thoroughly enjoyed the time we have spent in Iceland. It's a very sparsely populated, rugged country.  We will be trading in the dirt and less developed terrain of Iceland for the more developed, concrete jungles of Amsterdam, Brussels, and Paris for the remainder of our trip. 








Saturday, December 2, 2017

Iceland, Day 4

(Anthony wrote this one)

We went out again last night searching for the elusive northern lights. It was extremely windy when we headed out about 9:30 p.m., and we planned on staying out until about midnight. We could see stars above when we left our Airbnb, so we had some hope of seeing them even though the Soft Serve News website indicated the Aurora Borealis was quiet. We found a somewhat dark parking spot with a water view. The almost full moon lit things up quite a bit, and that is also not good for Borealis watching. At about 11:15 p.m., we noticed a very pale green line in the sky. We wondered, could that be it, but we were skeptical thinking it could be the moon reflecting light off a cloud.  We kept a close eye on the newly found light, and it would get longer, grow brighter in certain areas, disappear in areas, and then come back. We continued watching this interesting phonomena in the sky, and at one point it split into 2 distinct lines in part of it, and dropped down in places.  This activity went on until about 12:10 p.m., when it completely disappeared. We waited 5 more minutes with no activity at all, so we called it a night. We are both convinced that what we saw was the Aurora Borealis, so that can checked off our bucket list. 

This morning, we were both still asleep at 8:15 a.m., when one of the other guests in the Airbnb got in the shower and woke us up. Thank goodness she did because there is no telling how long we would have slept. As we were getting ready to prepare breakfast, 3 young Asian folks entered the Airbnb with their luggage, went into a bedroom and shut the door. We did not see them again. Our Airbnb host told us that the folks that came in this morning got lost last night, and was just checking in this morning. What a terrible way to start a vacation, especially in an area where you only have about 4.5 hours of daylight. 

We left Olafsvik headed for Reykjavik, Iceland's capital.  Below are some pics of the beautiful scenery we drove through today. 




Made a quick stop at Bjarnarfoss. 





At Bjarnarfoss, we saw our first real trees since arriving at Iceland.


Speaking of firsts since we've been in Iceland, today was the first time we have seen the sun in Iceland. The pic below was taken about 11:30 a.m., and the sun was just coming up. 


Even more trees, pic below. 


Snow covered mountains below. 


Instead go going through the tunnel going to Reykjavik, we bypassed the under water tunnel and took the road around Hvalfjordur fjord, which was very scenic.  Below are some pics from this loop. 




We finally made it to Reykavik, and it was about rush hour so there was a lot of traffic. Lisa's job as navigator was to get me to the Airbnb. On the instructions to get to the Airbnb, it said to not go completely by your GPS, it will take you to the wrong place. So to make her job easier, she not only plugged the address into a Garmin GPS, she decided to use the navigation on the the car's GPS, AND also her cell phone map.  THREE different navi systems were talking at the same time. I think her intent was to be taken out of the picture completely. Well, at about the 2nd turn, all three devices were giving me different directions. I asked Lisa what I needed to do, and being the good navigator she is, she told me to do what I wanted to. I had no idea what to do with that advice, so we had to pull over and shut off all but one the devices. We eventually found our Airbnb. 


Friday, December 1, 2017

Iceland, Day 3 (Olafsvik and Snaefellsnes Peninsula)

Do you know what we looked like watching for the Northern Lights last night??


Yup that was the picture I got of us sitting in a dark car beside the road looking up, hoping to get a glimpse, even though it was cloudy cloudy. Oh well.

Hope this doesn't turn out to be like our elusive moose story:(

So last night we stayed in another Airbnb and there were two other couples there. One couple was from Italy, and we think the other couple was German. That's an advantage of staying in a rented room, you get to share the kitchen and get to know other people pretty easily. 

Our goal today was to head west to the Snaefellsjokull National Park and see rock formations, a light house and supposedly there is a glacier there too, but you couldn't prove it by me. All we saw today was fog:


Maybe there is a glacier in there somewhere??

We were hoping to see the Snaefellsjokull Stratovolcano and its glacier in the National Park. This is the oldest National Park in Iceland and this mountain was the setting for Jules Verne's 1864 novel Journey to the Center of the Earth. And even though it hasn't erupted since about 200 AD, it is still considered to be an active volcano.

We did, however, get to see the Saxholl volcanic crater:


Got several different views of a pretty awesome lava formation called Londrangar,


And got a pretty good view of some crazy people walking over a rope to get the PERFECT shot.


You can see in the top picture the rope you are not supposed to cross.  Going to a cliff's edge to get the "perfect" picture is not a good idea on a perfect day, much less on a day like today when wind gusts at times made it hard to stand.

The little town of Olafsvik (pop. approximately 1,000) is not without its beauty. It has its own waterfall, Baejarfoss.


Here's a water view from our place.


And there's a boat displayed on the side of the road as we came into town:


Olafsvik is the westernmost settlement of its size in Europe and was at one point one of the largest trading ports in Iceland. Surprisingly (not), a lot of the economy is based on fishing.

Some of you have mentioned to me that you have heard the food here is very expensive, and I will say that is a YES. I mentioned on my FB that one bowl of seafood soup with two small pieces of bread and a coffee or tea was about $17 USD. Today we shared a meal of lamb, mashed potatoes (sweet and white), and three half pieces of about six inch asparagus., and it was a little over $50, and this is at lunchtime.



While traveling here, what has been useful to us is that if we see a city that has "vik" on the end of it, we know that it is on a bay or inlet; i.e., Reykjavik (largest city in Iceland) Keflavik (where airport is located), or Olafsvik. If you see a name of something that has "foss" on the end of it, you know that is a waterfall; i.e., Gulfoss or Baejarfoss.  

Tonight, we are in a different Airbnb in Olafsvik sharing the common areas, kitchen, den, and bathrooms, with a couple of ladies from Holland. When they told us they are from Holland, we got excited and told them we are traveling to Amsterdam when we leave Iceland. We then had our doubts about Amsterdam being in Holland, because we have been saying it is in The Netherlands. It was explained to us that Amsterdam is in Holland, and that the entire area is the Netherlands. We're still confused. One of the ladies talked about how pretty Amsterdam is with all the old buildings and "kennels".  We thought we were going to see the hidden treasure of the Amsterdam kennels since we had not read anything about it. To our disappointment, it was just miscommunication and she was calling the canals kennels, so no hidden treasure awaits us.