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Whales
After our intense day of volcano hiking, Kristen and I return to the House of the Spirits, clomping mud all over the spiral staircase, to flop on the bed and exclaim things like "God!" "That hike!" "Can you believe we did that?" and "How are your bruises?"
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Inside the Volcano
Monday morning dawns, the day of the volcano. This is the experience that inspired us to come to Iceland in the first place - there an Inside the Volcano tour that leads you on a hike across a lava field and then lowers you, on a thing that looks like a window washers cart, down into the magma chamber of the dormant Thrihnukagigur (pronounced ( Read more... ) -
The Harpa
As we head to the Harpa, we observe that people on the streets of Reykjavik are dressed in vastly disparate ways as they attempt to deal with the weather. We are wearing hoodies over t-shirts, and have our rain jackets in the backpack. It’s in the high 40’s, but the wind can make seem colder. Meanwhile, we see some people totally bundled up with ( Read more... ) -
First Morning in Reykjavik
Sunday morning we are up bright and early, our heroic efforts to stay awake all through our long day of travel having resulted in a successful Icelandic time reset.
We head out to get breakfast and explore the city. We are bound for a cafe called “The Grái Kötturinn” which means “The Gray Cat.” Although it is sort of unfashionable to be into ( Read more... ) -
Getting There
On Saturday morning, we wake at zero dark thirty to head to the airport for our first flight of the day. Uncertain of how much our bags weigh, and without a scale in the apartment, we develop a method of picking up the 14lb container of cat litter in one hand, and a suitcase in the other to compare. Not overly scientific perhaps, but it gets the ( Read more... ) -
Pink Iceland
Although I am a non-twittering luddite, in anticipation of our upcoming trip, Kristen has spent the summer following a group called "Pink Iceland" on twitter. They are a group devoted to encouraging The Gays to visit The Iceland. (Angie asked if every country or city has such a group, and especially hoped that the one for France would be called ( Read more... ) -
Learning Icelandic
In just under two weeks, Kristen and I are heading to Iceland. Although 98% of the people in Iceland speak English, we wanted to try and learn some basic phrases in Icelandic as a show of interest/goodwill/why be an Ugly American, etc ( Read more... ) -
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I can still remember how disappointed I was when Bill Clinton signed DOMA into law. I had been holding out hope for a pocket veto. What can I say? I was young and idealistic ( Read more... ) -
Land of Lincolns
This weekend, Columbus is hosting the American Society of Lincoln Presenters. This meant that two score of Lincolns were going to be at the Ohio Historical Society today, walking around, interacting with visitors, and doing presentations ( Read more... ) -
In Which Joanna Sees Papal Artifacts
Despite a long blogging absence, I went to a place today that was way too weird not to post about. When Kristen and I went to the Italian Festival in 2011, we had seen a poster for a Papal Artifacts museum here in Columbus. Now, we thought the existence of the papal museum in Columbus was an intriguing kind of strange, but not strange enough to ( Read more... )