Iceland, September / October 2006

September 25

My first two drinks in the country: a bottle of one of the local brews, and a pint of Arthur's finest.

September 26

the view from my hotel window

the last time I saw these planes was at Salthill Air Show in 2003

any car you want as long as it's a Suzuki 4x4...

apparently Colonel Saunders is a local hero for some reason. Must be the fast food thing.

Hallgrimskirkja, shining beacon to the lost souls of Reykjavik. By which I mean a landmark to guide you home after runtur.

In an unusually unimaginative moment of weakness, the locals named this piece of water "Pond".

Leaving the harbour for the whale-watching tour

A passing mountain

An inbound boat

Pathway to the sun

Whale-watching. There are some whales, but you can only see the dorsal fin. That's all we saw, it's not just that my photography sucks. There are also harbour porpoises, although you probably can't tell one fin from the other. And there are gannets. And there's one oddball photo in the middle where I moved the camera as I clicked the button, and the shutter speed was fast enough that I ended up with a weird skew instead of a blur.

This one's specifically for the Lou Crew ;-)

View from the top of Hallgrimskirkja

Inside one of the clock faces on Hallgrimskirkja

This is enterprising. Like the elevator music? We can sell it to you!

September 27

Part of the WWII bunker complex

View from the hill that Perlan sits on

View from the observation deck on Perlan. Panorama Version.

Artificial Geyser

Hallgrimskirkja again

A lost beer bottle (on top of Perlan)

Some sort of tribute to air-musicians everywhere

Exercise bench with instructions, in the middle of the woods

Laugavegur from the quiet end

One for Lou (and again with the weird skewing effect)

Kristo's über-Irish Coffee

September 28

Skiing mountain, except it's got no snow right now.

Random weirdly-shaped mountain

Geothermal power plant

Trying to capture the flat view in front of us, except we hit a bump as I snapped

Didn't quite get the shot here; there was some regular mountainy rock, with some bubbly volcanic rock stuck to it.

The doorway on the rock is for the Little People.

An odd-looking mountain. Looks almost like Ayers Rock.

Flooded volcano crater.

Me, standing on the edge of the crater. Note that my strongly-styled hair is being blown out of shape on account of the severe gusts.

Some sort of cairn

Strokkur, doing what geysers do best

When Geysers Collapse: a hot spring

A glacier (look closely)

Gullfoss (with incidental Waider)

A glacier (look closely again)

Another should-be-panorama shot of a random waterfall

September 30

Another panorama attempt, and yes I was going for the lens-flare look, although I didn't quite realise that the clipping for the directly-into-the-sun shot would be black.

There's a church with elven towers in this photo. I've got a closer shot of it further down, but for the first few days I kept failing to find it, only ever seeing it from this vantage point.

Best. Graffiti. Ever.

October 1

The Celtic Cross, the Irish pub I didn't spend more than a pint in. What's funnier is the place next door: Finnegan's undertakers, which advertises "Discreet Service" in the window.