My Big Fat Portuguese-English Christmas!

When we did finally arrive in England, there were only 3 days to go to Christmas! And we pretty much launched into Christmas day. As always it was loud and crazy - a very big, a very fat and a very Portuguesey-English Christmas!

Christmas dinner

Since the last time I was home, my sister, Jacqueline, had taken up cooking, so all I heard the first day or so was "Jamie Oliver this and Jamie Oliver that... etc etc". The plan was that my sister and I were going to cook Christmas dinner. When Christmas day arrived, Martin, my brother in-law Mark, and myself, prepared everything, except for my sister swanning in at the last second to do her Jamie Oliver Cabbage Dish! Needless to day, it was a huge wonderful feast, and so great to be with my family again, even if my sister was acting like she'd been slaving a ALL day in the kitchen! * Mush

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Surprise Stay in Iceland

Reykjavik, Iceland

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We had planned a 10 hour layover in Reykjavik, Iceland on our way to England.  We figured this
would be enough time to take the 30 minute trip into town from the airport, have a good look around and then get back to the airport in time for our 4:30 PM flight.  Well, we got a bit of a surprise as our flight to London was cancelled because of snow in England, so we ended up being "stranded" in Iceland!  I say stranded, but as you can imagine, we saw it as a bonus vacation.  It's not like we had to be anywhere other than in England for Christmas Day.  I feel bad for the other people who had jobs to get to and families to be there for, but we actually felt lucky!!
We had arrived on Dec 19th, almost the shortest day of the year.  It was a bit strange having dawn for a couple of hours prior to sunrise at 11:30 AM.  And then the sun didn't really rise up very high in the sky at all.  This day, we walked around in the bone chilling wind, on a very quiet Sunday morning.  The capital of Reykjavik, was a quaint little downtown, with some colourful little buildings. 
We stopped for lunch at a small restaurant at the fishing docks, and had a nice bowl of lobster soup.  We noticed at the cabinet that they had all kinds of fish skewers, including whale meat!!  A walk along the coast brought us to the Solfan sculpture.  It looked like a a metal frame viking ship, and the mountains across the bay provided a beautiful backdrop.
Since we knew our flight was cancelled, we found ourselves a nice little hostel in town, and took a nap for a couple of hours as we had been up for almost 24 hours at this point.  Iceland is quite an expensive place, especially for us budget backpackers, so we found the cheapest food in town, and went out for a drink at a little local pub, where they show a movie on Sunday nights.
The next day, we had a flight scheduled for the afternoon, so we woke up early and went to a local outdoor hot pool to relax and try to warm our cores.  It worked, but on the walk to the Hallgrimskirka church, we quickly cooled off again.  The church had a very modern, simple look inside and a very new massive pipe organ  with hundreds and hundreds of pipes!  An elevator up the main steeple brought us up to some great views over the city, and when the bells chimed for Noon, the sun finally rose over the hills in the distance.  This provided some great light for photos of the town.

We headed back to the airport to find our luggage had already been sent to London on an earlier flight, but no worries, we were soon to join it......or so we thought.  As we were waiting at our gate, they announced that our flight was again canceled because of snow in London, so they we putting us up in a hotel for the night.  One problem for us though, we had been without a change of clothes for 3 days already, now one more!!

Gulfoss Waterfall

With everyone now scrambling to get on stand-by flights in the morning, we decided we didn't want to be handcuffed to the airport, so we rented a car and drove a couple of hours out to some amazing sights on the island.  First stop was Great Geysir and Strokkur.  The latter is a geyser that erupts every 4-8 minutes and shoots about 30 - 40 feet in the air.  Pretty impressive sight and then the mist freezes where it lands as it was really cold!!  A bit surreal really.

Blue Lagoon

From here, we drove 10 minutes further and arrived at the Gulfoss waterfall.  WOW, what a sight.  It was half frozen and all the mist around had created some cool features of ice on the grasses and vegetation around.  Martin walked out to the waterfall pictured, but we didn't stay long because it was absolutely freezing there..... oh yeah, and we had a plane to catch!!
Our last stop of the day was at the Blue Lagoon.  The water temperature is between 37 and 39 degrees celcius and creates a nice relaxing spa experience especially in the cold weather.  It is surrounded by dried lava beds and a geothermal power plant in the distance.  A pretty bizarre sight, but at least they have made the spa a pretty tasteful looking building.  
We headed back to the airport and finally were able to get on a flight to London.  We felt pretty lucky we were able to spend 3 days in Iceland, and it was a real bonus for us.  We would still make it in plenty of time for Christmas and got a little taste of what Iceland has to offer.  When we go back though, it won't be in the Winter!!!   *Stub

California

Bad Water Basin - Lowest Point in USA

Into the barren wasteland that is Death Valley, we found surprisingly enjoyable.  We were 280 ft below sea level at Bad Water Basin, before finding some very scenic sand dunes.  We got turned away at Giant Sequoia National Park because we didn't have chains with us (???) - winter tires and 4 wheel drive wasn't sufficient I guess.  We were worried we might not get in to Yosemite also, but a very nice ranger let us through, and we camped a night in the snow under Half Dome and El Capitan before continuing on to Oregon.

Sand Dunes in Death Valley

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