Of course I don’t wait for my alarm to go off before I wake up, I mean, who even DOES that? So I’m up and blogging away before everyone else wakes up today. Maylin and my mom get up next, and after I shower, we wake the others up for breakfast.
After breakfast, we only just have time to organize the rest of our belongings, before our taxi driver arrives. He’s 20 minutes early, but maybe that’s because he has packed our load of luggage into his vehicle before, and knows if we want to be on the road by 10am, he has to be early?
We use our very best Tetris skills, and soon all our suitcases, backpacks, duffel, tote, jackets and people are loaded into his taxi. It’s a quick goodbye and thank you to my mom, and just like that, we’re off to the airport for almost the last time this trip. Almost, because we have to do the same tomorrow morning, but in a different country. This time we’re not just stopping at the airport in Iceland, we get to go spend the night!
Oslo Airport is a smooth experience for us, once again. Once we are through dropping our bags off and security has checked what feels like our million bags, we find our gate and go grab some sandwiches.
The last thing I did at the airport before we took off, was buying waffles for the girls and I. The waffles have brown cheese in them, so it was the last taste of two of our favourites, for now. We don’t know when we’ll have a home next, or when we’ll have somewhere to unpack our U-Haul container into, so our waffle irons may not come out just yet.
The flight from Oslo to Iceland is quick and uneventful. Before we know it, we have landed into a brand new part of the airport, and we look around impressed. This is such a much nicer feel than the old areas we know from before! There are eateries and shops that look inviting, and we hope we have some time to explore when we come back for our last flight tomorrow.
I actually have family on Iceland! My stepmom Lise’s twin sister Mette lives here, and so that makes her my step-aunt, and her three kids my step-cousins, and their kids and spouses… well, let’s just call them all family!
Mette’s daughter Eygló comes to pick us up at the airport, and drives us the almost hour back to her home, past lava fields and the fascinating landscape I admired when I visited here for Eygló’s wedding in the summer of 2010. We see the steam from the Blue Lagoon in the distance, but do not visit, this time. Joe and I will enjoy that some time in the future, when our daughters are not there to scream “it’s too hot”…
We get to Eygló’s house, and she’s set up one of her sons’ bedroom for our family. Her oldest is with her mom, but her youngest son is home, and he shows the girls the trampoline in the backyard. Maylin is itching to burn off some energy, and so she bounces until we tell her we are going for a walk.
We are walking to a place called Perlan, a museum/restaurant with a domed roof. It’s a short walk from Eygló’s house, and the walk takes us past where her boys went to daycare and their current elementary school. It is so peaceful here, the pace seems so relaxing, especially after the hectic pace of many of our previous stops. It even seems calmer than Norway, and that was shockingly quiet for us when we arrived. Eygló tells us that the entire country of Iceland has only about 400,000 inhabitants, and this city, Reykjavik, has about 225,000 of them.
On the way, we find a playground, and yes of course Maylin, go ahead and try it out!
We get to Perlan and meet up with Mette, and two of her grandsons: Eygló’s oldest and one of his cousins. We have to be back at the house for a 6pm full family BBQ, so we decide to not do for the full museum experience, we are heading to the top floor for views first, followed by ice cream.
The views are spectacular from up here. We see snowy mountains in the distance, shrouded by clouds, and it is windy. The wind is cold. We hang out and take pictures for a while, and then duck back in for shelter from that wind, and of course, to reward ourselves with ice cream.
We’ve had some fantastic ice cream on our trip so far, but the Perlan flavour selection still manages to impress us. The Biscoff flavour has cookie crumbs folded in throughout, the vanilla has colourful chocolate buttons mixed in, you can see the berries in the forest berry ice cream. We are hooked, and may head straight here from the airport next time. Maybe.
Back at Eygló’s, her brothers and their partners, along with all the kids, have arrived. The BBQ is on, it smells amazing, and before long, we are all seated for dinner. There is lamb two ways, chicken, three kinds of sausages, a leafy green salad, a fantastic broccoli salad, chimichurri, asparages, potatoes, I cannot tell you how much food there is on this table!
Maylin eats one hot dog, refuses all other food, and asks if she can go to bed. She is exhausted. I put her to bed, and when I get back to the table, the kids are scattered everywhere, inside and outside. That leaves us adults to catch up, drink wine, laugh, pick at the rest of the food, talk some more, and thoroughly enjoy ourselves for the rest of the evening. The languages around the table flow seamlessly between English, Icelandic, Norwegian, Swedish, Danish and some Faroese (spoken by only about 70,000 people, including Yrsa). Of course I don’t understand the Icelandic or Faroese, but they’re all in the same family, so I can catch a phrase here and there.
All good things have to come to an end, so eventually Mette, her sons and their families have to head out. Eyglo, Binni, Joe and I chat and chat and chat for a long time, and when the kids are all in bed, I head the same way too. It’s been a long day, and Iceland runs on a time zone two hours behind Norway. When I get to bed, it’s past midnight in my head. I tried warning the girls, today would be the longest day in the world, and tomorrow will be even longer…