bread, Cookie, amaryllis, Iceland

Even thought we only got to bed at 2 AM on Friday (2/5) morning (which was 7 AM Iceland time) I couldn’t sleep past 7:30, so I hopped up and got bread dough to rising (since we had NO bread/English muffins/anything in the house!)  By 11 AM I had bread made (we gave 1/2 a loaf to Susan to thank her for taking care of our kitty/mail/papers while we were gone)

 and a couple of loads of laundry done.  I got a little sewing done in the afternoon, and a bit of unpacking….along with a nap and we finally settled in with champagne and puffy things to watch TV and relax for the rest of the evening.

I spent most of the day Saturday (2/6) in my studio, loading up Ethel’s latest quilt and figuring out the program to quilt it.  Michael finally got a chance to get through his almost 200 emails 

waiting for dad to be done....

 while I was working on quilting.  I did get 4 rows done before I stopped for a smurfy dinner of grilled ham & cheese sandwiches from my honey.  We finished unpacking our suitcase (yes, we actually got away with only one suitcase for the 2 of us...a miracle :~) and got the rest of the laundry done as well.  As we expected, our amaryllis bloomed while we were away, but Ann Mary & Jim sent us pictures:

It has even more blooms now, I'll try to have more pics for tomorrow

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Iceland…..what can I tell you about Iceland.  I found the people to be very intelligent, forward thinking and ecologically conscious. And considering the environment in which they live, they also seemed to be a very happy people.  Their electricity is 100% cleanly produced; about 80% of it comes from the rivers (hydro-electric power) and the rest is generated from geo-thermal energy.  I feel like our country could learn a LOT from Iceland, but greed and oil/coal/gas lobbyists will never let it happen.  Yes, we did get to see the Northern Lights…not only while we were at a lookout point for 2-1/2 hours, but also out of the bus window all the way home to the hotel (so that is one more thing crossed off Michael's bucket list).  Yes, we got to swim in the geo-thermal pool and toured their geo-thermal plant (that was incredible!)  What are some of the small differences I noticed?  You never get a check in a restaurant…you just walk up to the cash register, tell them what you had and then pay your bill.  ALL of the bathrooms we used (whether in the hotel, the airport or wherever we were touring) were energy/water efficient.  They also all had separate flush mechanisms for flushing a liquid, or flushing a solid.  Everyone spoke English….they start learning it in the fourth grade.  They generate almost all of the food they consume.  Since Iceland is a volcanic island, they can't really plant anything, but it is all grown in greenhouses, fueled by their incredibly cheap electricity.  Most things are grown hydroponically.  Two of the tectonic plates run through Iceland, and at this point in time the plates are moving and separating Iceland at about 2 centimeters per year.  Michael walked the path of the rift.  Michael and I would definitely consider going back someday in the summertime, but the flights just about killed us.  The flight from Washington, DC was 5 hours on the way over, and 6 hours on the way back….but due to the timing of the flight, and getting to Washington from Charlotte, we were up over 24 hours on the way there, and 24 hours on the way back…we were both exhausted!!  A very few scenes from our trip:

intrepid travelers starting their journey: me, MIchael, Ralph & Candyce

"northern lights" display in the plane (it looked much cooler in person)

real northern lights

a stop to visit the horses....SO cute!

my souvenier...salt for cooking