Work-Trip to (London)Derry

At Keflavik airport at 7 am. I’m not a fan of early morning flights!

As usual, some of the airport facilities were in a slightly embarrassing state.

Sun rising.

Due to late planning, I ended up in a comfy seat, albeit not in the actual first class.

The Lego Batman Movie. It was chuckle worthy.

All the airplanes always take off at the same time!

Our shadow!

The best view I’ve gotten of the airport in a long while.  It’s permanently under construction it seems.

Our first stop was in Glasgow.

Approaching Glasgow.

Our layover was about 2 hours, then we boarded a direct flight to Londonderry.

Rainy Ireland.

That’s our wooden box coming off of the conveyor belt.

The plane that took us there.

Londonderry airport is tiny. Very tiny.

Hello rental car!

Sadly, the nice hotel in town was fully booked so it was back to the sad Travelodge.

The bed was nice enough.

The bathroom had seen better days.

My splendid view, over the breakfast room, at 3 pm.

We went to the factory, and ended up working until 8 pm, when we called it a night. That was one looooong day!

We worked all of Saturday, but did take a break to have lunch. Found this cute cafe, and it had good food!

Meanwhile, Finnur was yet again up by Laugarvatn to work on the humongous deck!

By the end of the weekend, the deck was complete enough that I think the guys called it “enough for winter”.

We returned to the same cafe on Sunday for lunch, as it turned out to be tricky to find places that were open. We also worked all through the Sunday.

Meanwhile, in Iceland, Bjarki was having fun at the summer house(s) by Laugarvatn.

Cousins.

So. Much. New. Timber!

Cuteness overload!

Anna, after 2 hour drive home. Apparently there were stops here and there.

We were at the factory until lunchtime, and then my colleague had to drive off to Belfast to catch a flight to Copenhagen. He’s one busy guy! We’d planned for “safe rather than sorry” so I stuck around in the area for the rest of the day, in case something at the factory went sideways. Nothing seemed to be going seriously amiss so I took a nap, and then walked around Derry, using the GPS Ingress as my guide, as there were a few interesting “missions” to complete.

It was a lovely afternoon, although the weather couldn’t quite decided whether to be sunny or rainy.

First things first, such as this lovely scone!

By a big church right by the River Foyle.

A street.

I kept walking to the start of mission in Ingress. Missions are just a predetermined collection of GPS points one should visit to get a badge.

I was pleasantly surprised and impressed when I found what the mission was about: Murals from the Battle of Bogside.

A power differential.

More commotion.

Info on Free Derry.

All that remains of the You are now entering Free Derry gable.

Up above the city walls stand.  I walked up there later in the day.

A famous wall.

A rainbow.

Murals everywhere.

I think these may have died.

Serious stuff!

After finishing the Battle of Bogside mission, I decided to do the City Wall mission, which involved walking around the whole city wall circle. Here’s a church on the way up.

A proper tower.

A proper wall.

A couple of proper cannons. There are cannons here and there along the whole circle.

By a church as it really started pouring.

The top of the wall as it slopes down towards the river/downtown.

By a proper bastion.

More cannons.

Cool old drawing of Derry that was.

Derry today.

Back to where I started, but only half way around the circle.

So. Many. Cannons!

Magazine gate.

On and on the top of the wall goes.

Another bastion.

Back on the west side.

The Free Derry wall and murals below.

Idyllic!

Always good to have a cannon pointing to where you live.

The view from Double Bastion.

Yes, more cannons! They strike me as being a tad paranoid!

A house by the cannons.

Back in the day…

At around 7 pm the sun was going down, and I began heading back towards my hotel.

I passed the big red church again (yes, third photo), and went to check out the River Foyle.

Runners running towards the Peace Bridge.

I’m not kidding about the name!

After all the walking I decided to call it a day, and walked to a nearby restaurant for dinner, a hop and a skip from my hotel.

The bathroom of the Travelodge, as I was packing my bags to leave. How many hotels have cracked sinks today?

To be honest though, the cracked sink paled in comparison to what I saw when I removed the shower gel bottle, as it was empty. I have never seen anything as black in a hotel before. I showed reception this photo and they promised they’d talk to housekeeping. Great.

I made it to Derry airport with plenty of time to spare.

The airport building.

A familiar sight.

Employees packing away a mountain of carry-on bags.

The view from my window.

Derry and the River Foyle.

A sight for sore eyes in Glasgow.

Yet another line.

Hello Iceland!

The town by the airport.  And with that I was home!!