Vacation Ends & Ed Sheeran

2019-08-07Uncategorized Standard

[Photos taken 07 – 10 August 2019, posted online 28 March 2020. The world is still going down the toilet.]

After close to four weeks of vacation it was time to re-start life as usual. Emma began attending a gymnastics/play-camp, and us old folks went back to work.

Having lots of extra energy from all that vacation, we still managed to perform a few maintenance tasks around the house. It helped that the weather stayed lovely, but we could feel it getting colder.

At long last it was also time for the much-anticipated concert with Ed Sheeran! (35-ish images total)

Wednesday 07 August 2019

What’s more ‘daily life’ than a trip with a kid to the orthodontist? Especially when said orthodontist is located downtown, and a brand new hotel is opening up on the opposite side of the street. Yes, the hotel was so new that you could see that only two or three rooms were occupied, and the rest had pillows and duvets in plastic bags still.
I finally worked up the courage to tackle the disaster area that is our garage. Anna was a huge help.
Ugh. Every. Single. Year.
Two hours later we’d made a lot of progress, yay!

Thursday 08 August 2019

Bjarki discovered there’s a swimming pool close to downtown Reykjavík that has a high springboard (stökkbretti), and he got really into going there. I drove him and a friend there, and then walked to a nearby cafe. That evening it so happened that the old-cars-club was doing a parade of sorts.
They sure were loud…
… and weird!
By the church of Hallgrímur (Hallgrímskirkja).
The same church, 90 minutes later, at 10 pm.
Calm Icelandic August evenings are hard to beat.
Proof it was me. 🙂

Friday 09 August 2019

On day two of returning to work, I had a hard time just staying indoors, so I ventured out on a walk during lunch and found these swollen crow-berries. So good!
Soon to be eaten!
After work I got out the wood staining gear, and kept going on the seemingly endless amount of wooden fences in the front yard.

Saturday 10 August 2019

New day, more wood staining! Found myself crawling behind trees, trying not to scrape myself too much. This white stain is water-based, and a lot easier to work with than the usual stinky stuff.
Sure, these fences look nice, but they’re a total pain to maintain! This was at 3 pm, and it was time to stop because Anna and I had an Ed Sheeran concert to go to!
We took the bus towards the Laugardalur-area, as the concert was going to be on the national football “stadium”.
We met up with Ragnar, Agnes and their entourage, and walked to the concert area. There were a bunch of road closures in effect. Only cars with four or more occupants could enter the area to park.
We arrived at 5 pm, which was a really great time, as the early arrivals line was gone, and the late arrivals hadn’t shown up yet.
We thought we had to stand in line here to get wristbands, but thankfully one of the staff knew to tell us to go straight to our gate.
The top of the stage visible (blue squares), as we walked past the line for the general admission.
Agnes and Ragnar.
Ragnar and Agnes decided to swap seats with myself and Anna.
Now, a small note on the weather. It was bright, but there was a very cold wind blowing from the north, i.e. that mountain behind the stage. Nonetheless, both female warm-up acts where wearing super skimpy clothing.
She of eternal bad judgement, according to most of her lyrics.
We were about as far back as was possible, and on the shadow side, so it was pretty darn cold. We made a bit of a sport trying to find people we knew on the walkway.
Bingo!
The last warm-up act, and the ground area filling up nicely.
In line for the toilets. I don’t know who designed the toilet facility, but they get a failing grade for not accounting for lines to form!?!
The main guy up on stage. Yes, we sat far back, but we were straight in line to the big speakers in the back.
Panorama.
Phone lights. It was a good thing the concert wasn’t held until August, or it would have been too bright out for the phone lights to be visible.
Mobile phone lights going strong!
Cool show!
At 22:50 it was all over, the lights came on, and everyone exited in an orderly fashion.
Yay, that was fun! 🙂