[Photos taken 01 – 06 January 2023, posted online 03 September 2023. The first storm of the fall came this Friday, bringing an abrupt stop to the lovely weather of July & August.]
I spent the first day of 2023 scouring the internet for a café that was open in the capital area. I found one downtown, and that’s where I spent most of the day.
The following days I kept a close eye and shovel on the public parking spot opposite our house, gym-routines restarted, the ginger-bread came close to demolition, and we had dinners with friends.
Sunday 01 January 2023
By the massive downtown yule-cat, swiping at unsuspecting tourists!
I’d arrived downtown around noon-time, and already the sun was casting an orange glow on Mount Esja.
There were a lot of people milling about in the snow, many with luggage.
I lucked out and got an upstairs table at Kaffibrennslan cafe, which is somewhat reliably open on 1 January, which is a public holiday.
Enjoying the view.
The cafe was packed to the gills, and I was almost the only Icelander there.
I decided to walk the long way to the car. There’s been a lot of work put into livening up the shopping street of Laugavegur.
Big Hallgrims-church up on the right.
About to arrive at the yule-cat. That square is always so grim, mostly due to the mean-looking judicial building on the right.
Sometimes art just works.
Yum, yum!
The new houses close to the water’s edge. The architects forgot to include plants to reduce wind, and increase loveliness. Now they’re trying to add a little life. Mostly it looks sad.
New bank building getting cladding made out of steeple-rocks.
By the time I got to Harpa, I was freezing. Didn’t exactly plan for a walk in the cold.
Whale watching boats were apparently not on vacation.
I ended the day by scraping a bit of snow, as I was still working to keep the public parking lot in tip-top shape (since we use it for car #3).
Monday 02 January 2023
Since a lot of the public holidays fell on the weekend, my employer gave everybody two extra days off (Icelandic law doesn’t move holidays to the following Monday). I took 2 January off, and used to to attack the public parking lot some more, as there was a little bit of thaw in the air.
Very satisfying!
Also very sweaty!
We invited ourselves to dinner, and enjoyed other people’s decorations.
Nice led-light.
Thursday 05 January 2023
Morning gym photo confirmation.
Bjarki switched over to parkour from team gym, and really enjoyed it. This is warm up.
The fully decorated ginger-bread house, unaware that it was soon due to be demolished and consumed.
The back side.
Friday 06 January 2023
Prepping for annual ginger bread house photo shoot.
Kiddos and house. For some reason we didn’t demolish it right then and there, although this was the technical end of yule.
Instead I went and spent the evening with old undergrad EE buddies downtown.
There was a good selection of non-alcoholic drinks!
My old co-worker/boss at Marel was among the group. It was fun to catch up! 🙂
