Airport, Dinner, Art (FFF-style), and Kids
[Photos from 01 to 05 October 2015, posted online 26 March 2016. Yup, that’s the wrong year.]
My digging into the photo-vaults continues. This time it’s October 2015.
This post has me driving my mom to the airport, us visiting friends for dinner, me going downtown to look at some art and hanging out at a new cafe, and the kids being cute. (27 images total)
Thursday 01 October 2015
Dropping mom off at the airport, as she goes to visit the Bournemouth-ers.
FFF #10 – Volcano House
Soooo… The FFF had to take a couple of weekends off because I was limping along with an injured heel, and two-hour walking-fests weren’t really high up on the want-to-do list.
My heel is slowly getting better, although I did a stupid thing at gym again, and probably made it slightly worse (again), but that’s just the nature of plantar faciitis. It’ll take a while…
But I was getting antsy again, so I decided to finally visit a low-walking venue that I’d both seen on the TripAdvisor to-do list for Reykjavik, and driven past a few times, sparking my curiosity.
It’s called Volcano House (#20 on the TripAdvisor list), and is basically a tourist trap/cafe/restaurant/rock display/tiny cinema. I really doubt they get a lot of Icelanders through their doors, so I figured I’d fall on the figurative sword and see what the touristy fuss was about.
The short story is that the meat soup was filling, but on the salty side, the rocks were mostly pretty, and the videos made me wonder why the heck anybody would live in Iceland. Ever. And that the people that do are therefore nuts and/or ridiculously stubborn. Which, incidentally, isn’t very far from the truth. (41 images total)
The Volcano House lives on the ground floor in that house on the left. Unseen, left-ishly behind me, is the Reykjavik Main Library, previously visited here.
FFF #9 – Geysir Bistro, The Settlement Exhibition, and Stofan Cafe
[Written 21-22 March 2014]
Again, the timing of this weekend’s FFF outing was constrained by a very busy weekend schedule, so yet again I had to find something to do around lunchtime.
After perusing the TripAdvisor listing for stuff to do in Reykjavik (Gullfoss is #1?!?! That’s like an hour and a half away!), I decided to check out the Settlement Exhibition (click here for the official multimedia site).
It didn’t hurt that the admission was included in the Culture Card I got in January.
First though, I had to get food, and had my sights set on almost-next-door Fiskmarkaðurinn (The Fish Market). As it turned out, that restaurant is closed for lunchtime on the weekends, so I ended up at Geysir Bistro a few houses away. After the exhibition, I still had a few minutes to spare and a grumbling stomach, so I walked a few steps to the Stofan Cafe for a pick-me-up, before heading home.
The Settlement Exhibition was cool, surprisingly cool. I’ll have to take the kids (at least Anna) there one day soon. (52 images total)
I was early enough that parking was a breeze! That gray stone building is the parliament building, and behind it you can see the Reykjavik cathedral.
FFF #8 – Gerðarsafn (Myndir ársins 2013), Cafe Dix, and Archery
[Written 13 March 2014]
Yet again, our busy weekend schedule meant that my only opening for a FFF outing was from 11 am on a Sunday morning, to about 2 pm.
I was feeling ‘sporty’ so I was initially just going to go shoot arrows at paper targets, but discovered just in time that the Archery Range opens at noon.
To pad out the outing, I therefore decided to visit Gerðarsafn (Museum of Gerður) first, where they were showing the Icelandic Photojournalism Association’s Pictures of the Year. (Ironically, I decided not to bring my ‘big’ camera, all the following images are from my phone.)
The photo show was pretty much as expected, except that I learned that almost all Icelandic Photojournalists are male. And it showed. (11 images total)
Back at Gerðarsafn. (See also FFF #4.)
FFF #7 – Hafnarhúsið Art Museum and Laundromat Cafe
Another short-notice FFF outing, due to a last-minute schedule change, but Elsa chimed in anyway and let me know she’d be joining me for lunch!
Not a lot of places are open at 11 am on Sundays, so I decided to use that ‘Culture Card‘ I got way back in the beginning, and visit the Reykjavik Art Museum at Hafnarhúsið (the Harbor House) “for free”. (34 images and 1 video total)
The Art Museum is right next to the Museum of Photography/Main Library (see FFF #5).
FFF #6 – Kling og Bang (The Visitors) and Kaffibrennslan
[Written 19 February 2014]
FFF #6 almost didn’t happen because it was such a busy weekend with the double birthday celebration etc. etc.
But, I’d been meaning to check out the gallery showing of The Visitors (YouTube, NYTimes) by Ragnar Kjartansson (and friends), having heard good things about it, and the kids were whining, so I decided to make a break for it.
I’m very glad that I did because this was so fun, lovely, technically impressive, and charming. Oh, Ragnar, why must you be so darn charming?! 🙂
Now, because this is Icleand, and Iceland has a tiny population, it should surprise nobody that Ragnar (anno 1976) and I attended the same high school/junior college. Now, I didn’t know him per se, but I certainly knew of him, and knew people that knew him.
It’s funny how some people are just incredibly noticeable right from an early age.
I haven’t really followed his work closely, but from what I’ve glimpsed over the years, one recurring theme in his works (which straddle the range from music to painting to installations to performance art) is repetition. (See painting the same guy in the same room in the same outfit once per day for six months, getting opera singers to repeat a famous operatic moment again and again for 12 hours – YouTube link).
This work had a lot of inbuilt repetition too, but not so that it felt gimmicky.
Basically, you walk into a large very dark room, where there are 9 large illuminated screens, set up such that some obscure others from view. On each screen is a musician/singer with headphones and they’re all performing/singing the same song, but each of them is in a separate room, so they’re united, but apart. (28 images total, 1 video)
A large dark room, with a surprising amount of people! (No, they’re not dancing, it’s just an animated gif!)
FFF #5 – Reykjavik Museum of Photography and Iða Book-Cafe
This weekend’s Fake-Football-Fanclub outing (#5!) got postponed from the originally scheduled time on Saturday because we decided on a whim to have Finnur take the big kids to a technology-show in downtown Harpa instead.
Come Sunday, I was suffering from acute cabin fever, so when the opportunity presented itself, I just headed out to do my thaaang, even though it was late in the day.
On the schedule was checking out the second part of the show “From a Different Angle…” (Betur sjá augu…), see FFF #3 for the first part. The second part of the show was much smaller than the first part, and somewhat less interesting. That may just be because I have a preference for photos of people though. 🙂 (48 images total)
Driving to downtown Reykjavík at 4 pm.
FFF #4 – The Icelandic Book of Drawings at Gerðarsafn and Cafe Dix
Today’s Fake Football Fanclub outing (#4!) was inspired by Elsa, and an ad and an article in the paper.
It turns out a scholar, Guðbjörg Kristjánsdóttir, has been working on analyzing a manuscript from the middle ages, called the Icelandic Book of Drawings (Íslenska teiknibókin), since the 1970s – and it’s finally culminated in the publishing of a book about the book, and an accompanying exhibition at the Kópavogur Art Museum – Gerðarsafn.
Said book just won a big Icelandic book-award, so admission to the exhibition was free this weekend, and I decided to go.
The aforementioned ad in the paper was regarding a free guided tour at 2 and 3 pm, but not only do I dislike crowds, we were also busy later in the day, so 11 am it was!
Ironically, I was late for my own event due to oversleeping (yeah, seriously!) but only by about 15 minutes. (57 images total, I kid you not.)
Gerðarsafn in Kópavogur is one of those buildings I’ve biked past a thousand times, but never actually entered. Well, finally the time had come!
Fake-Football-Fanclub Outing #3: Photo Exhibit at the National Museum of Iceland and Cafe Haiti
How time flies!!
Today was the third outing of the FFF (3xF?) club, and I was in the mood to be arty.
The art of choice was the opening of a new photo-exhibition by female Icelandic photographers dating from 1872-2013, called ‘From a Different Angle…‘ at the National Museum of Iceland.
Overall I really liked the show. The photos were undeniably ‘feminine’ in that they portrayed views that felt quite intimate, and/or home-y.
They “rang true”, is about as succinctly as I can put it! (31 images total)
I parked by the main building of the University of Iceland. The museum is on its right.
Kjarvalsstaðir aka The First Fake-Football-Fanclub Event
My darling, darling, darling husband, whom I love more than dark chocolate, likes football a lot.
And that’s great. I looove that he has a hobby (I have similarly engrossing hobbies in my online life), buuuut (could you see the buuut coming?), admittedly, I’ve been a bit miffed that he has a reason to physically venture out of the house every weekend (more or less) for upwards of two hours, come rain, hell, or snowstorms.
So, I’ve been trying to think of something equivalent for me to do, but there aren’t a lot of organized events for people who just want to do something different or special for two hours, sans children. And going to the gym is way too pedestrian.
And thus I decided to form a Fake-Football-Fanclub. Which will operate like a football fanclub, as in have a set time and event to attend every weekend (or close to it) picked by me.
The plan for now is to do something between 3-5 pm on either the Saturday or Sunday (opposite of Finnur’s engagement probably), and for now I’m working with ideas off of the TripAdvisor Activities list for Reykjavik.
The Fake-Football-Fanclub is called Ekki-aðdáendaklúbbur Shrewsbury Town (Not-Fanclub of Shrewsbury Town), and by making it public, I’m putting pressure on my self to both plan and go do stuff!! And of course, if someone wants to tag along, the more the merrier! 🙂
(Shrewsbury Town got picked due to Þráinn’s suggestion that Shrewsbury is the birthplace of Darwin, which is cool.)
So. Today was my first outing.
I decided to be arty, and visit Kjarvalsstaðir (The Place of Kjarval) which is a museum with two show areas, one of which is pretty permanently dedicated to the prolific Icelandic painter Jóhannes S. Kjarval, and the other houses random showings. Today was the last day of the showing for Alexander Rodchenko: Revolution in Photography (wikipedia link).
And in spite of my sometimes snarky commentary (see below), I had a very good time. 🙂 (47 images total)
The weather outside was blistery, but not too bad.