Tenerife South-ish Walk / Back to Iceland
[Photos taken 24-25 March 2025, posted online 23 27 December 2025. The weather is unseasonably wet and warm, hanging out at 9C/48F. Big rainy-wind-storms have battered us over the Christmas celebration, but zero snow.]
On our third and final full day in Tenerife, we ambled southwards, again utilizing the very handy mobility scooter as needed for those who needed it. The south-side felt less hilly than the northern one.
The following day we flew back to Iceland, which was probably good timing as the Bali-bed reservations were getting very competitive, and I only scored one on our last morning!
Monday 24 March 2025
Tenerife Bali-Bed Chillin’ / Visiting La Caleta
[Photos taken 22 – 23 March 2025, posted online 22 December 2025. My Christmas present to myself is a two week vacation over the holidays, yay!]
Seemingly having lost the ability to sleep in, I woke up bright and early on our mornings in Tenerife, hauled myself out of bed, and attempted to claim three Bali-beds in the fancy balcony-section. Then it was on to breakfast, followed by some serious lounging!
The first full day was pretty quiet, but on the second full day we acquired a mobility scooter, and went adventuring. We had a lot of fun walking northwards to La Caleta, and then I decided to jog back, which went well most of the way until my Achilles tendon suddenly had enough.
Saturday 22 March 2025
Arrival in Tenerife – Dream’s Jardin Edition
[Photos taken 21 March 2025, posted online 13 14 December 2025. This has been a week of massive rain and intermittent high winds, but right now it’s snowing which is brightening up the air as we endure the last week of shrinking daylight for a while.]
We decided to tag along with good friends, yet again, to visit Tenerife for a few days. With Finnur having a busy work-travel schedule ahead, we didn’t stay for very long. It was just us and two other couples, much like two years prior.
Friday 21 March 2025
12th Birthday / Increased Daylight / UK Winter Break
[Photos taken 12 – 21 February 2025, posted online 13 September 2025. It’s bright but windy day, the leaves have begun turning although the air temperature has been unseasonably high.]
Emma’s 12 birthday finally arrived, much to her joy! We had a mini celebration at home on the day, and she invited a few friends over a few days later. Further celebrations had to wait as a) I got sick and, b) we were headed to the UK for a school winter-break visit.
In the meantime, the days kept getting longer with the sun higher in the sky, which meant taking down yule-lights, and cleaning windows.
Wednesday 12 February 2025
Winter Arrival Prep / Forest Walks / Solo UK Trip
[Photos taken 01 – 07 November 2024, posted online 09 March 2025. Bright sunny-but-chilly weather outside. The days have gotten longer, it’s now bright outside when we leave the house in the mornings, and well past dinnertime. ]
It started getting chilly in November, which meant feeding the wild birds.
There were two birthday parties in one weekend, that week I gymmed, gamed, and walked in the forest a lot, also knitted a headband, gave a car some love, before getting on an airplane to London on a Thursday, to see a show there the following evening.
Friday 01 November 2024
Munich Bike Tour / To Iceland
[Photos taken 12 – 13 August 2024, posted online 14 November 2024. Weather-whiplash incoming, going from 10C/50F to freezing starting tomorrow.]
Our last full day in Munich was predicted to be yet another excessively warm day (31 C / 88 F) in a city that isn’t really built for it, air conditioning wise.
I was therefore a little apprehensive about having booked a guided bike tour, but with a backpack full of water, a flat city, and the built in air-movement of biking, it went better than expected. In the evening we returned downtown to eat dinner in the town-hall cellar.
The day after that, we finished packing our bags, took the trains to the airport, waited in line for almost an hour to check in our bags (staff shortage still?), and then happily walked to the car park in Iceland in t-shirts in the glorious chilly breeze!
Monday 12 August 2024
BMW Museum & World / Sea Life Aquarium
[Photos taken 11 August 2024, posted online 13 November 2024. It’s now fully dark in the mornings, but it’s been warm… we could do without the rain and wind though!]
On Sunday’s, most everything in Germany is closed. This day was predicted to be very warm, so I tried finding something that was a) open, and b) probably air conditioned. I ended up dragging everybody to the BMW Museum which fulfilled a) but failed spectacularly at b). It was so warm in there that one child wilted soon after entry, and another became nauseous half-way through.
After all but running through the BMW display rooms, we walked across the way to the newer BMW Welt / World which was nicer in air-temperature but didn’t have a lot of things for us to do.
Then we crossed another street into the Olympia park, where we finally found a respite from the heat inside a mostly subterranean aquarium.
Dinner was at the same place we’d eaten on our arrival day the Sunday prior. Why mess with perfection?
Sunday 11 August 2024
Blomberg Toboggan & Tree Climbing / Downtown Shopping
[Photos taken 09 – 10 August 2024, posted online 05 November 2024. It’s almost 10 C/50 F outside, rainy and windy. Also, US elections today.]
With the weather finally cooperating, we drove south for about 1.5 hours to the foothills of the Alps. There we found an ‘play-area’ at Blomberg, with two different toboggan rides, and a tree-climbing area. All of them were connected by a ski-lift!
This was one of the clear highlights of the trip, and comes highly recommended! At the end of the day we returned our rental car, and it was a relief to no longer have to read parking signage.
The following day was a designated ‘calm day’, which everybody but Anna and myself took to mean ‘watch screens all day’, while the two of us went downtown to attempt shopping again. My highlight was finding a shoe-store that sorted their offering by sizes, and they had a huuuuge section with shoes in EUR 43 and 44, and Anna’s was finding a store where she ended up buying multiple tops.
Friday 09 August 2024
Europa-Park / Shopping / Deutsches Museum
[Photos taken 06-08 August 2024, posted online 04 November 2024. It’s rainy and warm outside. In November.]
We got up early to arrive at Europa-Park when it opened at 9 in the morning. Our hotel was a 10-15 minute drive away, and when we arrived the traffic was thick but moving. I’d like to applaud the smart team that thought of installing multiple horizontal people-movers on the way from the parking lot to the entrance.
We split up along gender lines, us girls aiming to have lower-adrenaline thrills, while the boys wanted to visit the bigger roller coasters. Team Girls had a pretty good day, finding a small and near-empty roller-coaster that Emma had her eye on quickly and taking three trips in quick succession, while Team Boys got very unlucky and ended up stuck in the same line for 2 hours, which put a damper on the rest of their day.
By late afternoon our feet were very tired, and we got in the car to drive back to home base in Munich. The autobahn speed is so high that even though the car-battery could theoretically last the whole way, in practice it was not happening. Since you have to drain it sufficiently to get the high charging speeds, I waited until we were at the half-way point (2 hours away from Europa-Park) to locate an autobahn exit that looked promising (gas stations and fast food).
We made it back around 10 in the evening, and then Finnur and I spent close to an hour circling the neighborhood, trying to decipher parking signage, discovering after talking to locals that the first spot we’d found was for residential permits only, and then finally finding an apparently legal spot for non-residents, and paying using an app.
The following day was a designated “calm-day” so I got the brilliant idea to take the kids on a quick shopping trip to a nearby mall, as two of us needed closed toed shoes for tree-climbing, and we also needed to recharge the car for its next adventure. Let’s just say that energies were not up to the task!
The day after that was rainy, so we swapped out a trip to the hills for a trip to the Deutsches Museum.
Tuesday 06 August 2024
Towards Europa-Park via Augsburg / Göppingen
[Photos taken 05 August 2024, posted online 02 November 2024. Time is flying by, mornings are dark already.]
Before our departure for Germany, I ended up chatting to an acquaintance at the gym. When she heard we were headed for Munich, she strongly recommended making the trip to visit Europa-Park. After some mulling, we decided to give it a go, in spite of it being very high-season.
Finnur and I therefore went to pick up a rental car on our first whole day in Germany. As our apartment was located in a “low emissions zone” we opted for an all-electric rental car, which turned out to be both good and not-great.
It handled well on the autobahns but I ran into a lot of trouble downloading the required apps for the various charging stations, because the “app was not available in my country” (as in “Iceland”, where my phone lives). It caused a some delays, but it all worked out.
As it’s a about a 4-hour-drive between Munich and Europa-Park, we decided to drive there, stay overnight at a nearby hotel, then arrive when the park opened at 9 in the morning, and drive back in the late afternoon. En route there we checked in with Finnur’s niece, and found that they live basically on the way to the park, and we were kindly invited to dinner!
Monday 05 August 2024
