Late Tuesday night we decided to tag along the next day with Adda and Halli to Snæfellsnes, a peninsula north of the capital area. Finnur’s parents happen to have a small house in one of the towns there, Ólafsvík, which turned out to be available for a couple of nights. We drove there on WednesdayRead more
Here are pictures from our last day on the Snæfellsnes-peninsula.
We spent Friday morning packing up and cleaning out the house. Lunch was therefore served outside.
We woke up to glorious weather, and headed for the pool in Ólafsvík around lunchtime. We discovered that it was an indoor pool, which was not very appealing in the blazing sun. We therefore drove a little ways east to Grundarfjörður.
The public swimming pool in Grundarfjörður. I failed to take a picture in the other direction to document the very impressive view from the pool.
We drove north from Reykjavík shortly after noon on a Wednesday towards Ólafsvík on the Snæfellsnes-peninsula. Snæfellsnes is the home of Snæfellsjökull, the glacier of the snowy-mount-peninsula, a.k.a. the entrance to the center of the Earth. Trailing us were Adda and Halli hauling a tent-trailer.
Leaving the capital. It was raining ever so slightly.
We’ve started losing track of which day it is, since they’re all pretty much the same. We wake up around 9pm (give or take 30 minutes) and it’s always Bjarki that gets up first. It then takes us close to 3 hours to actually get ourselves together well enough to leave the house. This includesRead more
Hrumph. I’ve found myself repeatedly thinking “oh, I should blog” over the past week, but deciding not to because I had pictures I really wanted to put up first. So, I’m not sure what to do about that. It goes back to the “how to insert old pictures into the blog” discussion, but is moreRead more
We celebrated Bjarki’s third birthday a week later than originally planned due to unstable health-conditions (i.e. the stomach bug). This meant that the guest-list changed somewhat, but we still had a sizable crowd with lots of kids (especially young girls for some reason!!). Bjarki was suitably excited (read: delirious with joy) about getting presents, but also confused about all the people that were there.
Bjarki opening his first present of the day. I dearly wish I could have caught his joyous face on camera once the package was open, but my flash was out of batteries, so you'll just have to take my word for it that he was deeeelighted!
According to Google Maps, the distance from our apartment to Hrefna’s workplace is 760 feet or 230 meters, and the distance to Bjarki’s daycare is 1330 feet or 400 meters. The distance from Bjarki’s daycare onwards to what will hopefully be Anna’s school is 400 feet or 120 meters. (For comparison: Bjarki’s daycare used toRead more
After much agonizing, consternation, stress, and some more stress, we signed a year-long rental agreement on an apartment in the west side of Reykjavik (called ‘West Town’ or ‘Vesturbærinn’) today. Not surprisingly we heard of this apartment through a friend how works with the previous occupant, and not through the regular online rental-sites. (In retrospect we should have taken out an ad in the paper, apparently that works also).
Anyway, the apartment isn’t fantastic by any means, but it is really really really close to where I will be working for the next year. It is also very close to Bjarki’s daycare (that he will be starting later this month) and hopefully close to Anna’s school next year (we’ve yet to sign her up properly). So bottom line: we decided to give up creature comforts for a non-existent commute, although many people will argue that the capital area is too small to call driving from one end of it to the other a ‘commute’…
So, regarding the apartment itself… On the good side it is large for a rental in this part of town. It has three bedrooms, two of which are pretty big by Icelandic standards (particularly by West Town standards). The living room is big, and there’s a dining area off of it where our big table will fit. The floors are covered using ‘plastic wooden flooring’ (Pergo?), and tiles. Not a carpet in sight – yay! Also, the rent isn’t terrible, and in fact it’s the least we’ve paid for rent in about ten years (since our first year at Stanford).
Now for the not so great parts: The kitchen is slightly above terrible. It’s the original kitchen, built when people were smaller, so the counters are at least an inch too low. In fact, the counters are about an inch lower than the newish stove that comes with the apartment. The sink is also the smallest sink I’ve seen in a while. It is not big enough for us to lay a dinner plate flat. Why it’s a double sink, (a double teeny-sink) I do not understand. We’ll have to buy our own (smallish) fridge, and dishwasher. And it has a space for a small table, plus some chairs, which I find less optimal than having our dining table sitting right next to the kitchen.
Another annoyance is that the landlord didn’t want to paint the apartment after the previous owners. Since we’ll only be there for a year (we’re SOOOO buying a place next year) it’s a hard call whether to paint or not (the walls are slightly dirty), so I think we’ll start by spotting all the holes left by the numerous nails the previous occupant put up. The landlord has mentioned that he’ll “help” us pay for any paint we buy, but it’ll basically be free manual labor for him. He did fix the broken electrical sockets and window closers, but that’s about it.
And why is he so lah-dee-dah about it? Well, apparently his contracting business bought up most of the apartments in the house before the crash, intending to renovate them and even add to the building. But then things went belly up and now they’re just holding steady, weathering out the storm.
So anyway, we have have a place to stay, triple hurrah for that! Now we just have to wait for the container to arrive, and for it to clear customs before we can call in the troops and start the fun business of jamming it full of furniture. 🙂
Here are some pictures taken on July 12th:
Standing in the hallway, looking into the living room, and the adjacent dining area. The door that used to lead from the dining area to the kicthen (on the right) has been sealed off to create a large coat hanging area by the entrance door. Oh, and did I mention we'll have to buy a lot of light fixtures? But we'll at least get to keep them!
We drove my oldest brother to Borgarnes on a windy Wednesday. Borgarnes is a small town (pop: 2000-ish) about an hour north of Reykjavik (the capital). It was really nice to finally get to see some of the country-side after being stuck in town due to endless stomach bugs, and housing-worries.
In Borgarnes. Ylfa needed to take a nap, so Nökkvi, Jóhanna, Anna, anna and I went for a walk around town. It was windy enough that Bjarki would have complained non-stop so we left him behind with Finnur and Jóhanna's brother.