[Happened 31 March 2015, put online 26 April 2015. It’s been cold!] Finnur’s big sister came for a mini-visit the other day with a surprise gift for Bjarki: New mittens! Yay! Thank you Eyrún! 🙂Read more
[Written 30 March 2015.] Yesterday I returned from my first trip to Australia! I was there for a little over two weeks on a work trip for Marel, while Finnur held down the home fort. I had megalomaniacal visions of updating this website as time went by, but when push came to shove I wasRead more
[Happened Saturday to Sunday 28-29 March 2015. Blogged on 21 April 2015. Less then a month later, yay!]
We spent our last day in Australia playing tourists in Sydney. We had to leave for the airport around 4 pm, so we didn’t have a whole lot of time. We therefore ended up renting bikes and biking around for a few hours. It was great!
Phooootoooos! (67 images total!)
We began our touring by walking to Darling Harbour again. We passed by this enclosed Chinese garden, which charged admission for entry, so we didn’t go inside. It looked pretty neat though.
[Photos from Friday 27 March 2015, blogged on 13 April 2015. I suck at keeping up.]
This was our last day in Nowra, Australia. We checked out from our hotel beforeg 8 am, and headed for breakfast. Afterwards, we stopped by ‘Australia’s best coffee shop‘ on our way out of town. It only serves coffee, no real food, so we’d never bothered to stop by before, although we’d seen a constant stream of people waiting outside for their fix. The coffee was quite excellent (I am now a mocha lover. Yeah, yeah!)
We finished up at the factory, and set out north to Sydney around noon. We drove up by the beach until we hit Kiama, where we visited a natural ocean-side blowhole, and had lunch. We reached our hotel in Sydney around 5pm, after spending about half an hour just trying to navigate to the front of the hotel through a maze of one-way streets. Good times!
After a short unwinding period, we headed out to our last dinner in Australia, this time by Darling Harbour, which was within walking distance from our hotel. The food was very nice, and the surroundings bizarrely lively (it’s a harbour area! it’s evening! there’s a ton of people here!). We walked around afterwards for a bit, before collapsing into bed.
Photos! (63 images total!)
Goodbye hotel second floor hallway that’s been my ‘home’ for two weeks!
[Photos from 25 and 26 March 2015. Blogged on 07 April 2015. That’s some jetlag!]
Our second work week in Australia was very very busy. We had a couple of days where we left the factory around 9-10 pm, and almost missed out on dinner, because most of the restaurants close at 8 pm, and the rest before 10 pm. What can I say, these country dwelling Australians are early risers!
The side effect was that nary a photo was taken outside of the factory, until we started driving back north to Sydney, which deserves its own post.
So here are the few non-work photos from the week that flew by. (14 images total)
Wednesday 25 March 2015
Breakfast at Peckish on the Park.
[Happened on 22 March 2015, written up on 04 April 2015. Which is better, late or never?]
My colleagues and I kept ourselves pretty busy with work during our two weeks in Australia, but we did manage to eke out a Sunday outing after our first week there.
After chatting to numerous people where we were working, we decided to drive south from Nowra to Jervis Bay, visiting the touristy town of Huskisson, and the ‘whitest beach in the world’, aka Hyams Beach. We then turned inland to visit the Granite Falls, and walk the adjacent rain-forest walk after a quick stop at a lookout point. We ended the day by driving through a 4WD back-road on a 2WD car, and got to the paved asphalt just in time before dark!
On to photos! (120 images total, ahem!)
Indeed, a road and some rain.
[Photos from 14 March to 20 March 2015. Blogged on 06 April 2015. Your mileage may vary.]
Since we spent the majority of each day in the factory, not a lot of pictures got taken. Mostly they’re of food and lodging. Oh well… (36 images total)
Saturday 14 March 2015
A beautiful day to spend indoors. We showed up pretty early to turn all the machinery on, and then left it to warm up.
[Photos from Friday 13 March 2015. Put online on 05 April 2015. While high on chocolate, of course!]
We wasted no time after landing on Friday morning, Sydney-time. The first thing we did was to pick up our rental car (had to get an upgrade to accommodate all our bags) and drove south towards Nowra. We stopped in a small town called Berry to eat a surprisingly good lunch, and then drove straight to the factory we would be working in for the next couple of weeks. After meeting with our client, and organizing what we would need for our work over the weekend (never a dull moment), we visited the local shopping mall to get groceries. We exited with fluids, nuts, fruits, chocolate, and granola bars, which would be the main staples in our lunches for the next two weeks.
As it happened, there was a really poor availability of hotel rooms for our first weekend, so we ended up checking into what was essentially a family camp site! It was called the Seven Mile Beach Holiday Park, where our rooms were ‘surf shaks’, and the bathrooms were of the typical communal camping type. It was both weird and nice. (39 images total)
Me on the Seven Mile Beach at the end of the first day.
[Photos taken somewhere between Wednesday 11 to Friday 13 March 2015, depending on the timezone. Blogged on 05 April 2015.]
The work trip to Australia commenced on Wednesday afternoon in Iceland, and we touched down in Sydney, Australia, around 8 am Sydney-time (that’s around dinner time on Thursday in Iceland).
A few photos got taken along the way… (19 images total)
Iceland to London (3 hour flight)
Our backyard in Iceland, an hour before the taxi picked me up.
[Happened on 07 March 2015, put online on 08 March 2015. Sleeping a whole day does that.]
Annual balls are a thing in Iceland, where an entire company/organization goes out and has a fun evening, complete with fancy clothes, fancy food, and most often, copious amounts of alcohol.
Marel’s ball was last night, and after a pre-party at the boss’s house, we moved to what is usually a sports gymnasium (they play and practice basketball, team handball, etc there), but it had been decked out with carpets, tables, chairs, and the works! A good time was had by all! (15 images total)
Dropping the last kid off for an overnight stay. Yes, for the first time in two years, there would be zero children in the house the morning after.