{"id":34792,"date":"2023-01-01T12:29:00","date_gmt":"2023-01-01T12:29:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hrefna.com\/blog\/?p=34792"},"modified":"2023-09-03T13:04:59","modified_gmt":"2023-09-03T13:04:59","slug":"downtown-ing-snow-pushing-socializing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hrefna.com\/blog\/2023\/01\/downtown-ing-snow-pushing-socializing\/","title":{"rendered":"Downtown-ing, Snow-pushing & Socializing"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

[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.<\/em>]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I spent the first day of 2023 scouring the internet for a caf\u00e9 that was open in the capital area. I found one downtown, and that’s where I spent most of the day. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sunday 01 January 2023<\/h2>\n\n\n
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By the massive downtown yule-cat, swiping at unsuspecting tourists!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\n\n
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I’d arrived downtown around noon-time, and already the sun was casting an orange glow on Mount Esja.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n
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There were a lot of people milling about in the snow, many with luggage.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n
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I lucked out and got an upstairs table at Kaffibrennslan<\/a> cafe, which is somewhat reliably open on 1 January, which is a public holiday.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n
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Enjoying the view.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n
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The cafe was packed to the gills, and I was almost the only Icelander there.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n
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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.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n
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Big Hallgrims-church up on the right.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n
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About to arrive at the yule-cat. That square is always so grim, mostly due to the mean-looking judicial building on the right.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n
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Sometimes art just works.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n
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Yum, yum!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n
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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.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n
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New bank building getting cladding made out of steeple-rocks.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n
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By the time I got to Harpa, I was freezing. Didn’t exactly plan for a walk in the cold.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n
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Whale watching boats were apparently not on vacation.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n
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Another art piece that works really well, this is super popular photo spot<\/a>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n
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Expensive waterfront houses.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n
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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).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Monday 02 January 2023<\/h2>\n\n\n
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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.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n
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Very satisfying!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n
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Also very sweaty!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n
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We invited ourselves to dinner, and enjoyed other people’s decorations.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n
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Nice led-light.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Thursday 05 January 2023<\/h2>\n\n\n
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Morning gym photo confirmation.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n
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Bjarki switched over to parkour from team gym, and really enjoyed it. This is warm up.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n
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The fully decorated ginger-bread house, unaware that it was soon due to be demolished and consumed.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n
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The back side.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Friday 06 January 2023<\/h2>\n\n\n
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Prepping for annual ginger bread house photo shoot.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n
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Kiddos and house. For some reason we didn’t demolish it right then and there, although this was the technical end of yule.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n
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Instead I went and spent the evening with old undergrad EE buddies downtown.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n
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There was a good selection of non-alcoholic drinks!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n
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My old co-worker\/boss at Marel was among the group. It was fun to catch up! \ud83d\ude42<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[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.<\/em>]<\/p>\n

I spent the first day of 2023 scouring the internet for a caf\u00e9 that was open in the capital area. I found one downtown, and that’s where I spent most of the day. <\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Sunday 01 January 2023<\/h2>\n
\n
\"\"<\/a>
By the massive downtown yule-cat, swiping at unsuspecting tourists!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34792","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-us","post-container col-md-12"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hrefna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34792","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hrefna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hrefna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hrefna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hrefna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34792"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/hrefna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34792\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34828,"href":"https:\/\/hrefna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34792\/revisions\/34828"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hrefna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34792"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hrefna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34792"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hrefna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34792"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}