{"id":3625,"date":"2011-04-20T21:58:25","date_gmt":"2011-04-20T21:58:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hrefna.com\/blog\/?p=3625"},"modified":"2011-04-27T23:50:52","modified_gmt":"2011-04-27T23:50:52","slug":"northbound","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hrefna.com\/blog\/2011\/04\/northbound\/","title":{"rendered":"Northbound"},"content":{"rendered":"

Iceland has a state church<\/a>,\u00a0the “Evangelical Lutheran Church of Iceland<\/a>” (aka \u00dej\u00f3\u00f0kirkjan<\/a> or ‘The National Church’).\u00a0 Yes, you read that right, Iceland does not have a separation of church and state. \u00a0Although this irks me somewhat, one happy result is that Easter is a big national holiday, with Thursday, long Friday AND the Monday after Easter all off from work.<\/p>\n

Since I finished teaching on Tuesday 19 April (yay!) we decided to skip town the day after and visit our good friends Kata and J\u00f3i in\/by Akureyri<\/a> up north. \u00a0We last visited them some two years ago<\/a> (how can it be so long?!?!) so a visit was very overdue. \u00a0We set out around 2pm, and it was relatively smooth sailing all the way to Akureyri where we arrived around 7pm. \u00a0The kids stayed awake the entire time, and did pretty well, even though all we had for entertainment was the car-radio which turns out to get very few stations out in the middle of nowhere…<\/p>\n

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In Borgarnes where we stretched our legs and got a few chocolate easter eggs for the kiddos.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Slightly north of Borgarnes. This photo was taken from a moving car...<\/p><\/div>\n

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Hello mossy lavafields! (Also taken from a moving car.)<\/p><\/div>\n

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We made a quick pitstop on top of Holtav\u00f6r\u00f0uhei\u00f0i (a big 'heath') because...<\/p><\/div>\n

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... the Wee One needed to wee. I suspect he mostly wanted to pleasure of weeing onto the snow. Fun! ... and Cold!<\/p><\/div>\n

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Chugging right along. We couldn't find our travel\/map-book before departure so I don't quite know where this is.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Can somebody decipher that sign for me? \ud83d\ude42 This is the same house as in the previous picture.<\/p><\/div>\n

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The view from Anna's seat though Bjarki's window.<\/p><\/div>\n

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We saw quite a few horses on our way north. There were a few sheep-sightings too, but no cows. The farmers probably won't let the cows out for another month or so... (Anna took this picture).<\/p><\/div>\n

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Hay-bales. These can be seen by most farms. (Anna took this picture.)<\/p><\/div>\n

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We made a very quick pit-stop at Bl\u00f6ndu\u00f3s, mostly to stock up on biscuits\/crackers and some drinks. This is a view of the gas-station there and the mountain behind it. I think I'm looking mostly east...<\/p><\/div>\n

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This is how you know you're approaching Akureyri. Here we are in H\u00f6rg\u00e1rdalur.<\/p><\/div>\n

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And we have arrived! We had initially thought we'd be eating dinner in Bl\u00f6ndu\u00f3s, but since the kids were doing ok and it was kind of early to eat dinner while we were there, we decided to power on. We arrived in Akureyri around 7pm, and shortly afterwards J\u00f3i came how with a stash of pizzas. Oh, the power of cell-phones. Also: Yum! \ud83d\ude42<\/p><\/div>\n

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J\u00f3i and Finnur inflate a mattress using a very powerful, very manly air-compressor. \ud83d\ude42<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Click on the image below to see bigger versions of these images (and a couple of extra ones).<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
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2011-04-20 Driving north<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Iceland has a state church<\/a>,\u00a0the “Evangelical Lutheran Church of Iceland<\/a>” (aka \u00dej\u00f3\u00f0kirkjan<\/a> or ‘The National Church’).\u00a0 Yes, you read that right, Iceland does not have a separation of church and state. \u00a0Although this irks me somewhat, one happy result is that Easter is a big national holiday, with Thursday, long Friday AND the Monday after Easter all off from work.<\/p>\n

Since I finished teaching on Tuesday 19 April (yay!) we decided to skip town the day after and visit our good friends Kata and J\u00f3i in\/by Akureyri<\/a> up north. \u00a0We last visited them some two years ago<\/a> (how can it be so long?!?!) so a visit was very overdue. \u00a0We set out around 2pm, and it was relatively smooth sailing all the way to Akureyri where we arrived around 7pm. \u00a0The kids stayed awake the entire time, and did pretty well, even though all we had for entertainment was the car-radio which turns out to get very few stations out in the middle of nowhere…<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

In Borgarnes where we stretched our legs and got a few chocolate easter eggs for the kiddos.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3625","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","post-container col-md-12"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hrefna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3625","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=3625"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/hrefna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3625\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3642,"href":"https:\/\/hrefna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3625\/revisions\/3642"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hrefna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3625"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hrefna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3625"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hrefna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3625"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}