If you've been following along here, you know that prior to the kidney transplant, we were tied to a dialysis center for about three years. The only travel we did was by car and if it was for more than a couple of days, Pat had to schedule dialysis along the way. The transplant meant we were free to roam and we began to make plans in June. Despite some low white count issues and some viruses popping up, Pat was cleared to leave the country. We left on Monday afternoon, Sept. 18, and arrived at our first stop in Iceland early the next morning.
Our first glimpse of Iceland from the air showed how barren it is.
We tried to stay up all day and only ended up taking a couple of short, inadvertent naps. We were lucky and got to check into our hotel room when we got there at 9 am so had a home base. We first walked back to a little deli we had seen from the bus and had a couple of pastries and coffee. Then we walked down to the waterfront to a statue called Sun Voyager, which may resemble a Viking ship but in fact is a dream boat and ode to the sun, sculpted by Jon Gunnar Arnason. Mount Esja barely peeks through the clouds across the water.
After the first foray out, I think we went back and rested, then took a longer walk and visited the Asmundur Sveinsson sculpture gallery and then an art gallery. The sculpture gallery was housed in the artist's former home and studio, which he had also designed and built.
The names of places and streets were often incomprehensible, which made it challenging trying to read the map to get anywhere.
There's a lot of graffiti and street art here.
The neighborhoods are charming.
More tomorrow - we went on a whole day tour in the rain and saw some awesome things.
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