Exploring the World as a Roving Retiree

I am back home! My house looks nice but small.  It is so nice to use my electric toothbrush again! And my bed and pillow and silly stuff like my big white mug! Knowing how the train works! Though a part of SEA airport was new and  unfamiliar to me.  I am on Iceland time so I got home about 7 pm and went to sleep an hour later and woke up very early.  Yesterday in the morning I walked 15 minutes (but gingerly since the sidewalks were slippery)  to the Perlan Center in Reykjavik and had a nice few hours there. They have a great planetarium where you can see the Northern Lights without any problem (or iPhone) and a video about volcanoes and an ice cave and a great observation deck. The throne with fur rug in the ice cave The glaciers are receding and it's depressing and dramatic but I liked this man's humorous comment As usual, they had a restaurant,  café and gift shop. I spoke Spanish to a nice young man from Ecuador who worked in the café. The view of the c...

This may be my last post unless something exciting happens tomorrow! Last night the boat cruise to find the Northern Lights was disappointing but fun talking to other passengers,  an Irish couple and a woman from Dublin with a Scottish man. But the lights looked very unimpressive.  The woman on the loudspeaker said "human eyes were rubbish" (she was a Brit) but it wasn't until today that I found out they were only visible on your phone (especially using some setting on iPhones).  Seems a cruel irony! Today I was the last to get picked up for the full day tour called the Golden Circle tour of a waterfall, a volcanic crater, Icelandic horses, and, to end the day, the wonderful Blue Lagoon pools. Our guide was a woman named Maria (pronounced MAR-ia) who has a 27 year old child. First, the sunrise A visit to Thingvellir National Park which is a UNESCO site and a historic site AND where the tectonic plates for two continents, Europe and Eurasia, meet and has a waterfall and ne...

 It's been a good day, my day on my own in Reykjavik to explore, but it was cold this morning and I was glad to have my gloves, scarf and hat and double layer on my lower half! People were scraping their windshields and walking felt a bit slippery. I went to the nearby art museum. For the 2500 kroner admission you get in to the other two museums. The first one is named for the artist who donated his art, Jóhannes Kjarvel. I liked the art better by the guest artist, Gudjón Ketilsson. He called it Jaeja (pronounced like Yay Yay, I think) which means: His art was pretty amazing! Here is just a little. I walked to the other art museum near the harbor, the Hafnarhús. There was a lot of art inspired by concerns about climate change, some from Portland. Then I finally did what I have told others to do! Yes, I went to the penis museum, actually called the Icelandic Phallological Museum. Be glad you didn't go, it was pretty stupid. Admission was $17.50. And there were so many spelling m...

Today was an all day tour of South Coast! There were 19 of us. Some got picked up at their hotel but I had a 15 minute walk from the Airbnb through the park (it was still dark at 7:45). Waterfalls, glaciers and gas station stores (with mittens and hats)! But it became a sunny day, only in the  40's, so we were really lucky with the weather. Páll (Paul) played Icelandic music (which I quite enjoyed) when he wasn't talking (quite a bit about his childhood in the area--he even pointed out the house he was born in and the farm he was sent to at the tender age of 11 for the summer). "Foss" means waterfall (and that accent mark was an unsuccessful attempt to reproduce an Icelandic mark) I climbed to the top! Very worth it but my knee was complaining on the way down. "...the rugged Sólheimajökull Glacier. Sólheimajökull is an outlet glacier that flows from main ice-cap of Mýrdalsjökull where the mighty Katla Volcano rests" This glacier is so diminished that I find ...