Evy and I were both up early this morning. It is difficult to sleep with it so light outside. It is hard to believe that this was our last night on the road and that after over 10 months, we are heading home today. It is a bright sunny day. Joshua and Benjamin seem to need their sleep and so we refrain from the usual wake up routine. I make use of our internet connection to do the final blog entries, with the exception of today. Evy saw some interesting Icelandic Christmas ornaments when we were downtown yesterday, so she left [View Full Entry]

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We had two possible options today: the thermal pools or the Saga Museum. Having done thermal pools a lot in New Zealand, we decided to go the the Saga Museum instead and so, after packing a lunch, we headed off. The Saga Museum is about a half hour walk from our apartment and is more on the outskirts of Reykjavik. It is a very modern looking domed building, visible from quite a distance away. As we approached the museum, we found ourselves on a rise of land from which we could see most of the city. The gardens around the museum [View Full Entry]

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Today is Canada Day back home. Joshua and Benjamin are lamenting the fact that they will not get to see fireworks. We get a relatively slow start to the day, and are only ready to head out some time after 11. Our thought for the day is to walk to the downtown park of Reykjavik and find the tourism office. We would like to do some whale watching while we are here, having passed up the opportunity when we were in New Zealand. The route to the downtown turns out to be fairly easy, following a single road. Reykjavik seems quite [View Full Entry]

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We can't check in at the airport until about 10 am, so we slept in a bit this morning. There happened to be a shuttle bus about to leave when we came out of the hotel, so we were quite quickly at the airport. Despite having printed out the e-tickets last night, I had the terminal confused. We got off at terminal 3, only to discover it was terminal one that we needed. Fortunately, the terminals are not too far apart and there are moving sidewalks between them. At the terminal, we found Icelandair and checked in quite quickly, though we [View Full Entry]

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We got up a bit earlier this morning, and after breakfast at the hotel, walked our luggage through the streets the short distance to the train station. We arrived with lots of time to spare before our 10:30 train, and bought food for lunch at the Marks and Spencer's as well as checking out the book stores. The train platform was quite crowded, and at the last minute we found out we needed to be at the other end of the platform for our car. When we finally reached our car, there was hardly any room for luggage as the luggage [View Full Entry]

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We packed and loaded up the car this morning, aiming the gps for the Edinburgh airport area to return our rented car. The roads got better the closer we got, and it was raining lightly most of the trip. Leaving the main highway in Edinburgh, we quickly found ourselves in a traffic jam full of people going to the Edinburgh Royal Fair (the Queen herself, went yesterday). This combined with lots of construction, led to a rather convoluted route as we tried to find a gas station to fill the car and also find the car lot. At one point we [View Full Entry]

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As we are moving again today, we packed up after breakfast and said goodbye to Uig, leaving with the sun shinning on the bay. Just down the road I stopped and took photos of long haired Scottish cattle that we have passed several times, but never yet stopped for. When he combs his hair across, Benjamin looks just like one of them ! We stopped in the small town not far along the road to do some souvenir shopping, as we still have some family to buy things for. Shortly after this, our gps tried to point us up a smaller [View Full Entry]

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Today mark ten months away from home and also, one more week before we return to Toronto. Benjamin and Joshua are delighted to be counting down with single digits. We slept in a bit later this morning, and having a coffee maker at this hostel was a nice bonus (we rarely find one) so we could actually have real coffee rather than the instant stuff. After breakfast, I got talking with a Taiwanese women who was looking at her map, planning her day. I told her of our plans to visit the castle and later, seeing us set to go in [View Full Entry]

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I went out early this morning, to a field near the castle, and cut some wild flower's for Evy's birthday. When I returned, we all had breakfast in the dining hall, under the family portraits again. After packing up, we said goodbye to the castle and headed off down the road - a very narrow one lane road. Though most of the roads here in Scotland our paved, they have this odd habit of making one lane roads with passing spots every now and then. Because they are paved, people drive quite fast on them. The trouble comes when you reach [View Full Entry]

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It was light very early again today, which was just as well as we needed to get up a bit earlier. After breakfast at the hostel, we packed up the car and heading North up the road. A few minutes later, we turned around and headed back after realizing we had left all our food on the kitchen counter ! Our second attempt was more successful and we were soon passing through downtown Inverness, on our way to Cawdor Castle. Cawdor Castle is linked fictionally though Shakespeare's Macbeth when Macbeth is made “Thane of Cawdor”. Though there is no historical link [View Full Entry]

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