Iceland Day 2 - the Golden Circle

After a good breakfast at our hotel, we were picked up by our travel company to get our rental car. After a few stressful moments to figure out how to work things in the car and how to navigate (we ditched the GPS and used Google Maps), we were off for our first adventure!.

As soon as we got beyond Reykjavik, the road stretched before us as we headed toward the attractions along the Golden Circle. Although this is a very popular area for tourists, the traffic was minimal.

The roads in Iceland were lined with fields of wild lupines! It was gorgeous and we had to stop for photos.

Our first stop was Þingvellir National Park. This location is where Iceland held its first parliament. You can hike between the rift between North America and Eurasia. There are beautiful views that look out over the valley. (Note: the gift shop here had a large variety of sandwiches and snacks available for lunch.)

Our next stop was at the Efstidalur Farm for some delicious ice cream for an afternoon snack.

We continued on to the Geysir Geothermal Area. Here you can walk among bubbling hot springs, although if you have been to Yellowstone you will find the area to be very small in comparison. 

The big attraction is the Strokkur geyser which erupts every 4 to 10 minutes. Sometimes it is a small burst, but I discovered that it can also erupt with enthusiasm and I got doused with a large spray. The eruption lasts only a couple seconds, so have your camera set to burst mode if you want a good shot. 

We headed up the road to Gullfoss Waterfall. This waterfall drops 105 feet in two stages of 35 feet and 70 feet. There are stairs and walkways that let you enjoy the view from different locations.

One view looks like a shape like a wedge of pie, I think!

We then headed out to find our hotel. One of the great things about traveling in Iceland during the summer is that it never gets dark! We were able to tour as long as we wanted and still had daylight to find our hotel. Our hotel for the night was Brekkugerdi Guesthouse. It was fine, but probably our least favorite hotel of the trip. The rooms we had were small, no view, the breakfast was ok, and they asked you to take off your shoes when entering which is inconvenient when hauling luggage. Breakfast was served in a pretty glassed sunroom that looked out on the lawn.

We needed to hurry out to the one restaurant in the area before it closed and had a meal of fish and chips. We learned that many of the small towns had limited meal options, so you needed to plan ahead!

The restaurant was in the hotel in the small town of Skalholt. When leaving we caught the golden

 hour glow on the church and a small turf house. A nice view to ending the day.

Iceland Day 1 - Reykjavik

We arrived at the Keflavík International Airport in Iceland around 6 am. After clearing customs, we were met by a driver (who was arranged by Nordic Advisor when they planned our trip). He drove us the 45 minutes to our hotel in downtown Reykjavik. It was really nice not to have to think too hard when jet-lagged - we didn't have to deal with our rental car (yet), directions, parking, or logistics. We were dropped off directly at our hotel.

We stayed at the Hótel Frón which was in a great location on Laugavegur right in the center of Reykjavik. We were close to shops and restaurants and could easily walk to the attractions that we wanted to see. We were able to check into one of our two rooms when we arrived in the morning. They also let us eat breakfast. The breakfast was generous and included cereal, skyr yogurt, breads, meat, cheeses, fruit, and a few doughnuts along with juices and hot drinks.

Hotel Fron has a variety of room styles in several buildings. We were in the rear building where the rooms seemed a bit older and had a small kitchen area. One room was a bit larger than the other (which happened at several locations on our trip). Not fancy but comfortable, and we loved the convenient location. The street we stayed on was filled with lots of colorful street art.

We walked to the unique Hallgrímskirkja church which is the most striking landmark of the city. It was designed to resemble the basalt rock pillar formations that you frequently see around Iceland. We wanted to get there before the crowds to take the elevator up to the viewpoint at the top. Up there we were able to see amazing views of the city, the harbor, and the mountains.

The view of the colorful buildings and roofs from above is very striking!

We wandered around a lagoon area for a bit, then headed to see the Harpa Concert Hall. It is another building with unique architecture and we enjoyed seeing the beautiful honeycombed glass colors reflected on the floor inside.

Then we walked along the harbor to see the Sun Voyager statue.

Lunch was Icelandic hot dogs at the Bæjarins Beztu Pylsur hot dog stand, made famous when Bill Clinton ate here. The hot dog is lamb-based and is traditionally covered in ketchup, mustard, fried and raw onion and remoulade. (I opted for just the ketchup and fried onion.) I'm not a big fan of hot dogs, but these were pretty good.

We returned to our hotel in the afternoon to rest and refresh for a bit. Later we wandered the streets to do some souvenir shopping. We ended up at Cafe Loki for dinner where we had some traditional Icelandic lamb soup and rye bread. We especially liked the bread which has a sweet flavor. We also had our first experience with sticker shock on the food prices - about $25 for one meal!

Iceland Road Trip 2019 - Planning Tips

Iceland has been on my travel bucket list ever since I saw it featured on an episode of the Amazing Race a number of years ago. Who knew it was not just a pile of snow, but actually was a country filled with a variety of stunning landscapes! My three friends and I have been planning this trip for several years. In this post, I will share some details of how we put our trip together (to help others who might be interested in visiting there). In future posts, I will share what we did each day with hotel and food details.

Airflight: We did some comparing of flight cost between WOW airlines and Icelandair, and found Icelandair was cheaper. In November we booked flights out of Cleveland. Boy, were we glad that we did when WOW went bankrupt a couple months before our trip. Then Icelandair canceled all their flights out of Cleveland due to the Boing 737 grounding. Thankfully, they were able to change our reservation to Toronto. 

Parking: We drove to Toronto from Detroit on the day of our flight. We used the Park and Go at the Delta Marriott Hotel near the airport which was very efficient and convenient. We stayed at the hotel the night we returned from our trip.

Trip Planning: We debated if we should take a tour or drive ourselves for our trip. We really wanted to have the freedom to drive ourselves at our own pace but felt a bit overwhelmed to plan everything on our own. 

We opted to use Nordic Advisor (in January) to design a self-drive trip for us. They reserved all our hotels (wonderful breakfasts were included) and rental car. They also supplied a driver to pick us up at the airport to get us to our first hotel and then to our rental car in Reykjavik the next day. They gave us an itinerary of suggested places to visit and detailed maps. They also gave us a loaner phone to use for emergencies/contacting our hotels if needed, a GPS (which was useless), and wifi for the car. The wifi was essential - we used it for Google Maps for our entire trip. We had great coverage for most of the trip. A few remote places the coverage dropped, and we used the Maps.Me app with a downloaded offline map of Iceland (worked great with GPS and no wifi). Nordic Advisor was not a "budget" way to do Iceland, but it was a very convenient way to create a custom tour. They worked with us to get the experience we wanted and patiently answered our many questions. They also appeared to have partnerships with some of the guest houses/hotels that we used - they appeared to fully booked for the summer if you searched online for them. We enjoyed the many unique places and locations where we stayed.

Our rental car was a Land Rover Discovery. We definitely needed the size to hold our luggage!

Our trip was for 11 days/10 nights. We began and ended with a night in Reykjavik. We traveled the Ring Road counterclockwise. I think that was a good plan because the first few days were loaded with many sites to visit and it was great to do it when we were fresh. We also had 2 nights by Lake Myvatn in the middle of the trip, which was nice to have an easy day to tour without heavy driving.

We got a lot of ideas, hints, and helpful advice by joining the Iceland Tips for Travelers group. It was a great place to ask questions and I learned a lot by reading about other people's trips and seeing their photos.

In future blog posts, I will share photos and info on what we did each day. Stay tuned!

Sermon Sketchnotes 2018

I don't get an opportunity to post to this personal blog very often anymore! I am too busy keeping my two school blogs active and busy with other technology projects. But I wanted to post a link to a personal project that I just completed.

Since 2013, I have been creating digital sketchnotes on my iPad. I do them at conferences, for books, videos, and meetings, but I also regularly do sketchnotes of the sermons at my church on Sundays. I decided to compile all the sermon sketchnotes from 2018 into an ebook using the Book Creator app. Here is the link to the book:

Sermon Sketchnotes 2018

And here are Sermon Sketchnotes 2017

To view the ebook, simply click on the link and you can click through the pages of the book.

If you are interested in learning more about creating sketchnotes, here is a link to my resource page:

http://tinyurl.com/ipadsketchnotes

And if you are interested in seeing more of my sketchnotes (along with other creative projects and an occasional picture of my cats), please follow me @karlyb on Instagram!

Hamilton Lyrics Digital Calligraphy for the Fourth of July

I recently was able to score last minute tickets to see Hamilton in Chicago! (TIP: Sometimes they have last minute tickets that have been saved for guests of the cast that are released about 3 hours before show time. You might get lucky - I had amazing 10th row seats, dead center!)

The show is amazing, of course, and the lyrics are inspiring!

I've been having fun practicing my digital calligraphy on my iPad using some of the quotes.

I use an Apple Pencil for my drawings and used the Tayasui Sketches Pro app to make my drawings. 

To help me with designing my quotes, I used Ian Barnard's Grid Builders which I recently downloaded from Creative Market. I love these shape templates. You can arrange and combine them on your page any way that you wish to make your design. The grids come in a variety of formats including brushes for the ProCreate app. I used the transparent .png format which I had saved in a folder on my iPad. I was able to import them into Tayasui Sketches Pro and arrange them on my page  on a bottom layer. When I finished my writing, I hid my layer (or else you could delete the layer.) You can see below how I used the Grid Builders to help me with my lettering and design.

Lemon Chicken Rice Soup

If I am sick, this is the soup that will help me feel better...

(Some of you asked for the recipe for the soup which I brought to school for our luncheon last week.)

INGREDIENTS

1 tablespoon olive oil
One small onion, chopped
6 cups chicken stock (I use Trader Joe’s)
1/2 cup arborio rice (Regular rice would likely work, but arborio/risotto rice has more starch and will be creamier.)
3 eggs, lightly beaten
2 lemons
1 deli chicken, removed from bones, chopped or shredded
3/4 cup chopped parsley



STEPS

1. Sauté the chopped onions in olive oil until soft.
2. Add chicken stock and heat until boiling.
3. Add 1/2 cup arborio rice. Simmer under medium heat for about 15 minutes, or until al dente.
4. In a medium bowl, temper the beaten eggs by adding a cup of stock and beating until absorbed. Then slowly add to soup, whisking as you add, to thicken the soup.
5. Grate the zest of the lemons into the soup, then add the juice.
6. Just before serving, add chicken and cook until warm. Top with fresh parsley. Season with freshly cracked pepper if desired.

Leftover soup will thicken, add more stock before serving.

Recipe adapted from Closet Cooking: http://www.closetcooking.com/2008/03/avgolemono-soup.html

Sermon Sketchnotes 2017

I don't get an opportunity to post to this personal blog very often anymore! I am too busy keeping my two school blogs active and busy with other technology projects. But I wanted to post a link to a personal project that I just completed.

Since 2013, I have been creating digital sketchnotes on my iPad. I do them at conferences, for books, videos, and meetings, but I also regularly do sketchnotes of the sermons at my church on Sundays. I decided to compile all the sermon sketchnotes from 2017 into an ebook using the Book Creator app. Here is the link to the book:

Sermon Sketchnotes 2017

To view the ebook, simply click on the link and you can click through the pages of the book.

If you are interested in learning more about creating sketchnotes, here is a link to my resource page:

http://tinyurl.com/ipadsketchnotes

And if you are interested in seeing more of my sketchnotes (along with other creative projects and an occasional picture of my cats), please follow me @karlyb on Instagram!