Flower Day

Skólavörðurstígur in Reykjavík

The Saturday before last was Flower Day in Reykjavik. I went for a stroll with Óðinn in his belly pack and noticed that just about every woman I passed on Skólavörðurstígur (the street leading up to the big church) held a rose in her hand. Valentína, who was holding a tombóla with Marsibil at the top of Skólavörðurstígur told me when I went to visit their enterprise (they made over $25 each that day!) that someone was handing out flowers to women downtown, though she didn't know who. I didn't make it far enough on my walk to find out, but I did see this charming group of people with their watering cans. It must have been an acting troupe....they were very cute and kind of pranced about watering things like parking meters and garbage cans. We definitely more of this type of urban attraction here in our little city!

The Bridge

Yep, we popped off to Northern California for a week's stay pretty much the day after I turned in my last assignments at University. We took the very first direct flight of the season to San Francisco, a trip that takes a relatively easy seven+ hours if all goes as planned. It's a Major Improvement over stopover flights and made it especially easy to travel with Óðinn (Valentina is always easy to travel with.) At six weeks old, he basically slept the entire time there and back. Dad calls him a miracle baby... : )

SF is always beautiful, and we particularly lucked out on this day since it had rained buckets the day before. We took a break from shopping and hiked up to the top of Buena Vista Hill, overlooking lower Haight, meeting a few squirrels, a little black dog and some sweet old Italian tourist ladies on the way. Valentina thought it would be fun to run down the hill but I nixed that plan; instead she cartwheeled the entire descent. Crazy girl!

The beauty of this one-week trip was that we didn't have to say too many big goodbyes: my parents are moving back to Reykjavik after forty years in Northern California in just two weeks time, and my sister's clan will be coming late summer. One week was actually just perfect...we got off the Lava Rock for a much needed reality check (otherwise known as a shopping spree, American style) and found that we were more than happy to return home. And that's exactly how a vacation should be!