Iceland: The Return

June 29, 2018

I made a trip back to Iceland after finishing off my research in Amsterdam, Budapest, and Istanbul. All in all, my travels in May and June lasted for about seven weeks. Most of the time was spent researching, but I also spent about 10 days in various places in Iceland at the beginning and end of the trip. Shots from my first visit to Iceland, which took place in the first half of May, can be found here and here. 

On the ferry from Heimaey back to the "mainland"

June is apparently high season in Iceland, and my guidebook had advised me to arrange accommodation ahead of time. I'd therefore decided back in Turkey where I was going to stay--I booked a night's stay in Hveragerði, followed by two nights in Heimaey, on the Western Islands. Last I'd spend one night in Vik, on the southern coast, before driving back to the airport outside Reykjavik to drop off the car and fly back to the US. Ultimately, my trip would take me as far east as Jökulsárlón before I turned back. 

Taking the Long Road to the Imperial Metropole

June 25, 2018

Back when I was living in Turkey in the 1990s, I made a point of taking a vacation every summer for 6-8 weeks. It made sense, and I could afford it. After all, most of my English teaching work dried up in the summer anyway. From the beginning of July until the end of September, there wasn't a lot of work to do, and frankly I appreciate the opportunity to get out of Istanbul and visit some other countries in the region. My daughter was living in southern Hungary at the time, so pretty much every year I'd trek through the Balkans to go see her, usually traveling up through Bulgaria and parts of ex-Yugoslavia, then coming back down via Romania and, again, Bulgaria. Other summertime excursions took me through various places in central Europe, the ex-USSR, the Middle East, and east Asia. 

    Reykjavik