The Grand Tour AKA The Trip From Hell, Part 1

  We arrived home the day before Thanksgiving. That had been the plan, because we've never missed a Thanksgiving with the kids. That made our trip a total of 5 weeks. In that 5 weeks, everything that could go wrong seemed to do so. Not that we didn't have a good trip. I really shouldn't call it the trip from Hell, because we had a good time overall, and most of the bad things that happened didn't happen 'to' us!

  I'll start at the beginning. I remembered everything I was supposed to take, except I couldn't find the gifts I was going to take to mail to my Flickr friend. That made me feel bad, but if I really want to I can mail them when I do find them. Of course, then she'd have to pay a huge duty on them. I found that out before I left. I had something to take over for one of my readers, and she told me that if I mailed it from England she would have duty to pay, whereas if I mailed it from the EU she wouldn't have to pay duty. So it travelled with us to Germany and Belgium, where it remained with my friend for mailing. Anyway, we set off with two carefully packed 50 pound cases full of gifts for friends and relatives. Due to postal fees and duty charges we hadn't mailed anything to them for years. So I had a gift for everybody. The cases were packed and weighed and reweighed, and everything worked out just right. Emma drove us to the airport, and we made our plane in plenty of time. Of course, when we reached New York, we had to change planes, and airlines...and airports. That meant hauling our giant bags around with us through the airport, and onto a van, which drove us to another airport, where we sat around waiting for our flight to Iceland. The change of airlines was because Iceland Air doesn't fly inside the U.S.. 

  We had an uneventful flight, and arrived in Iceland at about 6 o'clock in the morning. In the airport I spotted a whole display of Tin Tin figures and plush 'Snowy' dogs..

  I had in mind to find a Tin Tin figure while we were on this trip, but I didn't want to pay airport prices. I figured I'd wait and see what I could find in the real world before I paid the airport price for one of these. (I also wanted a more playable figure, without a base.) I thought the same thing about the 'Cats Rule the Town' Reykjavik t-shirt I liked for Emma.(There really are cats all over Reykjavik's town center. They belong to people. They have collars on and everything. They just wander around, peeking into the shops because they all had their doors open.)

  I also saw these kids in the airport shop that was selling the Tin Tins.

 

  Iceland is all about wool, so the knitted dolls make sense.

We caught the shuttle which took us on the one hour trip to the bus station in Reykjavik, where, we had been told, our accommodation was a five minute walk away.  The problem was, it was then 7 o'clock in the morning, the sun barely up, and we weren't allowed to check in to our accommodation until 4PM. With two carry on bags, a camera bag back pack, a large purse type bag with all my junk in it, and those two 50 pound cases. There was no way we were going to roll all that around Reykjavik until 4PM. So we paid far too much and checked the two huge bags at the bus station. That was all that would fit. That left us to roll the carry on bags around Reykjavik for hours. My leg was still bothering me. I felt sick. It was cold, and it rained most of the day. But I found out that Icelandic pancakes, and yogurt are delicious. 

Skyr is yogurt.

Pancakes with jam and cream.

Pancakes with yogurt and caramel sauce.

If you're ever in Reykjavik, have the pancakes with yogurt and caramel sauce and the pancakes with jam and cream, at the Café Loki, on a corner across the street from the famous Hallgrimskirkja church.

Café Loki is the beige coloured building left of center, and it has the name on it.

Hallgrimskirkja church at night. The lights change colour. We saw it white, purple, and red.

  Right away we found that our phones didn't have service. They were supposed to, but they didn't. I had kindly been given a nice phone by a friend of Emma's before we left, and it proved invaluable. It didn't have phone service in Iceland, but it picked up the internet almost everywhere, so I could message people, keep the kids up to date on what we were doing, and it takes very nice pictures...something we would come to appreciate, even though we both had cameras.

  So all day we went around the town with the two carry on bags, which fortunately have wheels, if not the really good ones bags have now. 

Ken with one of the bags. Two if you count his camera bag that's hanging on the carry on bag.

We walked all over that area, seeing what we could see.

Hallgrimsirkja church.

Interestingly different buildings. Mountains in the distance.

Trolls are big in Iceland...in more ways than one.

  I discovered that most places had something specifically for vegetarians or vegans. We found a whole vegan restaurant.

I had some patties that were pretty good, and potatoes and salad. I was feeling too lousy to eat it all though.

  I was going to strangle Ken by the end of the day because we couldn't just go to our accommodation and rest. We finally got in a bit after 4 o'clock. The place was warm and cozy. I got in the shower right away. That was another pain in the butt. As soon as the water was turned on the shower curtain sucked itself to my face and body. It was almost impossible to bathe because there was a curtain all over me. Normally that would creep me out: a strange shower curtain all over me. But I did the best I could. I was too tired and sore to worry too much about it. I was in bed by 6 o'clock, and didn't get up until the next day.

  Here's a thing. That was the most comfortable bed and pillow EVER. I don't think it was just because I was so relieved to lay down, because I felt the same way the next night. I had Ken take a picture of the pillow tag so I could remember what it was. The pillow was a Nordic Sleep Foss Flakes, medium low, and it was the best pillow I have found besides my 50+ year old feather pillow I've been sleeping on since I was 11.  It was made in Denmark, so I wondered if I could find one when we went to Europe and were a bit closer to the source. I asked my friend Helga, in Belgium if she'd ever heard of it. She immediately went into search mode and tracked them down online. They turned out to be expensive, and I didn't know how I'd get such a big thing home, so I gave up the idea. I will now dream about the perfect pillow, and it is a Nordic Sleep Foss Flakes Medium Low...

  But the night wasn't over for Ken. He had a nap, and then had to go out and haul the bags from the bus station, otherwise we'd have to pay for another day, which was too expensive to do. He came and went in the night, taking the opportunity to photograph the church at night while it was lit up. He also discovered that we were only a few minutes from the bus station, just like our airb&b description had said. It seemed like we had walked  miles, and I'm sure that in the ensuing hours between 7 and 4, we had. 

  The next day we went out to see a bit more of Reykjavik. Tammy World bought an Icelandic sweater.

We had pancakes at the Café Loki again. 

Yes, that's my glass of milk.

That's a forkfull of pancake I was trying to share with Ken.

We saw this cool wall.

We went inside the Hallgrimskirkja church.

I noticed a window to an upstairs room to the left of the bottom photo. I could see there was a miniature of the town in that room! I got Ken and we went to see where the stairs were that led up to the room, only to find that the stairs were roped off. A guy who was delivering hymn books told us that the upstairs was closed. I was very disappointed, but we went back out to the lobby area, where there were loads of other people, and Ken wanted to wait for the hymn book guy's van to leave from where he had parked, right in front of the doors, so he could get a photo from that spot. While we're standing there, with loads of other people mind you, the guy comes back out for another load of hymn books, and makes a point of coming up to us and repeating, "The upstairs is closed." Yeah, and? We get the point buddy. It's not like we're lingering near the stairs, waiting for the chance to slip up there. We're way out here, amongst a zillion other people you aren't suspecting of anything. I was offended.

Somewhat late in the afternoon we decided to take the 'hop on/off bus', and see where we might want to hop off and have something to eat. We thought we'd go all the way around once, and decide where we wanted to get off the next time around. 

So we got around once, deciding to 'hop off' at the docks, where Ken could get some fish. So  the bus started around on it's second lap. Not more than a couple of stops into it, the bus driver announced that the next stop would be the last for the day. What?! We got off near the docks and walked the rest of the way, only to find that everything seemed to be closed for the day. 

Ken was going to be getting hangry soon, so we needed to find food. We did stop in a shop and get some Icelandic ice cream. They seem to like black licorice there, and Ken got the licorice ice cream. Yech! 

That's it on the right.

  The Elf on the Shelf seems to have invaded everywhere. We saw every rip off of The Elf on the Shelf every country had to offer.

I had been joking the whole time about finding Icelandic honey, a reference to a Monty Python sketch where a guy is going door to door trying to sell honey for Icelandic Honey Week. But when the person who answered the door asks for Icelandic honey, they are told there is no such thing because it's too cold in Iceland! We kind of found out that that is true. The shops sold Spruce Syrup, (Which I was told really does taste like a spruce tree smells.) and Birch Syrup, but the man in the shop verified that they really don't have honey because they don't grow many flowers in Iceland. But guess what I finally found!

Icelandic honey!

 

  

I would have loved to have bought some and sent it to a Python loving friend of mine, but it was a bit expensive when she isn't really a sweets eater, and our luggage already weighed a ton.

I actually kind of would have liked to try the tree syrups, but I'm sure all I would have wanted was a taste, because it sounds like it would be awful!

   We walked for ages. I was in so much pain. I had to just keep pushing myself. Ken assured me that we weren't that far from a place to eat. He was managing to use the phone to sort out a place. Things were closing quickly, it was starting to get dark, my leg was killing me, and Ken's GPS was crap. We found someone who could direct us to the lobster place he was looking for, only to find that it had gone out of business. We finally found a restaurant that was open, and I put my foot down: We're eating here, I don't care if they have fish or not. As it turned out, the food was really good.

I had the chickpea and carrot fritters and veg. All the food was brought to your table in a skillet fresh off the stove top!  

For dessert we had apple crumble with vanilla and pistachio ice cream. It wasn't a combination I would have thought of, but it was good.

  A few years ago Emma and Ivy took a trip to New York and Canada. They brought back a little keyring for corn loving Ken. They thought it looked like him, and the fact that it was an ear of corn made it even better. We call him Corn Daddy, and Ken, after watching me photograph Tammy World everywhere, decided a while back to start documenting Corn Daddy's travels too.

Corn Daddy, about to dive into a drink.

 

  After we ate we walked back to our accommodation, photographing the church again, lit up. We met up with one of those Reykjavik cats.

Don't look at the hat. It was cold and raining, okay?!

  We had wanted to see the Northern Lights. We talked to a lady on the shuttle bus from the airport to the bus station on that first morning, who said she had seen them from the plane when she flew in. But there were two other ladies staying at our air b&b who had booked the excursion and not seen the lights. They were told they could come back for free the next night because they had missed them. They checked out before we could talk to them the next morning, but we talked to a couple on the Hop On/Off bus who said they were supposed to go that night, and the trip had been cancelled due to cloud cover. So we wouldn't have gotten to see the lights, even if we had booked it.

   We had to get up before daylight the next morning to get to the bus station in time to catch the bus to the airport in time. It wasn't so bad walking to the bus station with the bags, mainly because Ken took both big ones. I beat him to the bus station, and was picking up some cool rocks in the parking lot when Ken, who had somehow managed to get into the bus station without me seeing him, came out panicking, telling me the bus was about to leave, and come on. (And yes, I brought rocks home. They were really neat. They were almost perfectly round, and pretty smooth.)

  We made it onto the bus, and to the airport. 

At the airport Tammy met a giant Playmobile guy.

We met the brother of the troll from that shop in Reykjavik.

Ken's comment is, why is that guy so much bigger compared to me than to him? Smart aleck.

And I found Sobo and his family.

They're trolls too.

I caved and bought a Tin Tin figure, and the t-shirt I liked for Emma, since I hadn't found either away from the airport.

"Cats Rule the Town".

  We waited for our flight. 

I don't know why I'm doing this.

While I waited, Ken ran off to see if he could find any food, since we hadn't eaten. Somehow he managed to almost miss the flight, while still not bringing back any food.

  And that concluded our time in Iceland. Up next: Glasgow, and more bad luck.

The Doll Book of the Month Club: Raggedy Ann Stories by Johnny Gruelle

   Well, we're back from our trip, but obviously the Doll Book of the Month is late. That's because, like everything else connected with our trip, something screwed up. We got home to find that our internet had been out for days. Ken contacted our internet provider and we were told they could get to us about December 5th. I, in the background, shouted, "That's WEEKS!" Apparently the person on the phone heard me, as she said they might be able to expedite things. 'Might' is the operative word there, as they didn't actually show up until the 5th. Ken suggested I write my review in notepad and copy and paste it to the blog. But another problem is, the paper with all my passwords on it, that I always keep in my desk drawer, has disappeared. As I alluded to at the beginning of this post, that is a carry over from the world's most bad luck trip, which we just returned from. Not that we didn't have a good time, and things weren't pleasant most of the time. But Ken says he was talking to someone at work after we returned, and he asked them to name every bad thing that could happen on a trip. They did, and all of it had happened to us on this one, and more besides that no one would even think of. But never mind about that. I'll cover that in my posts on the trip. This is our Doll Book of the Month Club post. And the book this, (or, rather, last) month is "Raggedy Ann Stories", by Johnny Gruelle.

  I won't bore you by repeating the story of Johnny Gruelle and Raggedy Ann's origins in full. For that, I'll refer you to my 2014 post on my childhood Raggedy Ann and Andy dolls. I will only give you the basics here. Johnny Gruelle created the Raggedy Ann doll after either finding a doll his mother had once made for his sister when she was a child, or when his daughter found an old rag doll in his mother's attic. There are conflicting stories. He received a patent for the Raggedy Ann doll in 1915, the same month his young daughter Marcella, for whom Raggedy Ann's owner in the stories is named, passed away from vaccination poisoning. (That's a whole tale in itself too, for which I also refer you to the 2014 post.) The first Raggedy Ann book was published in 1918. So the doll far preceded the books.

   Johnny Gruelle, apart from being an author, was also an accomplished artist, and the original Raggedy Ann book is blessed with his beautiful illustrations. 

  The stories are sweet and simple, mostly focusing on Raggedy Ann and how the other toys adore her.

 They adore her because she is kind, loving, and honest. But she isn't sickening, which is nice. 

  This is one of those books about what toys get up to when no one is around. 

As old fashioned as these stories are, I can see them still appealing to children today. I'm not talking about modern Raggedy Ann stories, because I know pretty much nothing about those. But this book is a pleasant and entertaining read. I wish I had had a copy when Ivy was small, because she loved Ann, even if she pretty much ignored Andy, who had always been my favourite. 

The character of Uncle Clem looks very like Andy, who hadn't yet been invented.

  If you do look for a copy of this book, which has probably been reprinted many times, (My copy s quite old.), try to find one with Johnny Gruelle's original illustrations. 

They are absolutely beautiful and the modern illustrations can't hold a candle to them.

The Doll Book of the Month Club: Cozy Classics, Les Miserables?

   Even though I'm away, the Book Club lingers on. This month's Doll Book of the Month isn't about dolls, but the illustrations are all doll. The book is from the Cozy Classics collection, published by Chronicle Books. It's a board book, and so you'd think it must be for very small kids, right? And what is this wonderful, cozy classic for tiny children? Why, Les Miserables, of course.

  Now, if there's a classic that I wouldn't term 'cozy', this is one of them. The story is downright depressing. I mean, there's a reason it's called "Les Miserables", and not "Le Heureux" (The Happy").

  I got this book at Dollar Tree. What made me buy it was the illustrations, which I thought you might enjoy seeing. The book is one word per page, if you don't count the first page, which has a picture over a picture of a printed page. 

Apparently the intention was to introduce kids to the classics, while teaching them simple first reading words.

Other books in the series include "Emma", "Huckleberry Finn", "War and Peace", "Pride and Prejudice", Moby Dick", and "the Wizard of Oz", which probably lends itself better to the format than say, "War and Peace".  But I guess they realize there's something a bit out of the ordinary in the idea, as their website says, "These unique and inventive board books serve as true word primers for toddlers, storytelling vehicles for older kids, and ironic and humorous coffee-table pieces for adults!" 

  The illustrations are photographs, using felted dolls as the characters. 

According to their website, they never use photoshop. All pictures are shot on real locations, or in scenes built especially for the photographs.

  The books are by Jack and Holman Wang. I'm not sure who needle felts the characters. 

  I like the idea of introducing kids to the classics, and the illustrations are reminiscent of the old puppet illustrations in books like the ones I posted about HERE, albeit a lot simpler than the Shiba ones. 

To learn more about the series, and other things the Wangs have done, check out their website at: www.mycozyclassics.com.

  See you next month for another book. That one really will be cozy.