Iceland - Thursday morning

Well, here we are in Iceland. And what was the first thing the guys wanted to do in this strange and wonderful land? Why, SLEEP of course! Jim saw the bed and just crashed.

Jeff decided he was going to take full advantage of "nap time" and snuggled right in.

Those weenies. Liz and I decided to take advantage of the fact that all the men were sleeping, and go SHOPPING! First stop - Alafoss factory outlet.

Wool galore! The ladies in the store were extremely helpful (thank goodness, because I don´t know that much about knitting). They helped with everything except the colour selection, which took me at least half an hour. So many to choose from! I can´t show you what I bought because it´s a surprise. Especially for the person I am going to ask to teach me to knit socks and mittens, hehe!

And beautiful sweaters. We hadn´t been anywhere else yet, we didn´t know how good the prices were. It turns out that they were cheaper there than anywhere else. I kind of assumed that the sweaters were solely for tourists, but I during the day we saw lots of locals wearing them. They are no dummies - those sweaters are WARM.

 

We asked the lady at the wool shop for directions to the quilt shop. One thing we have noticed about the Icelanders - they are all so helpful and happy. Jim said it was the most enjoyable experience he ever had renting a car - the man behind the counter gave us all sorts of tips, joked with us, and even told us that we wouldn´t really need a GPS if we knew how to read a map. If you take a wrong turn in Reykjavik, you just turn again until you are back where you started - it´s not a very big town. And there are a few landmarks that you can see from almost everywhere - the big church (Hallgrimskirkja) and the Pearl - a building that actually looks like a half pearl on top of a hill. It is beautiful all lit up at night, I have to remember to take a picture.

The quilt shop was very easy to get to. Except for one thing. When you think you are going to merge onto the main highway, the sneakily make you turn 180 degrees and then you end up heading in the opposite direction. That happened to us 3 times yesterday (and not just to me, to Jim too) But all you have to do is continue to do the cloverleaf a couple of times and you are heading in the right direction.

What a wonderful quilt shop! Better than most I have seen in North America.  They had loads of samples everywhere - on the walls going down the stairs -

and books - holy cow. I had a quick look and they have a lot of new publications as well as a few good oldies. Elaine is there anything that you are looking for that you can´t find? They might have it here :-)

I asked the shop owner if she had any local patterns or fabrics designed by locals, but alas, she told me that all their stock came from the States or Canada. And while they had a wonderful selection and lots of stuff, I wasn´t tempted to buy any of it because it was all at least 1 1/2 times  as expensive as at home. It was inspiring though and I am itching to get back home and work on some of the things I saw made up in the store.

We were a little late getting back to the hotel but we needn´t have worried - the guys were still sleeping. After a couple cups of coffee (which is delicious here), we were finally ready to head into Reykjavik for the afternoon to do some sightseeing.

The internet in the hotel is free in the lobby for a 30 minute session but you have to pay $4.00 for 20 minutes to use it on your own computer. I am switching between our computer to upload photos and the hotel computer to write captions (I know - I have to make my life complicated!) so I am going to try to post 2 or 3 times a day depending on how long I can use the computer in the lobby. Stay tuned for our afternoon adventures...