Last week on Instagram I featured photos from my trip to Iceland two years ago. I went with my friend Kandi. It was truly an adventure! It was early December, so we only had about five hours of daylight each day. We did our level best to cram as much as possible into those hours!
The first day, we arrived at our hotel in Reykjavik around 8:30 am—yes, it was still full-on dark out. We grabbed breakfast and then, as the sun was coming up, we struck out on foot armed with a map the lovely people at the hotel gave us. Our destination: Harpa. The conference and concert hall on the Reykjavik waterfront.
Our trusty map didn't even make it across the street in front of our hotel before a gust of wind blew it out of my pocket. As Murphy’s Law dictates, it was immediately run over by a passing car. Better the map than us, I suppose. I darted into the street between cars to retrieve it, as you would. After all, it was the only copy we had and there was no way we were going to turn tail and admit to the hotel staff we’d so immediately run into trouble.
Reading between the tire marks, we navigated our way towards the center of town. It was only about a mile away from our hotel. We eventually spotted the water at the bottom of a rather wide street. Knowing the Opera House was on the waterfront, we turned in that direction. Sure enough, when we got to the water’s edge, we spotted our destination in the distance. I’d seen pictures of the Harpa on Instagram—all glass and modern and such. Very cool. Couldn’t wait to get inside. But wait—what was that right on the water about half-way between us and the Harpa? Our battered map told us it's called Sun Voyager.
Hello.
Holy. cow!
It was AWESOME!
I was hooked! Loved it! Despite it being almost mid-day, there still weren’t a ton of tourists out at that point. That meant I could get some great shots of it without having to dodge people. Those are some of my favorite shots from the trip. I took a slew of them from lots of different vantage points along the street. The water and mountains in the background The sky was muted pinks, purples, and blues. Sweet!
But I do love to look at things slightly differently. And I wasn’t disappointed this time. I wandered around the sculpture and stood with my back to the water. Yup. There is was.
That's what I'm talkin' about! I think it looks pretty cool. I mean, the sculpture is super modern on its own, but with the steel and glass buildings behind it? Neat.
Having dusted these photos off, I was inspired to update my online print gallery to include some of my favorite travel pics. For now I’ve added some shots from Iceland and Ireland. I still need to dig through shots from the southwest U.S. and Hawaii, but in the meantime, be sure to take a look!