Category Storms
Speaking of flowers… those lilies did not cooperate 🤨
After two full weeks —aka eternity—the lilies finally deigned to bloom. By then nearly all the berries had turned brown, the pussy willow buds had either dropped off or begun to sprout—and the lilies weren’t even white. Pink! Sigh. But it’s good lesson in the importance of getting the timing right in floristry. And of […]
Not the week to travel
I was supposed to start the new year off with a business trip to Washington DC. A series of meetings and onboarding a new team member. Last week when snow and record low temperatures shut down all travel out of Seattle I rescheduled my flight, pushing it out to today thinking the additional day would […]
Work travel!
After a year and a half of working from home I’m officially on a business trip to Chicago! And it’s going just as a business trip to Chicago should go: flights delayed due to severe weather . . . . . . and then an extra hour in the air due to tornadoes . . […]
Black sand beaches!
At long last! The wind died down just enough for us to scrape our way along the southern coast to Vik, a tiny town on a stretch of black sand beach. If you do a web search for pictures of Vik, you’ll see serenely pastoral views of a picturesque village nestled among green fields beside […]
Waterfalls!
Iceland is a land of wind and volcanoes and glaciers—and also waterfalls! They pour over the volcanic cliffs onto the flat coastland below. Highly dramatic and incredibly photogenic, they are sure crowd pleasers. The first one we visited was Seljalandsfoss, which was also the largest and busiest. Next, just a few hundred yards up the […]
Lava!
Getting rescued with a new (and functional!) van did not solve our problems. Cyclone Dennis was still pummelling us with 100+ mph winds, topping 150mph in the passes—which meant it wasn’t safe for us to continue our journey. So our guide announced an impromptu visit to the Lava Centre, which offered a small and highly […]
Stranded!
We left before dawn (aka a little after 9am) on a two-day adventure tour to the southern coast of Iceland. In no time at all we were traversing frozen lava fields and climbing our way over the Blue Mountains. About an hour outside of ReykjavĂk, just as we were passing through a town named after […]
Exploring ReykjavĂk
Oh man, what a day. We criss-crossed this charming town no fewer than five times from end to end under the biting winds of a north-Atlantic cyclone. The meals were delicious, the architecture fantastic, and those shapes, colours, and textures of the houses? I’m obsessed. Off to bed now—photos in order, without explanation; out into […]
Reykjavik!
We made it! The last flight out of Paris got us to ReykjavĂk just after midnight and literally minutes before Dennis the storm hit. By the time we had collected our luggage and climbed onto the shuttle, the wind and snow had begun. We crawled our way through blizzard conditions into town, more than an […]
New Year’s Eve 2018
The big night was finally here! We knew we couldn’t be in Sydney for New Year’s Eve without witnessing the legendary fireworks over Sydney Harbour. Fortunately the Royal Botanic Garden offered its lawns for those of us who didn’t want to spend a fortune at one of the local restaurants. For the price of a […]
A More Gentlemanlike Manner 