Excitement on the way to the airport

We just had the most stressful trip here.

 

We were in an uber from Anna’s place and come to a bunch of slow traffic on South Dowling. At first we think it’s just some traffic in the right turn lane. But after a little while the live traffic app says there is a minor accident that happened 2 minutes before we got there. For 5-10 mins we are stopped in gridlock, so I get out and see chaos up ahead.

We bail from the uber and get our stuff out. A guy in the car behind yells “are you going to the airport?” We say yeh and so he joins us in running along the road between the cars.

As we’re running, other people with their bags and luggage start getting out of the cars and running too.

Eventually we get past the accident and see that the road is totally blocked with fire engines and a truck with a snatch strap pulling cars out of the way. It was more than a minor accident!

I put down a sketchy pick up point for another uber and some hero accepts within 10 seconds. He stops in a turning lane (sorry other cars!). He races the three of us in the best ‘we need to get to the airport’ kinda way. While we chat to our new friend who’s a beef farmer from Armidale.

We only just got through check in and bag drop in time. Good bit of excitement to start the holiday! Hopefully the whole trip isn’t all that exciting

La Sagrata Familia

La Sagrata Familia was absolutely breathtaking!

The outside was Goudi’s usual mess of everything possibly going on. Everything symbolic and sculptural, all the different styles and textures too close to one another and overwhelming. Inside was even more overwhelming, but completely different.

I had the most unusual feeling walking in: I couldn’t hold everything in my head at once, my eyes darted about trying to take it in, then I stared at one thing at a time trying to remember it when I looked away. The colours and the shapes and the size, none made sense.

I remember Bug describing how he felt looking at the Grand Canyon, that it was so big, so vast, that his eyes couldn’t ‘render’ it in 3D, that it looked like a painting and trying to convince his brain that it was real was nearly impossible. This felt similar to that.

When I looked at ground level, things made sense: people and colour and columns. As I begin to look up the columns change, they split like trees or fractals, the light bounces off the joints in the trees and the branches split again further up. When the second set of branches come into view, the rest of the ceiling hangs there impossible and then finally I look at the ceiling with its shapes and untouchable heights. It looks unreal, I can’t understand how it is that I am actually in the picture that I am seeing. (I also can’t understand how the whole building is supported..!). 

As Anna said: ‘This this closest I’ve come to a religious experience’.

A tear come to my eye. Absolutely incredible.

La Sagrata Familia
La Sagrata Familia, look at those colours!
La Sagrata Familia, looking up
La Sagrata Familia, looking up
La Sagrata Familia, looking up
La Sagrata Familia, view from outside walkway

Reykjavik

Hallgrimskirche is this big cool cathedral in Reykjavik which we visited in the last full day we had to walk around.

It is a lot like Grundtvik’s Church…I preferred Grundtivik’s.

On the last day we walked to this church, down around the old harbour, to the lake and then to the 871±2 Settlement Exhibition. The 871±2 exhibition is pretty cool. In 2001 an excavation found a Viking longhouse. Because of a layer of volcanic ash found above the house, the construction date of the house was pinpointed to 871±2. So the exhibition is (literally) centred around this longhouse with all kinds of other Viking and establishment-of-Iceland exhibits. The next day we wake early and drive to the airport, by 11am we’re in London. Summary of Iceland: freezing, windy, incredible, wild. Will return.

Hallgrimskirche Cathedral in Reykjavik which we visited in the last full day in Iceland. Reminds me of Grundtvik’s Church in Copenhagen
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View of Reykjavik from Hallgrimskirche Cathedral
View of Reykjavik from Hallgrimskirche Cathedral

Plane wreck

We pack up to leave Hvoll in the morning and make a list of places to stop off on the way back to Reykjavik.

The first of which is this plane crash.

We turn off the road onto a plain of black rock with no path. Our view is split in two: the upper half is grey sky and the lower half is black rock. No amount of light from the car gives any more detail than that.

Very faintly there are specs of light in the distance: small fluro poles. For about 15 or 20 minutes we are guided by these little poles and just over a tiny rise there is the plane in from of us!

Such an eerie way to find such a thing, and exploring it is even stranger. The tail is missing, as are the wing tips. No instruments remain and the plane is peppered with holes. What happen to the crew?

There is no information except for US military markings on the side.

Later on I found that it was a US transport plane which crash landed in the 70s (possible ran out of fuel). All crew survived, but recovery of the plane was abandoned. A local farmer (may have) sold all valuable parts of the plane long ago. Strange.