Monday, April 17th, we stayed with Tóti and his family. His wife, Hannahlið, made a fantastic vegetarian meal, which was a really pleasant surprise. After dinner, Rob and Tóti ran some errands and I stayed behind to teach Marsibel (their daughter) how to make a puppet. She’s been out of school with a cold and then the holiday so she was really bored. The exciting part of this is that she’s seven and doesn’t speak english yet. That’s right, I taught puppet building in Icelandic. And mime. She was really good about figuring out what I meant and helping me learn new words. Hannahlið was standing by, but didn’t need to help as much as either of us thought she would.
The funniest part about the visit was the reaction of their very large dog to Audrey. Their dog was horribly jealous and tried to sleep in Audrey’s little basket. Have you ever seen anything so ridiculous?
So on Tuesday, April 18th we left Tóti’s house and met Bernd, then went for coffee at Bláa Kannan (the blue pot). Then Rob and I took Audrey for a walk at the Akureyri Botanical Gardens, which were completely covered in snow. Someone had gone through the park before us, leaving a single trail of footprints. Audrey bounded between the footprints like some kind of snow porpoise.
After stocking up on groceries for the road, we went to Bernd’s for coffee. Bernd and his family live in a valley outside of DalvÃÂk, north of Akureyri. Jodi, Sarah, Julie and Sam met up with us there and we had a grand time talking about travels and puppetry. Just in case you don’t remember, Bernd Ogrodnik is my friend who did Strings (Go watch the trailer) and he has a number of the puppets at his place. He also has a fantastic workshop that is the envy of every puppeteer who has seen it.
Jodi, Sarah, Julie and Sam continued on their way while Rob and I stayed around for the night. Great conversations with Bernd, his wife Hildur and his intern Ava. It was a lot of fun.
On Wednesday, April 19th, we planned to drive up to the northern most part of Iceland but that plan changed. Bernd is working on a new show and as we were walking to the car he asked if I wouldn’t mind ducking into the workshop (Seen from above in this photo) and showing him some fast connections for shadow puppets. Well…you get two enthusiastic puppeteers in a room and the conversation will quickly become more involved. We went through the connection pretty fast and then moved on to a story issue and some other concerns he was having with his new show. Rob went for a hike with Audrey but when he came back, Bernd, Ava and I were still working. We wound up staying through lunch and leaving around five o’clock.
At that point we revised our plans and drove straight to Egillstaðir where we stayed at Gistihús Olgu. Road 1 was long and wild. I won’t try to describe it, but will just give you a collection of photos. Not all of these are from the drive to Egilsstaðir.
On Thursday, April 20th, we got up and began our drive around the southern part of Iceland. We had planned to stay at Skalafell, but realized when we reached the glacial lagoon, that it was still early in the day. We had driven to Skaftafell when Eve was here, so we’d be seeing landscapes that we had seen before. Rather than staying we decided to head back to ReykjavÃÂk and have an extra day at home.
And here we are.
