Hello, Transition.

We have officially continued on in the eastward direction - solidifying, with a little disbelief, that we are certainly on our way and not merely on a week-long vacation. It seems that no matter how obvious that is, our bodies and minds have engrained habits of existence that are slow to be changed.

Thanks to some wonderfully succinct advice from a great friend, we are doing our best to absorb and be a part of all of this with small steps making up the whole. Step one, get off airplane. Step two, get to bathroom. Step three, reconvene and find bus area....and so on, until we get to the hostel, or couch host, or farm. The steps don't necessarily have an end - even more so, they seem to always be able to begin again, wherever you need them to. It is grounding, present-making.

This process - or attention to it - was especially helpful through our first few days hitting the ground in Glasgow. For those of you familiar with Boston, imagine your first experience there being dropped off in the middle of Downtown Crossing or the financial district around 5pm and your hostel being right at the edge of both. It most certainly wouldn't be the same Boston we all know and love. For those of you not familiar, what I'm getting at is that it is important to remember that first impressions are not always an accurate portrayal. Also, things take time to gel - identities of cities and people are strikingly similar in that they are incredibly complex and unfurl at surprising times or in funny ways. Sometimes it is easy to forget that.

I've said it in an email to someone recently and it remains accurate - the translation to Glasgow from Reykjavik was an aesthetically bumpy one. Where Reykjavik seems to cater to a visitor with simplicity in design and transportation, Glasgow - though things are in English - seemed harsh at first. We were also in the midst of the first stage of the aforementioned realization, while plinking ourselves in the center of a big city filled with expectations. Alas, it took a day of simply observing that exact experience and having patience...with ourselves and the newness and with the incessantly on again, off again rain.

The sense of openness, possibility and mini-adventure that comes with just walking about in a new place, getting lost, pulling oneself through the confusion is reinvigorating. It works well for us to take these walks and we've been wishing that we brought a pedometer with us, to satisfy the documentarian urge. At the very least, we are psyched to have remembered our rain coats.

Location:Dunollie Terrace,Oban,United Kingdom

Highlights: Iceland

Some highlights, for our memories and for anyone who might be planning a visit (We're hoping to do this for each country):

The Reykjavík Grapevine: the English language weekly paper

Kaffismiðja: that one I keep going on about

The Photography Museum of Reykjavík

Vík Prjónsdóttir: crazy cool knit stuff

Noodle Station: Thai noodle soup, cheap and delicious

Hallgrímskirkja: a the big church that serves as a good navigation point and stands out in my mind for its grand simplicity

C is for Cookie: another wonderful coffee shop hang

Bæjarins Beztu Pylsur: a hot dog stand, voted best restaurant in Europe a couple years back.

The Icelandic Handknitters Association: for delightful wool as straight from the source as we found it in Reykjavik, with some helpful staff when it comes to the conversions between American and Iceland knitting terms

The Seabaron: small seafood place by the harbor that even the locals recommend, with the best lobster soup you'll ever have...and the most lovely and smiling owner.

Skyr: the BEST. That is all.

Location:Jamaica St,Glasgow,United Kingdom

Takk Fyrir, Ísland

4:15 am. Wake up.4:43 am. Out the door. 5:16 am. Shuttle to Keflavik international airport. 8:05 am. Liftoff to the south and east and destination two: Glasgow, Scotland, UK.

There are obviously very many things we didn't do in Ísland, but what we did do certainly gave us reason enough to feel that we not only got to see the country a bit, but we also got to know it.

You might have noticed that we've uploaded a lot of pictures that you can get to over in the right column. In there are some from:

- Hiking Mt. Esja, the main ridge/range across the water that looks over Reykjavík and the surrounding area. We only made it to checkpoint four (of six) before turning around in order to catch the bus back to town, but from the very start it was apparent that hiking in Ísland is slightly different than in the States in that the trail starts and it just goes up. No signs saying how difficult it may or may not be...just up. We were hoping to go back another day (earlier) to get to the top but ran out of days. Next time! - A trip to Þorsmörk on the south coast, a wildlife preserve that nestles into three glaciers, if my memory serves. One of these is on Eyjafjallajökull, the volcano that blew last year, and one is on Hekla, which is "the one they're really worried about," due to the amunt of flooding it would cause with glacial melt. After our picnic lunch we hiked up a ridge on paths with dropoffs that made us question whether or not they were actually the continuation of the trail and at the top got confronted (well, Casey did) by a Norwegian woman who was more than eager to chat. She was also at least 75 years old. Apparently Norway has something in the water? - A coffee shop that all others I visit will now be judged by. - The 10:40 pm sunset that we managed to catch three nights in a row as it little up the entire sky and surronding mountains and backlit the gulls as they reached their evening feeding time. If we were here just a couple weeks from now we would've gotten to experience the 24 hr. sunlight.

We owe a big thanks to our couch surfing hosts, James and Audra, who included us on a dinner party with some friends of theirs (Kári, Helga, Gunnar, Vala and her daughter Járngerður [whose full name translates to Iron Maiden, daughter of the thunder of Thor - beat that!]), allowing us to step into local culture a little further. Audra also made one of the best cakes I've had in recent memory: pear almond.

We also owe a mini shout to Kjartan, the fisherman from the Vestmannaeyjar islands, who we met at the hostel our second night and who I can be seen "arm wrestling with", though it was him who said it doesn't matter who wins.

Location:Manchester, UK

A Shout Out...

...to Jack Passion. If you do not know him, he's the two-time WORLD champion in the Natural Full Beard at the world beard and mustache championships. We happened into him on the street in Reykjavik today and he (and his friends) were super nice, even after 30 or so hours of travel to get here from California.

Backstory: before heading out to Iceland, while researching "things happening in Iceland" we somehow came across the World Championships of Beard and Mustache...growing, or something like that. Pretty phenomenal. When we realized that, though the event was in Norway, the American team would be stoppong in Iceland for a few days while we were supposed to be here, we vowed to approach any man with amazing facial hair. We figured that either they would be en route to the championships or just be worthwhile for some conversation.

Thus, across our path walked Jack Passion today. We decided to keep our promise to ourselves...So, on Sunday, send out some good winning-natural-beard vibes his way and know he is a nice guy.

jackpassion.com labeards.org. (jack's pal, also really nice!)

YAY!

Location:Reykjavik, Iceland

Some Inspiration

This is the magic of travel. You leave your home secure in your own knowledge and identity. But as you travel, the world in all it's richness intervenes. You meet people you could not invent; you see scenes you could not imagine. Your own world, which was so large as to consume your whole life, becomes smaller and smaller until it is only one tiny dot in time and space.Your return a different person. All you need to do is give yourself over to the unknown. It doesn't have to be on a vast, dreamlike arctic plain. It can be on a gentle stroll through a Wisconsin forest or on a street corner in Nairobi. What matters is that you leave the comfort of the familiar and open yourself to a world totally apart from your own.

- From Letters To My Son by Kent Nerburn

* this was part of a reading that some wonderful friends gave us for our first plane ride and it really resonates with us. we couldn't say it better ourselves.

Location:Reykjavik, Iceland