Saturday, September 11, 2010

Rainbow, Perlan, Korpúlfsstaðir

I saw two rainbows today! One was right as I looked out my window this morning. The other was a tiny rainbow in the clouds at Korpúlfsstaðir (more on that later) but it was a beautiful day to be outside so I spent a lot of time gawking at the scenery.
Perlan is a funny thing in Reykjavík, it is a structure that houses giant water tanks for the public water in the city, but conveniently it also has a great museum, a cafe, a lookout deck, and a fancy revolving restaurant inside of it (hence the name Perlan or 'The Pearl', for it's shiny glass dome). It's also next to a beautiful forest which leads to the geothermal beach in the city (only open in the summer season). I walked to Perlan recently, which I don't recommend when it might suddenly downpour on you and the weather report said nothing about torrents. Wah-wah. There are only highways and trees in between my apartment and Perlan, so I was an unhappy camper until I dried out a little. Luckily the views after the rain were beautiful and crystal clear, and the air around the city is so clean you can often see for miles. I suppose that's what also makes it great weather for rainbows, as it rains/mists a little bit almost every day.

On another recent afternoon excursion, I visited Nicole, another Fulbright artist, at her temporary digs at Korpúlfsstaðir. You can take one bus there from Reykjavík, and you don't have to transfer but the ride is about 45 minutes and you definitely feel like you're in a totally different place than downtown Reykjavík. The 'town' there is more like a suburb, with chain stores and strip malls nearby, but Korpúlfsstaðir itself is an old dairy farm, now converted into a gold course and putting green. And in true Icelandic style, the same golf course building also has a repurposed section in it for artists' studios and artist housing! I walked around the golf course a bit (on walking trails, heaven forbid I touch the greens) before dinnertime, and took a couple shots of the first landscapes I've seen here that are fairly uninhabited and treeless. And we're not even really outside the city limits yet! You just wait a few days as I'm planning a trip around the country, which I am so much looking forward to. Some amazing images cometh.

No comments: