Faroes - all over the place

This is going to be all over the place - but hey who cares, limitted readership means suffer baby

On arrival at the Faroes, God was with us in the form of Pastor Dalla and her husband Agnar and the State Heritage folk were there too - Þór Hjaltalín

Our tour directors, on the left Nanna Hermansson - tour guide extraordinaire and Sirrí choir foreman, cousin and all round great person!

This is the view from the hotel window. Hotel Faroya is high up above the main town. It has a grass roof and the longest corridors that I have ever walked.. Still twas a nice hotel.

It also has the bonus that you put your bevvies out the window for instant cooling

I promised grass roofed houses! I have now decided that I will paint my house black with white windows! I think it will be great - the house will look smaller but that just means that the tardis effect will be even greater!

Downtown Thorshavn at Tingsnes the area where the old parliament in Faroes was. If I were ever to live in the Faroes this would be where I would like to live

We had dinner in this area in the tiniest of tiny houses. Laura was our host ( a Faroese actress who is also a farmer in Skálavík). The food was excellent - apart from skerpu kjöt - an aquired taste... I was full for two days after that (and had the worst wind I have ever ever had) Nevertheless it was an excellent evening and the ambiance was amazing.

the next day was a trip to gjogv and the Island of Oisterey - Eastern Island. Amazing scenery, amazing roads and also a great lunch was had - apart from the pilot whale meat... call me useless - like icelandic shark - I am not good with food thats off...

This is Gjogv. an amazing little inlet where they used to pull up the fisherboats.. a great natural harbour but at the same time quite treachorous this is the dog I met at Gjogv... he has an underbite... I thought he didn´t like me - shows how much a facial expression influences first impressions.

the choir I was travelling with had a concert in the church at Götu. An amazing building with wonderful accustics.. the choir was excellent as was the Faroese choir that hosted them. We had a soup dinner in the kindergarten with the other choir and lots of singing and drinking ensued.

This is both choirs doing rehearsals together. They sounded ok but when the church filled with people the sound became amazing.

It was a great trip, great people, a wonderful country and will leave an everlasting memory.

Faroes - last day

This is going to be one of those dragged out blog posts - if it ever finishes, so I am starting at the end. On our last day we decided to walk down to the centre of Thorshavn, a little later than planned, as I had slept in. Not my fault ofcourse, never is.... had a few drinks the night before and was in bed at around 3am and woke up at 10.30 - too late for breakfast but we still had time to check out the town before our bus trip to the airport at 2pm

On the way we met this Icelander, sitting in the one flat spot in his garden in the suburbs of Thorshavn, seemed a tad sad, but looked healthy enough and he still had grass to graze on...

this is the flight in to Faroes, yes it was our last day and yes we were supposed to be flying to Iceland, not back to the Faroes, what happened was that after our bus to the airport boiled over (someone forgot to check the water in the radiator) we got on the plane and took off... then 20 minutes later we were advised that due to electrical problems (the main AC power supply had died) the pilots decided to turn back to the Faroes and check out the problem there rather than fly to Reykjavik and perhaps be stuck there for however long it would take to fix the problem... Now I never got a photo of the airstrip at Vaga - but believe me, it is very short, built during WWII by the Brits for their planes (ie not current type transport jets), it sits atop a mountain and hence the landing strip has big drops on both sides... not fun, it also requires the airplanes to do 180´s around mountain tops to get a straight bearing on the strip.. Not recommended for those not happy in small planes in tight places. We made it down and made it back to Iceland (duh.. since I am writing this from home) Nevertheless, this flight has made me think twice about further air travel... yet another reason why my next trip to aus will be many many years from now.