Sunday 1 March: Having my first cigarette, just before 9AM. UsaKousa are still dribbling in bed - hence the cloudy weather.	My second smoke a little bit later, at the front of the hotel - looking at the icicles and the sky gradually and subtly turning pink...
... as well as snow gradually sliding off the roof of the hotel!	View from our first-floor room: the festival venue is just behind this fish processing factory.
Another morning walk. It's hard to tell where the mountain ends and the cloud starts.	A snowman and a snowdog.
UsaKousa in the snow landscape.	Back at the hotel, Hilmar spots this upside down duck - probably still drunk from the party last night, like many hotel guests ;-)
As the other jury members don't seem to be up yet, Hilmar takes us on a little drive out of town, heading west towards the Glacier. I've been to this area a few times before (1986, 2005, 2007) but it just looks so different in winter - and even more beautiful, I find.
A couple of random shots out of the car window...	...you can see how a little sunlight really changes the whole landscape, it's no longer in b/w.
	I admit I've tweaked the colour balance on this image - and still didn't get what I really saw. These giant icicles looked *so* blue from miles away and really stood out, but my camera couldn't capture that. Oh well.
Just as we leave Grundarförður in the late afternoon, it starts to snow heavily. The visibility on the road is really bad. So, from the car window, we got an abstract version of what we saw on the way up.	Halfway home, we stop in Borgarnes. The cafe attatched to the the Icelandic Settlement Center offers a nice & peaceful environment as well as good food (and cakes.) And... some of us can never stop taking photos, can we? ;-))
So we've had a lovely weekend - a great excuse to do a bit of winter sightseeing, while catching up with some art, and to get drunk in a friendly atmosphere. It's great to see a festival working so well with the local communicty: apart from the town's co-operation, the prizes are sponsored by 2 local fish companies; the local beer is on special offer at the venue; and the hotel gives the festival guests an unbeatable price (90 Euro for 2 nights, including breakfast and really good dinners!) In return, the festival brings people from Reykjavík and abroad to the town during its off-season, so everyone benefits. Many local kids and families attend the screenings too, which are all for free. A great initiative. Finally, our thanks to Hilmar for driving us there and back, in those road conditions... we've driven past a really nasty looking pile-up crash on the way back too!
TO PART FIVE