October 17th: Reykjavik

The first stop on this year's big trip was one of my absolute favorite countries: Iceland! It's the only country I've been to twice, and even just looking through my pictures is making me antsy to go back again. Maybe in the spring...?

We had an overnight flight from Boston to Keflavik and stayed in the same hotel as last year. The flight was good enough, though I'm always baffled by the people who think it's a good idea to bring small children on a long overnight flight. If I ever had my own airline, I'd make sure every plane had a soundproof quiet room area for families with kids, kind of like those quiet rooms some churches have. I'd gladly pay extra to not have to listen to screaming children while I'm trying to sleep. We also hit some surprisingly bad turbulence at one point. I'm not usually concerned about turbulence (I've seen more than enough of it as a flight instructor), but this stuff kept getting worse. I think I managed to get just a couple hours of sleep at best. But really, it wouldn't be a vacation if I wasn't enormously sleep deprived at some point, so so far, so good!

After we landed and got our bags, we hopped on the bus to the hotel.. There were a lot of other people staying at the same place, so we snuck past everyone as they sorted through their bags and managed to check in before nearly everybody else. After dumping our bags in our room, we went back downstairs (past the still long line of people waiting to check in) to do what I'd been looking forward to for weeks: grab some Icelandic breakfast in the hotel restaurant.

That pink blob on my plate is pickled herring in red wine. Who doesn't like some pickled fish to start the day?

After breakfast we headed back upstairs for a much-needed nap. I passed right out; it took Mark a few tries to wake me up a few hours later and it took me a few minutes to remember where I even was. A quick shower later I was semi-functional, so we hopped on the hotel's shuttle into town and spent a few hours wandering around downtown Reykjavik. I had been kicking myself last year for not getting an Icelandic wool sweater when I had the chance, so I didn't make that mistake this time!

This thing is so warm it's ridiculous and fits perfectly. I love it!!

We eventually made our way back to the hotel, grabbed our stuff, and hopped on another bus to...

The Blue Lagoon!!

I didn't take many pictures while we were there (the above picture is actually from last year's trip) because I spent most of my time doing this:

Don't tell me that if you had the chance, you wouldn't spend all your time drinking beer and finding the warmest spots, too.

Mark got another tasty cup of Krap. Mmm...so krappy...

We spent a couple hours in the water; so long, in fact, that my ponytail actually started to freeze. Since the return bus ticket was good for any of the scheduled pickup times, we decided to wait for the last bus back and grabbed dinner at the restaurant. Our table had a great view of the lagoon (sorry, but it was dark and the picture didn't turn out), and the food was really good. I had lasagna that was supposedly filled with some mix of veggies but tasted more like it was filled with stuffing (note to self: add lasagna noodles and Stove Top to shopping list), and Mark even ate a tiny sliver of smoked fish. Also, I think I finally figured out what to do with my overambitious mint plant in the backyard: mint sorbet. AMAZING. After stuffing ourselves, we waddled onto the bus and made our way back to the hotel. No Northern Lights tour this year (maybe next time?), but we wanted to make sure we were awake enough to enjoy the next day's fun: a Super Jeep tour!