Wait, what day is it, where ARE we?

Two countries, time zones, and plane rides later, we find ourselves (most miraculously I admit) in PARIS!  But first things first- Iceland.

AAAAAHHHH RUN!  but she's such a cute norse-woman!

Well I'm positive that at some point in the past few days we have time-traveled because more days have passed than night's I've slept, leading to an unbalanced and jet-lagged life.  Monday we took off from Salt Lake City after a very restless night sleep due to extreme excitement/nervousness that is very unique to travel, I think.  After shaving my facial hair and feeling naked, we made it to the airport, all ready and excited to go.  All this time spent planning this trip, time to make it happen!

Ready to go!

Our flight took us to Denver for a short layover (not too short to exclude some delicious Pizza Hut pizza, last-supper style), we were off to Reykjavik!  As anyone who has flown overseas knows, what followed after was not fun, we took off from Salt Lake City at 2:40 p.m. MST and, due to interesting time-traveling tricks, landed in Iceland 9 hours later at 6:30 AM GMT.  Despite our recently-purchased inflatable neck pillows, we slept terribly on the plane, but the sun was shinning, and it was morning, so time to get the rental car and go!  One hour later, after wandering around tired, confused, and worried, we discovered that our rental car company had merged with another one, which is why there was no sign for it.  Awesome.  But then, off to our noble steed-for-rent, a blue 4-door Suzuki Swift!

What a head-turner, right?!?!

Our next simple task, on roughly 2-3 terrible hours of sleep was to follow our google map directions to our guesthouse, pretty easy, right?  Well, imagine trying to give directions with this map:

Ah yes, Njardargata, we know thee all too well... Can you spot the Odensgata in this map?  Neither could we!  1,000 year old city planning in full effect!

Further, imagine that these roads are all the width of an average couch (with cars parked on both sides), some are one way, and all are approximately 100 feet long, so that by the time Melanie figured out how to pronounce the name of the next street to turn on, I'm already six blocks past it.  Sleep was low, frustration was high, but somehow, with divine intervention, we made it and collapsed into bed.  We didn't stay there for long though, we had a new city to explore!  And explore we did, we had an awesome time just wandering through the crazy, cute (when you are not driving), and ancient streets.

I still think it looks like a space shuttle!

The inside - simple, but very nice feeling

So much character, every house was unique!

In the interest of full disclosure, it was hard not to just spend all our time laughing at the language and crazy words and letters, it was so foreign and intense!  I think it's disrespectful to go to a country and expect everyone to speak english to you without even trying to say a few words in their language, but every time I opened my mouth to speak Icelandic my brain went dead it is so difficult. 

Thus ended day 1, just spent wandering around.  Day 2 was when it was supposed to get really fun, we headed out of Reykjavik to tour the Golden Circle, Iceland's main sights.  It ended up being a really long drive into the Icelandic bush, most of it looking like this:

I'm sure it didn't help that we were still jet lagged, but out of the three big sights, Geysir, Thingfeller, and Gulfoss, only Gulfoss was really worth seeing.  But man it was cool, waterfalls never cease to amaze.

Not going to lie, Iceland is REALLY cold and windy, all the time.

Air.  Canned, Icelandic air is what I'm holding.  yup.

Strangely, not Geysir.  The real Geysir (after which all others are named) erupts only like every 10 years.

Not sure then, not sure now, but he was big and hairy

Gulfoss!  So amazing!  the tiny dots near the falls are people.

A huge glacier, not just clouds, that blends in with the sky

Some of the drive was better than others.

We wanted to drive out to see the BIG glaciers, but couldn't as our rental car agreement made us promise not to drive that far out there 7 times in three different languages and seal it with blood.  So after 8 hours, we returned to Reykjavik, pretty exhausted.  We wandered around and wanted to try some Icelandic food, but it seems it is only seafood (expensive) and lamb, or "Mountain Sheep" which we weren't feeling, are authentic so we went with some Italian, and weren't disappointed.  We'll put it this way - there's a reason you've never heard of an Icelandic restaurant, capisce?  So we went to bed and woke up early, although at this point our bodies are like "early?  late?  who can tell?  I'll just make sure you're tired all the time."  So we got up early and flew to Paris!  Yay!  We're pumped to be here, and excited to be in a place where I can understand whats happening.  Not to mention the food, the ambiance, the sights... good things to come!