It's a long way down the holiday road
Holiday road
Holiday road
As you might (or might not) know, my company gives us a sabbatical every 5 years. I was eligible last year, but moved it to this year because last year was a bit crazy work-wise. If you followed our last sabbatical (Hummel Sabbatical 2013), you'll remember we did a 6,000 mile road trip across the Western United States. That was essentially our equivalent of National Lampoon's Vacation. Sticking to the theme, we thought it only appropriate to take our National Lampoon's European Vacation this year. Hope you enjoy the ride!
We packed our bags for a month-long trip, but in non-Hummel style, we actually limited ourselves to one roller bag and one carry-on (the smaller backpacks all fit in the smaller carry on bags). For a whole month! I'm guessing we packed half of the stuff we did for our first sabbatical.
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| Probably not enough stuff for a whole month |
We embarked on our journey to Iceland. Haley had a good question....why is the layover in Seattle...isn't that the opposite direction? Not having a good answer, I changed the subject to some sort of fatherly advice that she's likely to forget in 7 minutes.
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| Not the straightest distance between two points |
The flight to Seattle was uneventful (which is always good). After a two hour layover, we headed to Iceland.
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| Pretty sunset at 30,000 feet |
It's a 7 hour flight and there is a 7 hour time difference between Phoenix and Iceland. This means we took off from Phoenix at 1:40pm on Wednesday landed at 10am on Thursday. None of us really got any sleep on the plane, and we had a full day in front of us in Iceland. We should be good, though, right? More on that later....
After landing in Iceland, we picked up our rented van and headed out to Reykjavík, Iceland's capital. In Reykjavík, we had some of their famous hot dogs. This is an inexpensive and yummy way to feed a hungry family of five, as we had not had anything to eat for about 10 hours at that point.
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| What's up, dog?! |
After the hot dog stop, we headed to Hallgrímskirkja, Iceland's largest church. It is amazingly beautiful. Outside is a statue of Leif Erikson, and on the plaque it indicates that he was the first North American who set foot on North America. I think my history teachers were lying to me about Columbus....
We then headed to Reynisfjara, Iceland's famous black sand beach. Although it was a long drive to the beach (about 2.5 hours!) it was totally worth it. The sand was amazing, and the rock formations were beautiful. Iceland is definitely a very pretty place. It is also covered with lupinus nootkatensis, a beautiful purple flower.
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| The sand really is black! I'm not sure why I had to see it to believe it... |
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| You wouldn't believe how strategic I had to be to get no people in this shot... |
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| It seems everyone wears black to Black Sand Beach. Luckily, we got the memo! |
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| Lupinus nootkatensis, Icelandic for "really cool purple flower that you can find everywhere" |
After the long drive back from Black Sand Beach, we headed to the Blue Lagoon. It was a very welcome 40 degrees (C, people, not F....it was 100 degrees F). We relaxed, soaked our tired bodies, and put on a nice silica mask to open our pores. Unfortunately, I forgot to bring my adapter for my GoPro card, so you will just have to picture us in silica masks drinking beers and smoothies.
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| The long and winding road (you're welcome for getting that song stuck in your head) |
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