Our Travels Unravelled!

We have been so busy planning, researching, packing and buzzing around that we neglected to publish the below piece before we left.  So, here it is...

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A few late nights on the internet and several disagreements later, we unveil our final itinerary: -

Iceland, London, France, Switzerland and Italy!

Our trip unravelled will look like this…

Iceland - Day 2

Sunday, 28 August 2011

We spent time strolling the streets of the capital city, Reykjavik, where we were staying.  We wandered around, did some window shopping (as all of them were closed with the exception of food outlets and souvenir shops).

The streets and shops were really cute.  Everything was in neat rows, matching styles and bright colours, and generaly more modern than we had anticipated.  This is because Iceland was fairly undeveloped up until as recently as the early 1900s.  There were some great outlets for fashion/shoes, homewares and handicrafts, which we would not have the opportunity to explore due to our future itinerary.  However, we did pop into some of the souvenir shops where we saw, among the usual tacky key rings and fridge magnets, cans of "Icelandic air".

Their food outlets are mainly cafes selling American type food such as burgers, french fries and the Icelandic hot dog.  There is the odd spot of Mexican, Indian and Japanese, and then cafes of various levels of quality.  Oh, and the occassional bistro selling traditional Icelandic cuisine, which we would be exploring later.

The high prices are not just because the Icelandic economy crashed a few years ago.  (In fact, a local informed us that the cost of food had not changed).  It is because it costs alot for them to import the bulk of ingredients, and also the wages they pay their staff are high.

We popped in to a colourful cafe for a spot of lunch and had a game of chess.  (Sarah was winning, but Jason didn't want to finish the game so it was a "tie").  Jason ordered a can of Coke, which is made with Icelandic water (the best) and without corn syrup.

We then strolled into the famous Hallgrímskirkja parish church in time for a traditional service.  This intimidating building stands at 74.5 metres high.  (Photos will be forthcoming, but check the link provided in the interim).

I wish we could say we did more, but we thought it would be silly to plan anything for the day of ultimate jetlag.

There was an issue with our camera.  We will have the photos published for this piece as soon as they are available.

Iceland - Day 1 (Reykjavic)

Saturday, 27 August 2011

Having arrived on a perfectly clear afternoon, our plane took a few swoops giving us a good aerial view of south west Iceland and the Westmann Islands which we would be exploring later.

The landscape was very unique.  Much of it looked like the surface of the moon, with the exception of a carpet of moss.  We were told by a guide later on that the vikings cut down all the trees a number of centuries ago, and trees in Iceland evidently remain scarce.

Our hotel room had views of a mountian range which were not the best on the days that followed due to fog and some rain.

The restaurant attached to our hotel was the first shock to the wallet.  We did not realise that prices of most things in Iceland were so expensive.  We paid $17 for a soup of the day, and in the coming days we realised this price range was not unique to this restaurant.

Too jetlagged to do much else (as we had done the three stop flight in one go), we got an early night to prepare for the two day tours ahead.