1 Year Anniversary Part 1 - Budapest

Pictures from our 1 year anniversary trip - Part 1 - Budapest, Hungary.  There's a more complete, "Public" album uploaded on my G+ page with each picture labeled (with some commentary).  Enjoy!

1st Anniversary - Vacation to Central Europe

It has been quite some time since I’ve added a write-up to the page, so here we go with a summation of our 1 year anniversary trip to Europe; specifically, Budapest (Hungary), Vienna (Austria), and Prague (Czech Republic).  How did we wind up with this package?  Two main reasons: 1. Dorothy took care of Iceland for my birthday and 2. Dorothy’s mentions of Italy and Greece have been in political turmoil and rioting has been on and off for the past few months.  “No thanks” on the latter options.  This package of cities has been on the radar since originally visiting Europe a handful of years ago and we found a very reasonable package on Gate1Travel.com – two nights in each city and we upgraded the hotels.  Towards the end, I’ll provide some overall thoughts on each city, but for the time being, here’s a recap of the trip itself:

We left for the trip on our Anniversary (4/2) and were flying out of Newark Airport, to Munich, Germany and then a quick flight over to Budapest.  Never one to disappoint, for some reason the TSA didn’t allow for an alcohol delivery to the bar/restaurants in Newark’s Terminal B that day and there was no Pinot Grigio for Dorothy at McGinley’s Irish Pub.  So that’s how things started on this trip. 

After going through a handful of available options, we chose to fly Lufthansa on the way over to Europe and Swiss Air on the way back.  Note to European airlines, in general, Americans are lazy and hate to be uncomfortably hot.  There were no personal vents on the trans-Atlantic flight from Newark to Munich.  How is this even possible?  It could not have been hotter on this flight.  Dorothy, who is always cold, was hot and my body was permeating heat.  I was so uncomfortable that I chose to stand in the bathroom of the plane for two minutes because there was an air vent flowing in there.  Yes, the air flow that had the scent of a urinal was the preferred option.  Outside of this, everything else was pretty good on the Lufthansa flight – food, liquor, the bathrooms being on the lower level of the plane.  We just couldn’t bear the heat.  (We did watch the Descendants, and I must say that was a very good movie.)

We landed in Munich airport for our connection; very impressive airport – very quiet and very clean.  We also noticed that there are no rules for boarding planes in Europe.  When it is ready to board, everyone just goes.  Our flight to Budapest was relatively short, thankfully, as there were two kids behind us that couldn’t have acted worse (more on this later).  The plane even had air vents!  However, when they passed out the food, Dorothy and I looked at each other and laughed.  It was some type of brat, some awful looking mashed potato concoction, and a pickle.  Pass. 

Landing in Budapest, we had arranged for Gate1Travel to provide a car service to take us directly to the hotel – Ibis Heroes Square.  This was a pretty good hotel that was very close to the Metro (to take downtown) and to Heroes Square.  It also has a 24/7 café for food and booze.  Nice!  The only problem we ran into with the hotel was, once again, the heat. 

We planned to walk through Castle Row in Budapest on day one.  I have to say that Budapest exceeded my expectations, as it really was a beautiful city.  We crossed the Chain Bridge to get to Castle Row and took the gondola up the side of the mountain just in time to see a changing of the guard ceremony.  Looking around at/for various castles, we stumbled upon the Hilton, which also hosts a wine tasting.  Unfortunately, not on the day we show up. 

Dorothy and I made our way back across the bridge/river and into the downtown area.  There were a number of booths with souvenirs and local cuisine.  We also found what I’ll dub “Casino Row” with a ‘Trop’ and a few other casinos (which became part of day two activities).  We wound up having dinner on a riverside boat which was really good - http://www.columbuspub.hu/ 

On day two our goal was to walk through Heroes Square and go to one of the more popular Hungarian Bathhouses – Szechenyi Thermal Baths (http://www.szechenyibath.com/ ) right in the park behind Heroes Square.  This was definitely one of the highlights of the trip as this was beautiful and a lot of fun.  The Speedo was not as prevalent as we had thought.  After the Baths and showering, we wound up taking the Metro back downtown to see the Parliament and a few other buildings, stopping at the Menza Café to eat based on a few recommendations.  The local foods were actually really good.  We got a little lost trying to find the Café and ironically, it was about 200 feet from where we had stopped to try to look at a map (30 minutes before actually walking further and finding it…). 

I booked a dinner cruise for us for the evening as the “paper” anniversary gift.  This wound up being another highlight of the trip as it was very nice to see all of the buildings on both sides of the Danube River light up in the evening.  The tour had a full buffet and Hungarian musicians to play for us.  We thought there was going to be dancing as well, but that might have been our misunderstanding.  Net/net, a river cruise is highly recommended when visiting Budapest.  Here’s who we used: http://www.perfecttoursbudapest.com/danube.php#4

After the river cruise we made our way back downtown to pop in and out of a few cafes and then made our way to ‘The Trop’.  You have to sign your life away to get into these places and I did this for a measly loss of 40 Euros.  Annoying. 

We were up early on day three to get to the train station, with the thought that there would be some type of line, customs check, etc.  Nope.  Completely unnecessary to get up at the time we did and over to the train station.  However, here’s a tip for the station, don’t let any track employees “help” you with your bags.  Some guy came over to Dorothy while I went to check out the signs and then took us to a room with our bags.  When the train came, he came back and brought our bags on the train for us.  I gave him a tip but it conveniently wasn’t enough.  After about two minutes of back and forth, I decided to hand him some more and told him to beat it.  It worked, but we were basically scammed. 

The train ride from Budapest to Vienna is only about 2.5 hours, so not bad at all.  We were dropped off at the Wien Melding station in Vienna which does not look like any of the classical looking train stations I’ve become accustomed to in Europe.  It looked like a NJ Transit stop.  This isn’t a compliment. 

We took a cab directly to our hotel – The Senator Hotel.  While the room was hot as well, it wasn’t as bad as the prior hotel in Budapest, while the room itself was very nice.  We eventually found the means of opening up the windows to the room – thanks to the maid – and the rest was history.  Breakfast was a little bit better here as well.  The bar at the hotel was open until midnight with the workers at the front desk pulling double duty as a bartender.  The one drawback to the hotel was its location to City Center, as we decided to cab it to and from each day for around 10-15 Euros (each way).  There is a tram station right by the hotel, but we decided to skip learning the stops for the 1.5 days we were there.  If we were going to be there longer, we would have taken the time and effort to do so. 

On our first trip to City Center we asked the cab driver to take us to the University.  If you are looking at a map, this is the northwest corner of City Center and you can loop around it from there.  Instead, our cab driver took us to Stadtpark (City Park) – only the furthest possible option from the University within the loop and the southeastern corner of City Center.  Thanks.  We desperately needed to eat and quickly found a beer garden in Stadtpark, which was filled with customers.  We saw a helicopter land and take back off from the hotel right next door to the park.  This was probably the President of Austria (or the Governator) but we’ll never know. 

Given the change in our drop-off point, we had to completely re-route the plan of attack.  I’m only slightly kidding here.  After wrapping up Stadtpark we walked towards Stephandson Church, which was undergoing some major reparations.  It is a beautiful building though.  We then walked through the shops and squares of City Center and found a goldmine of a restaurant; Sparky’s.  Not only did they serve Guinness, but for whatever reason, there were way too many Avatar figures and dedications in the place. 

I’ve failed to mention that right before the trip and even on the first few days, Dorothy was a little sick.  Guess who caught at least some of that bug by the time he got to Vienna.  So you have two tired, somewhat sick, and cranky tourists, which led to a lot of taking it easy and a shift to “American” food throughout the next 24 hours – which skipping ahead to our dinner for a second, included fish and chips and chicken fingers. 

We plowed through a number of other highlight sites, buildings, and monuments, including; Dorotheum Store/Museum, Horburg Palace (huge and beautiful), Albertina Museum (more on Day 2), the State Opera House – where you can buy standing room tickets for 3 Euro and leave whenever you choose, and Mozart Park.  We also walked the perimeter of Museums Quarter and saw the Mother Theresa Monument, which was impressive.  After stopping to eat our American style dinner, it was back to Sparky’s for an hour or two and then back to the hotel to call it a relatively early evening.

Day two consisted of much of the same sightseeing of City Center and included the Parliament, Rathaus Park, and more of Horburg Palace.  We went back to the Albertina Museum to walk through the Impressionists section – Dorothy’s favorite type of art.  (Let’s pretend that I knew that before day five of our one year anniversary trip.)  The architecture in Vienna was probably the best / most impressive of the three cities on the trip.  We didn’t have much left to see so took care of souvenir shopping, ate lunch (pizza, still working the American angle), and took a 20 minute horse carriage ride through the city.  After a bit more sightseeing it was back to the hotel for a few glasses of wine and to get ready for our Wine Tavern Tour - http://www.viator.com/tours/Vienna/Vienna-Wine-Tavern-Night-Tour-with-Giant-Ferris-Wheel/d454-3585AT006VS

This show was really good and I would recommend this tour for anyone looking for a night activity that eats up a few hours.  The package included hotel pickup and drop-off.  The first stop was to the amusement park in Vienna to ride the giant Ferris wheel – as you can tell from the link.  The Ferris wheel provides some impressive views of the city.  Afterward, you are transported a good 30 minutes away to the hills of Vienna and where the wineries are.  While I wouldn’t classify this as a wine tour, the venue they do take you to for the show does have very good red and white wine.  Here we watched a Viennese show while eating our one and only local meal for the stop in Vienna.  We knew that this was going to be our local food source hence not seeing a problem in going American for the few prior meals while in Vienna.  The meal itself was really good with various types of pork and potatoes.  However, I still don’t like sauerkraut, even 3,000 miles away from home. 

After the show and being dropped off at the hotel, we decided to call it a night and just enjoyed a few glasses of wine at the hotel bar. 

We were up early again for our train ride to Prague.  The train from Vienna to Prague is about 4.5 hours, so this was a little bit more painful, but not too bad at all.  Gate1Travel set us up with two seats across from one another and no one bothered to try to set next to us with our luggage and carry-on spread out and about.  We were able to walk from the train station to our hotel – Palace Hotel, which was a nice end to the trip. 

Due to the holiday weekend (Easter), we had to upgrade our Prague hotel even further due to sellouts on our package/plan.  This was not a problem whatsoever and the Palace Hotel was a great venue – good rooms, bar, breakfast, staff, and best of all, location. 

Our first day in Prague was a little limited due to not getting into town until 3pm or so.  We wound up walking down to Center City for a bite to eat and then did a good amount of walking around; State Opera House, National Museum, Wenceslas Square, New Town Hall Tower, Charles Square Park, Geary House (which was oddly shaped/designed and neat), and a pit stop at U Fleku bar/restaurant. 

I found U Fleku (http://en.ufleku.cz/ ) in a .99 cent Nook book and it only has one type of beer: dark.  Yes, please.  Accordion players walk around the room and the staff continuously walks around with trays of beer for refills.  We didn’t like the food, so I recommend just going for drinks and the atmosphere.  After a few rounds we were back to walking around by the river, the National Theatre, and then circled back to Old Town Square to see the Astronomical Clock and Tyn Church.  At the corner of the Square we found Caffrey’s, an Irish Pub.  We actually wound up staying here for a while, before heading back to the hotel to call it an evening. 

Day two in Prague took us across the Charles Bridge and over to the Castle District.  Before heading to the castles though, we took the appropriate Easter Sunday stop at St. Nicholas Church and walked into Our Lady Triumphant Church, the latter of which has the “Infant Jesus of Prague” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infant_Jesus_of_Prague).  After meeting our religious obligations, we were off to the castles, walking up some pretty strong hills towards the US Embassy (Dor may have said “which building?” while taking pictures … snotty response “the one with the American flag”.  We were clearly closing in on the end of the trip …).  We walked through the palaces, courtyards, gardens, and back around to Prague Castle.  This didn’t look much like a castle at all and more like a bigger White House more than anything else.  We then walked down the steps on the other side of palaces (“Zamecke Schody” steps) and found a Christmas ornament store to add to our collection and a nice little restaurant at the bottom of the steps for lunch. 

After lunch there was just a little bit more to see, but we couldn’t find the “Lennon Wall” whatsoever.  This was another site added to the list from the .99 Nook book, to no avail.  I’m not even sure it exists as no one could clearly explain where to go to see it, and some people had no idea what we were talking about.  We gave up pretty quickly and it was back across another bridge to take pictures of the Czech Government buildings.  From here we walked through the Jewish Quarter of Prague, only to have just about everything closed for Sunday. 

The last “to do” was to find the location of our meeting place for the Prague Pub Crawl for later in the evening.  http://www.pubcrawl.cz/prague-pub-crawl

After locating this we went back to the hotel to change and then grabbed a quick bite to eat at an English Pub, George & Dragon, right next to the Irish Pub and minutes away from our meeting place.  If you know me at all, you know I’m about to recommend the Prague Pub Crawl.  Despite being the senior member of the crawl by a good 10 years (excluding Dor), this was a lot of fun and there was a good crowd for a Sunday night (40-50 participants I would estimate).  They start you off at their own bar with beer, wine, absinthe, and shooters.  From there, a guide takes you to a few local venues and you eventually wind up at “Karlovy Lazre” – which is apparently the largest nightclub in Central Europe.  As an added bonus, it includes an Ice Bar.  Yes!  We’re finally going into a building that isn’t uncomfortably warm.  That said, it wasn’t nearly as cold as the ice bars we have been to in the past, but a welcoming site nonetheless. 

We called it a night shortly thereafter and found a street cart open at 2am for some food.  Of course.  Prague = Winning! 

The next day, our airport transfer picked us up at the hotel and took us to the airport.  For some reason, Swiss Air doesn’t check people in more than two hours before the flight, so we were the first online to check in, with about 40 minutes of standing around to do.  This wound up being a blessing, as a number of people dwindled in over the next 45 minutes, including a Czech sports team.  So we beat all of this through security and to the airport … bar.  Swiss Air was definitely better than Lufthansa in terms of food offering and leg space.  However, once again, there were no air vents for each individual seat on the trans-Atlantic flight.  Who made this decision?!  One other note about the flight home, remember when I said that there were two kids on our flight from Munich to Budapest that couldn’t have acted worse?  Well, I was wrong.  On the trans-Atlantic flight home, we had a family of six right by us and naturally, the parents, the older child (~18), and grandmother took the row behind us, leaving the two kids (12 and 8 or so) next to us.  As a quick summary, these two miscreants were very likely the two worst behaving children I have ever had to endure on a plane.  The family conveniently didn’t know English when either of us would turn around and look at them.  Extremely annoying. 

Overall it was a great trip.  I have to say that Budapest exceeded my expectations and I would recommend it as a stop for anyone interested in seeing this part of the world.  I’m not sure what I expected from Vienna, but it was certainly beautiful from an architectural standpoint.  If we were to stay there a third day though, I would probably take a day tour to Salzburg or recommend it to others.  Prague met my very high expectations.  It was nice to just be able to walk around a town and not have to worry about public transportation at all on the last leg of a trip. 

The only “problems” we ran into on the trip were that Europeans are completely comfortable being warm and I am not.  At all.  The other is that smoking cigarettes is very much alive and kicking throughout any and all venues in Central Europe.  We had a hard time with this, especially with the sicknesses that were already being dealt with.  Oh well, nothing we could do about either or, so you have to make the best of it.

Finally, a big kudos to Gate1Travel.com, for having everything work seamlessly for us.  They allowed the flexibility of the hotel upgrades and such, sent over all of the documentation in a timely manner, and the airport transfers were on time / early in each location.  Thanks for making it that much easier for us!

I’m going to add pictures for each city as separate entries in the coming days, so they can be easily distinguishable between the three stops on the trip.  We are also still combing through 2K pictures to come up with some type of highlights montage to save everyone the pain of going through everything.

In any case, did we miss anything along the way?  Do you have any other recommendations for any of the cities?

Thanksgiving Road Trip

This Thanksgiving, Dor and I made a strategic decision to drive to Cincinnati to visit her family vs. flying to and from.  We have actually never taken a “road trip” as the farthest we’ve ever driven is our New Years Eve houses in the Poconos or Hunter Mountain.  Given my proclivity for speeding, I figured I would tackle the vast majority of the driving and try to beat the 10 hour mark.  (No cliffhangers here: Success!)

Here’s a quick recap of the drive itself, which actually wasn’t too bad at all.  There were only a few rules for the trip.  1. A quota of 2 pit stops going in each direction (and we actually only made 1 per) and 2. We have to leave early.

Therefore, we were up at 4am on Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving to get out of NJ and past Philly before the morning rush hour even started.  This wound up being a good idea as the weather was miserable.  Outside of two minor hydroplaning episodes on the NJ Turnpike, we were out of NJ and into PA in no time, passing through Valley Forge by 6:30-7am. 

We were on cruise control until about 8:30am and I have a theory as to why we wound up hitting a bit of traffic for the next hour.  During this time, it is my belief that you have all of the stragglers waiting until the last minute to get to their respective employers.  These people largely pay no attention to the art of driving and are on the phone, eating breakfast, and/or putting on makeup instead of … you know … driving. 

About 5 hours into the trip, we finally made our first pit stop.  Ten minutes eating, two minutes in the bathroom, and ten minutes refilling the gas tank (just as scripted) and we were back on the road.  I very vaguely remember driving through the PA Turnpike and the Mountain Tunnels (Blue Mountain, Kittatinny, and Tuscarora) as a child.  This was actually one of the highlights of the drive and if I wasn’t driving another 4-5 hours, likely would have stopped to take some pictures and enjoyed the scenery a bit more.  Next time … maybe.  (Here’s some additional reading for the history buffs: http://www.pahighways.com/toll/PATurnpike.html  )

In looking up the route, it never dawned on me that we would be driving through a small section of West Virginia.  Any time you mention West Virginia to me, I immediately think of two things: 1. The terrible movie “Wrong Turn” (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0295700/) and how they portray the locals in this movie and 2. John Denver.  It never fails and now that song is in your head, isn’t it?  Admit it.  “Country Roads … Take me home … To the place, I belong!! …”

A few hours into Ohio and we finally hit a patch of traffic around Columbus.  This is/was the final leg of the trip, another 90 minutes or so to go and we were in no mood for traffic.  Driving in Ohio is infuriating because they don’t have a “keep right except to pass” law or, if they do, no one in the state follows it.  You have trucks, the elderly, and any other profiling demographic that you would put under the “bad driver” umbrella in the left lane.  You have no idea how incredibly annoying this is until you experience it yourself. 

We arrived at Dor’s parents house shortly after 2:30pm, after stopping at Chick-fil-A (of course).  So with one stop, we would have been door to door in 9.5 hours.  Not bad at all.  You may notice that there are virtually no comments about things discussed while driving 9.5 hours with someone, games that we played, arguing over driving or directions, etc.  Why?  Out of those 9.5 hours, Dorothy slept about 7 of them.  Yep, the co-pilot was fast asleep for 73.7% of the drive.

The trip back east was done in a vastly similar timeframe, also included only one pit stop, and Dor managed to sleep the majority of the drive as well.  Good times! 

In case we ever decide to drive again, any recommendations for good stopping grounds?  Where can we stop around the mountains for good pictures?  Good pit stops off the highway?  

Finally going to Iceland!

I have been talking about vacationing in Iceland since approximately 2002.  There were less than a handful of times where it looked like there was a legitimate opportunity that I managed to convince someone else to make the trip as well.  However, this all recently changed.  Dorothy asked me to pick and block out a weekend and that she wanted the rest to remain a surprise for my birthday.  I didn’t think too much about it / where she was planning to go.  After getting me a Nook Color for my birthday, I figured we would do something local (NYC, Delaware, similar) to just get away for a few days.  Then, an hour before the cab was coming, she hit me with the Iceland Frommers.  Nice!!  The winner for wife of the year goes to … you betcha!

Dorothy can’t keep a secret, so I know how much thought and effort went into this.  She said that she only booked the flights, hotel, and a trip to the Blue Lagoon / Northern Lights and left the rest open.  I had talked about Iceland so much over the past few years that she knew exactly what to book.  We had talked about going for our one year anniversary next April, but going in the Fall/Winter allowed us the opportunity to chase the Northern Lights.  As an added bonus, the weekend we were heading to Iceland was their annual Iceland Airwaves festival, where a ton of bands from around the world (apparently) play in various bars, clubs, and other miscellaneous venues.  Well played Dorothy, well played. 

Given that she told me where we were going and we had about an hour to burn, I rummaged through the suitcase that she packed for me – she couldn’t hold out the surprise any further, plus, I was really starting to bother her about the trip and not knowing what was going on.  I threw out a few things and we were on our way to JFK.  One of “our” traditions is to get to an airport hours earlier than necessary and sit at the bar for a bit.  After about an hour, Dorothy keeps looking at her phone and around the airport.  Then she says, “Wait, what are they doing here?”  The final surprise of the trip, we’re going to Iceland with the Schlenks!

Our flight was on Icelandair and departed/landed on time, so we arrived in Keflavik around 7am local time.  The flight itself is only 4.5 hours from JFK, i.e. nothing.  Icelandair itself was perfectly fine; nothing to write home about, nothing to complain about.  The wives booked a package through Icelandair and correctly chose to ‘upgrade’ the hotel to the Hilton in Reykjavik.  We took a bus/shuttle from Keflavik to Reykjavik (just to spell all of that out again) that took about 45 minutes.  Our first stop was the other hotel that was available in the package, and let’s just say that it was a great move to book at the Hilton.  One middle aged woman on the bus looked mortified that she was going to spend the next few nights in this hotel.  It looked like a rundown high school.

When we got to the Hilton we checked in and decided that A. we needed a quick nap and B. needed something to eat.  My biggest pet peeve about traveling abroad is when you land in the AM locally, can check in at your hotel, but they don’t let you have the complementary breakfast and charge you for it.  If you are offering the free breakfast with a reservation, just give the extra day’s breakfast to the people that booked a stay with you.  How much are they really saving, $3, $4 tops?  The VP of Common Sense just checked into this blog entry; satisfy your customers! 

After a quick bite to eat and short nap, we hitched a cab ride to downtown Reykjavik.  We found the place to get our wristbands for the Iceland Airwaves shows – which basically gave us free admission into each and every venue.  The most confusing thing about Iceland is that every street name has about 15 letters in it and is virtually impossible to pronounce.  Can we buy a vowel please?  Downtown Reykjavik was a quaint little city with a lot of places to pop in and out of.  While some buildings look a little run down from the outside, especially bars, the inside of just about every single building is modern, very clean, and accommodating.  According to the driver that took us downtown, one of the biggest attractions downtown is this little hot dog stand.  Apparently, there is a long tradition here and the hot dogs are phenomenal; they contain lamb and lord knows what else.  (Chris can comment here as he dove into one the following evening.  And by evening, I mean around 4am.) 

After about an hour or so of walking up and down the roads that I can’t pronounce, we finally found City Hall and a few other buildings for site seeing.  It took some time to find the Parliament building, and to be honest, we’re not sure if we actually ever did.  Let’s just assume that one of the buildings we took a picture of is the Parliament building.  Guess what time it is now in our trip?  One glass pint of personality please.  Thank you.  We stopped to eat / have a drink in a place called “Gamla Posthusid”.  Good luck with pronouncing that.  Our first and second Viking Stouts were tested and stamped with approval.  Unfortunately, I never saw Viking Stout again, as the venues at night had Viking Light and a slew of other beers I couldn’t stand. 

After closing the tab we wound up walking around the streets and taking pictures for another few hours.  We may have also popped into the casino.  As a few drinks were consumed, we reached the conclusion that given the rain and weather, we weren’t going to head back and forth from the hotel, we would just stay downtown.  We had also postponed the Blue Lagoon / Northern Lights tour due to the weather, as they told us that we wouldn’t be able to see the Lights due to the clouds. 

The music festival started popping up at various venues throughout the early stages of the evening, including the local hostel that we popped into.  Good times!  As we’re walking down the street a sign from heaven appeared; a local tavern that served Guinness.  The name of this palace is “Olsmidjan”.  Again, good luck.  For the first 30 minutes or so, we were the only souls in there.  However, a few locals popped in, including a middle aged local.  About 30 minutes later, somehow, we were learning about the history of Iceland, their expertise in trout fishing, and then broke into political affairs 101.  I’ll leave it at this.  He did manage to call Americans something to the effect of “Gum chewing, Cigarette smoking, Chocolatiers” and I couldn’t have been happier.  Really, it was hysterical. 

Our next stop was dinner at “Islenski Barinn” (???) where we tried a few local trays.  I will never again eat whale.  It was prepared two different ways and I didn’t like either of them.  However, our lamb burger was phenomenal.  I really do not like lamb at all here in the states, but this was actually really good.  After dinner we popped into a few different venues for the music festival.  While we largely had no idea what the artists were saying, the music itself was pretty good.  We found ourselves at the Icelandair Lounge which basically was another bar/club that Icelandair took over for the festival and hung a banner over the name of the bar.  Notice I’m starting to get more and more vague as this night progresses?  Eventually, we head back to the Hilton where we stop by the hotel bar to look through flyers of tours.  Around 2am or so, we found a cheap, condensed tour of the Golden Circle and immediately after breakfast the next day, booked the tour for that afternoon. 

The Golden Circle tour takes you to a few of the core sightseeing areas of Eastern Iceland and the condensed tour does all of this in approximately 5 hours.  Win.  We drove for a little over an hour East and once you get out of Reykjavik there really isn’t any civilization or cities whatsoever.  The tour guide on this bus was not very good, but the scenery held its own and made it easier to overlook his ineptitude.  I actually feel bad for saying this because he was a really nice guy, but I don’t think he is in the right profession. 

The scenery itself in Iceland is amazing.  The US would have built a playground and other unnecessary buildings on this if it had the chance.  It is nice to see that Iceland has let its natural beauty remain, even as the country boomed before the financial crisis.  Our first stop was Gullfoss Falls, where the wind whipped around and the hail/snow hitting your face felt like you were getting pelted with paintballs.  Our second stop was at the geysers, aptly named Geysir.  It’s pretty amazing to see this come out of the earth.  We may have dared each other to put our fingers/hands in the water coming out of one of the springs.  It was hot.  The name of the spring that we put our hands into was “Konungshver”.  Really? 

Our next stop on the bus tour was at a location where the North American and European plates meet and separate.  This is the cause of many small earthquakes in the country.  Our last stop on the tour was a place called “Pingvellir”.  Sure.  This was a historic place but we’ll ignore that part and call out the views of the volcanoes and the lake – which was the largest body of water within Iceland.  Icelanders are waiting for one of the volcanoes to erupt in the near future as it has erupted on a relatively regular schedule over time.  Imagine knowing something like this was coming where you live?  No thanks.

Upon returning to Reykjavik, we made dinner reservations at the Fish Market restaurant.  Unfortunately, it was a Saturday night and our reservation wasn’t until 10:30pm.  Here’s another local dish that I probably won’t ever order again; monkfish.  It was OK.  Luckily, the other food (salmon, lobster bisque soup) that Dorothy ordered was good.  Given our late start, we exited the restaurant and began hopping around to different bars with very little alcohol in our systems.  Meanwhile, the rest of downtown Reykjavik seemed to be falling down on their faces.  My patience for this when sober is always incredibly low.  We wound up at a bar/venue that looked like a place that belonged on the side of a ski mountain here in the states.  The band here was good but was wrapping up.  Afterwards, music came on and a freak show ensued.  Essentially, we saw what I believe to be the beginning stages of an Icelandic “pants off dance off” among a handful of guys and quickly bolted for the doors. 

After a few stops and walking in and out of places, we returned to the Icelandair Lounge where we had to, unfortunately wait on line to get in.  By unfortunate, I mean that the people behind us were terribly annoying and had absolutely no comprehension of personal space, continuously bumping into me, stepping on my shoes/pants, all while yapping/yelling into their cell phones.  Enter Grumpy Old Man.  We finally got into the bar and the lack of personal space continued for a few minutes.  As I’m ordering drinks Dorothy comes behind me and says she just got jacked in the face by another girl who was air swinging at a separate girl.  Awesome.  After slugging a drink, we both tapped out of the lounge.  We told Jen and Chris we would go outside, but after 15 minutes or so, we decided it just made more sense to walk around a bit more before heading back to the hotel.

Our final full day in Iceland was the clearest day of the weekend; limited clouds, no rain.  We pushed back the Lagoon / Northern Lights tour until Sunday due to this and then pushed the tour until the evening so we could chase the Lights, as the forecast for seeing them was upgraded to “Moderate”.  During the day, we walked to downtown Reykjavik and hung out at a few watering holes, bought souvenirs and that’s about it. 

Our tour guide picked us up at the hotel in our “super jeep”.  This is an all-terrain vehicle that can basically handle off-roading, sides of mountains, etc.  He drove us to the Blue Lagoon and I have to say that it is absolutely phenomenal.  It is gorgeous to look at and even better to sit in.  As an added bonus, they were smart enough to put in a “swim up bar”.  Brilliant!  I really don’t think I can put into words how much I enjoyed the Blue Lagoon, so I’m not even going to try.  Just go there!

After a few hours at the Lagoon, we were back in the super jeep and hitting the road.  Our driver made a few stops along the way to show some of the nature to us, including the hot springs.  I haven’t the slightest idea what town, city, or area we were in though.  We have pictures of signs that say “Krysuvikurkirkja” and “Seltun”.  Don’t even try to pronounce the first one, just move on.  Back in the jeep and we began our off-roading adventures, going up and down small mountains and hills.  We then put the jeep in park along the side of a mountain as we were at one of the drivers’ suggested areas to see the Northern Lights.  Shortly thereafter, we started to see some of the green and blue highlights in the sky.  Well, I only saw a very small bit of it due to my terrible night vision, but the pictures that were taken do show this pretty clearly.  (Trying to insert a picture here, hopefully this works and if it doesn’t, I blame Blogger) 

After others jumped back in the jeep due to the terribly cold wind, I decided to take a walk up the mountainside of where we were parked.  Let’s just say that if the driver made a bad turn or hit the gas too hard at certain points of this drive, we were bound to slide or fall a good couple hundred of feet down the side of the mountain and this blog entry would have never happened. 

All in all, Iceland met my very high expectations and I would definitely return for another long weekend. I would probably look to stay at the Blue Lagoon for the better part of a full afternoon as part of that trip.  The girls did a great job at surprising us and definitely made some good decisions on the hotel and the jeep tour.  What a great gift!

What do you think?  Are there any other recommendations for while you’re in Iceland?  Did we miss anything?