We started bright and early and drove to the National Park. This park is a UNESCO world heritage site, and is the place of the first parliament in Iceland more than 800 years ago. For several hundred years the delegates, their families, and support community would meet for about two weeks in the summer. They camped and fished in the lake. The lake happens to be in the rift valley where the American plate and the European plate are constantly pulling apart from each other. The lake formed when the part in between sank, and is the largest lake in Iceland. The earliest settler in Iceland was said to have arrived in 870. Man it was windy today, serious wind, the kind that is hard to stand up in. Our bus traveled from the American plate ... read more

After getting no sleep on the overnight direct flight from Raleigh, we finally landed in Reykjavík. The five minute border patrol took one hour, they needed to make a new sign. We boarded a bus for the hour-long ride to the hotel where we met four or five other buses from other cruise lines arriving at the same time. What a mess! After a quick breakfast we checked in and took a short rest. However, we don't like wasting even a minute of a vacation, so we headed out to see Reykjavík on foot. We walked the harbor and then headed to the shopping district which had some quaint, Icelandic architecture. In the midst of all of the nice shops was a "Phallus Museum". Needless to say, you don't have to think very hard to realize ... read more

On the 5thday of our trip, Dennis took us to Bremerhaven. Our first stop was the Emigration and Immigration Museum. It turns out Bremerhaven is where many Europeans emigrated out of Europe and many arrived in the US via Ellis Island. There are records there from the 1600s through the late 1900s. When we bought our tickets, you were assigned a person to follow. My person was a lady named Margret and she was born in the 1820s. She didn’t emigrate to the US until she was in her late 20s. There were stations all through the museum where you could find out more information about her. We each had a different person. The museum had exhibits that depicted the different time periods and all the people would have had to endure on their trip. I ... read more

We made it to Germany on Monday after several flights, but we were glad to be here. We didn’t sleep much. On the long flight, right as we both were falling asleep, the flight attendant made an announcement. “This is important, you must listen” or something like that but in the tone of something major has happened to the plane. She then started again and again said whatever it was in the tone followed by, “you need to fill this paperwork in before arriving in France”. What, ok, but did you have to say it in that tone? Can you say adrenaline rush? Well, that is what we heard and then we couldn’t relax enough to fall asleep. Dennis picked us up at the airport and drove us back to his house. We arrived and got ... read more

Well they switched out flight to a new plane and guess what, it too had problems but those problems only took 30 minutes to fix. we finally took off 2.5 hours late. I was exhausted by then and fell asleep immediately. Tom waited for dinner before retiring. We arrived in Barcelona at 12:30 and took the metro towards the hotel. We transferred to the red line and then got off at our station. It was then about a 10 minute walk (well it would have been but we took a wrong turn). Oh well, we made it to the hotel and checked in. Our room wasn't ready yet so we left our bags and went in search for lunch. we had a nice tappas lunch and then came back to the hotel to change. oh the ... read more