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Wednesday, April 19, 2017

Last 2 Days in Iceland

Perry spent a lot of night hours awake. Without a baby-safe room to let him do his own thing, it was harder for us to rest. (He actually broke a lamp in the living room, but the owners were gracious and forgiving, they didn't even accept our offers to replace it.) In the morning he tried to find Grandma, who was in her room.
Once his brothers woke up, John took them all out to do their favorite thing: play in the snow.
We are going to try to take them to Tahoe next winter. Much closer and less expensive, same outcome as far as the boys are concerned.
John read that the best hot chocolate in Reykjavik is from C is for Cookie, so we had to try it out. We had lunch there and it was good, but the hot chocolate was absolutely heavenly. We agreed it was the best in the city, but we'd need a side-by-side comparison to determine if it or the Geysir one was the best in Iceland.
The lady working there gave us the name of the chocolate product they used, so we went to the store to track some down to bring home and try for ourselves. Along the way we saw people coming over to this truck and taking away whole cases of toilet paper. I asked someone what it was for and she just said school. 
The houses in the down town area were colorful, clean and cute.
Scott in front of one of the churches.
The night before we went to see the Northern Lights and John and Karen saw them while I was in the car with the boys. This was our last night and last chance, so we went back to Thingvellir early and camped out. 
After almost 2 hours of waiting (the boys watched a whole movie on the ipad in the car), the lights came out.
They were beautiful and amazing and totally worth the whole trip and the long, cold wait. I don't know if surreal is the right word, but it's hard to explain what it was like to see the lights in person. A total dream come true for me, because it's been on my bucket list since I watched Balto probably 20 years ago. Seeing them in pictures or video aren't comparable.
The lights changed and moved for about a half hour. We didn't know before this trip that the solar activity is unpredictable and have to be paired with a clear night and a sky removed from the city. We feel really lucky that we were able to see them!
We went back home and had our last night of Perry-sharing-our-room sleep. Then John bought more food from the bakery for breakfast and snacks for the trip home while I packed us up. On our way out the next morning, we stopped for gas and Karen posted some mail.
We drove to the Bridge America-Europe near the airport.
We were in both continents at once.
It wasn't too cold here, but extremely windy. Jonah and Perry had red, chapped faces for a couple days after. Oops, sorry babies.
There was another mishap at the airport, where they wouldn't take my tax rebate form because the store receipt wasn't itemized and I thought I lost the credit card I gave them, but it had fallen in the stroller seat. I felt like the Iceland airport experiences were so stressful and sandwiched an otherwise really enjoyable trip that showed us a polite people in a lovely country. It didn't help that we weren't excited about the long flight home.
It ended up going really smoothly. Perry crawled around a bit and they had the cool seatbelts that attach to ours for him again. The boys watched a show, colored, ate, and played "calculator" on Karen's tablet. Scott was the only one who didn't sleep on the flight out and on the way home he crashed hard just in the last hour. It did not look comfortable.
We loved Iceland and are anxious to go back in the summer months for what we expect will be a different experience, especially once the boys are a little older. We were exhausted and ready to be home, but enjoyed exploring a new place that filled our travel hunger for a little while. 

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