ICELAND - day one...

what a whirlwind of a weekend we recently had. after years of wanting to go and what felt like ages of planning, we were finally on our way to iceland over the easter long weekend. our flight was at 9pm on thursday and after about 5 hours, we arrived at the airport around 6:30am (2:30am toronto time). we picked up our rental car right from the airport and made our way to reykjavik to grab some breakfast. i'll be honest, for the first 2-3 hours, i felt so nauseous, so overtired, like i was going to throw up, and like we had made a huge mistake planning a full day straight until about 9pm on the day we landed. we barely slept on the flight and my body just doesn't do well when i don't get enough sleep. however, a tylenol, some food, and coffee later, i was feeling much better and was ready to go.

the first thing we did after breakfast was take a walk around reykjavik. it's such a charming little place and so colorful. we made our way towards the famous church that you're sure to see in all of the pictures of the city and waited in line to get to the top to see the best view of the city.

 free alcohol in the lounge calm the nerves (i'm the nervous flier of us).

 we made it!

 so pretty.

 a perfectly clear day to welcome us.

i think the entrance fee was about $6 a person. we got there around 10am and waited in line for 10-15 minutes.

after walking around a bit, we were able to check into our hotel a bit early, get ourselves freshened up, and make our way to our first activity of the day - a quad tour! we chose the twin peaks tour with safari quads and it was awesome! highly recommend checking them out.

 all lined up and ready to go explore the mountains.

 we chose to share a quad since i have no idea how to ride one. i will say, sitting in the back was actually very comfortable.

 at the top of the first peak.

definitely having a blast.

 the second peak was more of a city view, rather than just mountains.

 you can see hallgrímskirkja (the church) in the very centre of the picture.

i will say that at the top of the mountains, the wind is unbelievable. i took my gloves off to take some pictures and they almost immediately froze! i could barely do my zipper back up after putting my phone in my pocket they were so frozen. that said, it really was such a great experience. it was a small group of only about 8 quads plus 2 guides which was nice. so, if you're ever in iceland, i highly recommend doing this tour!

we're going to...

ICELAND! this place has been on my list for years and i'm beyond excited. when we decided to book italy last year, sure i was excited, but it was never on the top of my list. did it end up being the best 9 days of my life, thus far? absolutely. hands down. without question. and i hope to return some say, but after seeing a lot of other places first. but iceland? after dreaming about this place for so long, this trip feels like a dream come true.

we were originally going to make it a stopover on our longer trip later in the year, but dylan suggested that we just make a trip of its own and so that's what we've done! we're just taking a long weekend in march and adding on an extra day (that way it's only one vacation day from work) and we know that it will be a jam packed weekend! we leave on a thursday evening, arrive early in the morning on friday (especially when you consider they are 5 hours ahead of us), and leave around dinnertime on monday. 

we already have so much tentatively planned and know we'll have to plan another trip in the future to make up for everything we will miss ;) renting quads and driving the mountains, glacier hiking, exploring reykjavik, horseback riding, seeing geysers and waterfalls, and (fingers crossed) seeing the northern lights. and hopefully we can make it to the blue lagoon, too. let the countdown begin. if anyone has been and has any suggestions, i would love to hear them!

italy video...

we left for italy 4 months ago today (unbelievable!) and we finally got around to putting our video together! i've literally been the worst nag for the last few months trying to get dylan to do it. i mean, especially now with the broken ankle, he has so much time! but i get it, we had about 4 hours of footage to go through so it was no easy feat. but we took advantage of the long weekend (and being housebound) and put it together. we cut it down to 16 minutes (which is still fairly long), but hopefully it's not boring. we've watched it at least a dozen times already.

unfortunately, because we have music in it and youtube has silly rules, it can only be viewed on a computer, it will not work on a phone/tablet/ipad etc. it's really weird and it sucks, but oh well. we tried vimeo but we had to reduce the quality in order to get the size within the limits and it looked horrible. so, we're stuck with watching it on a computer. 

also note: the quality increases so much if you click on the little crank on the bottom right hand corner of the video ("settings") and choose HD.

*video HERE*

you'll probably be able to tell by the smiles on our faces that renting a boat in amalfi was our favourite part of the trip. really though, the entire trip was just a dream and we can't wait for our next one.

italy diary: CAPRI...

CAPRI

oh beautiful capri. we were picked up from our hotel at 8am, made a few other stops at other hotels, and soon enough we were at the ferry waiting to board  and spend the day on the island. capri is so stunningly beautiful, it's just hard to take in. the water is so blue and so clear. unfortunately for us, the blue grotto was closed that day, but our guide recommended another option.

let's board!

well hello capri.

we started with a short bus ride up a windy road to end up in our first little stop for a walking tour.

dylan opted for this ride up to anacapri (the highest point of the island), but i was too chicken.

going to capri, we were really looking forward to checking out the blue grotto, but as luck would have it, it was closed that day. however, our guide said even if it was open, a better option was an hour long boat tour around the whole island; it was cheaper, you got to see a lot more than just one spot, and it was longer.

we're on a boat!

back on the main port, marina grande, where all the boats come in.

i had thought that capri was just souvenir shops and limoncello shops at first, but once you really get into the island, then come the shops of your big designers, beautiful jewelry stores, plenty of restaurant options, and some stunning hotels.

 4:30 - arriving back in sorrento.

why not spend a little time relaxing by the hotel pool? it was some of the little relaxation time we had.

we cleaned ourselves up a bit and went out for our last night in sorrento.

dylan's before dinner snack. we went to a small deli and dylan asked for a sandwich, the guy made a suggestion as to what to put on it, dylan agreed, and he said it was the best sandwich ever.

a beautiful sky on our last night.