So it begins: arriving in Iceland

Life is just a series of new beginnings isn’t it? Mike and I have been managing projects at work for years but we have just embarked on our most ambitious project to date: round the world 2.0 with our daughters and four suitcases in tow. After leaving everything behind in Vancouver at the end of July, we have spent nearly two months and traveled over 9,000 km to reach the Atlantic Coast, visiting friends and family along the way. It was a great road trip and we really enjoyed our time with friends and family. But that was only the beginning of our year off, the longer and more ambitious part lays ahead.

We’ve left Halifax airport last night for a red-eye flight to Iceland on a one-way ticket with little planned after two weeks. Will we be able to sleep on the flight? Will we all be too tired and miserable once we get to Reykjavik at 5 am local time? Will the Airbnb really be accessible in the morning as promised? Those were some of the questions we had when we left. Fast forward 24 hours, we are now sitting in a nice apartment, the girls are asleep and everything worked out just fine! The girls did sleep on the plane, and in the car… and we all slept 5 hours once we got here! Children can be so surprising and resilient. I must say though that I am now sold on taking Melatonine for night flying and for getting over jet-lag!

On our way from the airport, as we went from darkness to crepuscular light, the features of the landscape started to materialize. Lava rock was visible everywhere and the ocean breakers started poking out on the horizon. We’ve only seen a little bit of the capital today but it did not disappoint. First observations: there are a lot of white roofs here. I wonder why. Walking around the city, we experienced chilly winds, rain, sun, rainbows and dark clouds all within the blink of an eye it seemed. The big famous church: Hallgrimskirkja: very cool in person. The view from the top was worth the $20 fee ($10 per adult, free for the girls). Reykjavik is quite a bit bigger than I had thought and there are very few taller buildings. Even the stop lights are short (as in not very high). Perhaps because it is so windy here? There are lots of visually interesting and colourful buildings. The girls had a lot of fun jumping from rock to rock along the waterfront and Mike logged his mandatory Iceland Geocache. Yup, TRAVELLINGCANUCK found at least one per province during our Canadian crossing and now we gotta find at least one per country on our travels.

Fun fact: the hot water coming out of the taps smells like rotten eggs! Perhaps that was to be expected given where it comes from around here (i.e., straight from the ground, geothermally heated) but that still surprised me. I thought that was just the water for the heated swimming pools and for heating buildings. Mike just came back from showering and guess what he smells like? You gotta wonder why bother showering…  Interestingly, the cold water from the tap is from a different source and does not smell. It is one of the purest in the world (according to my extensive google research). It comes straight from natural springs with no treatment required!

Tonight, we finally got this page set-up for everyone who wants to follow us and learn more about the countries we visit and our lives abroad. We’ve never really had a website nor blogged so this should be interesting. Please bear with us! We hope to write and post photos here fairly regularly and encourage the girls to contribute some content. Let us know if you have any questions, recommendations and suggestions! We’d love to hear from you and take you along virtually or meet up with you somewhere along the way!