It’s been a while since we posted but we haven’t just been sitting around sorting dirty clothes. We spent our last couple of days in Germany staying close to Neustadt and then another trying day of travel between Germany and Iceland and that included two cars, three trains, a plane, and a shuttle bus. One of our last days in Germany was spent taking the train to a nearby town, Lambrecht, then walking back to Neustadt.

A very selective picture of Lambrecht

When we arrived in Lambrecht we quickly realized that there was really nothing of interest there, so we had a reasonably good lunch in one of the few restaurants and trekked on foot back to Neustadt. Tami managed to get one appealing picture of Lambrecht by carefully framing the picture to capture the two picturesque buildings and avoid all the ugly ones. Sorry, Lambrecht, but I don’t think we’ll be back.
When we got back we decided we felt like eating in, so Mike made a dinner of pasta with cream and soft cheese, wild mushrooms, and chestnuts. Delicious.

Mike’s delicious dinner

Our last day in Neustadt was spent in some serious power shopping. We are going to come very close to our duty free limit!

One thing we like about flying Icelandair is that all flights are routed through Reykjavik and you can stay there for up to a week for no extra airfare. It’s a great policy to encourage tourism in Iceland and we have benn very happy to take advantage of it twice now.
At last we are back in Iceland and we are falling in love with the country and Reykjavik all over again. We have seen lots of beautiful woolens, had some great local brews, and devoured some wonderful local food. We have eaten a lot of very fresh seafood and Tami once again got to enjoy her favorite food from our last visit, minke whale. We found our favorite place from the last visit, the Icelandic Bar, even though it had moved from its old location, and went there twice. They have a wonderful selection of Icelandic foods, as well as a number of local beers.

Our silly little car

Today we rented a car and managed to get outside the city for a change and we have seen some truly spectacular scenery. We traveled the fabled Golden Circle which is the most popular route for a day trip in Iceland (more in the next post). We decided it made much more sense to rent a car than to take one of the bus tours. Not only could we rent the car for about the price of one bus tour ticket, but it would give us much more freedom to spend as much or as little time at each stop as we wanted, but it would also allow us to pick alternate routes and make other stops.

Here is the car Tami would have preferred driving (seen frequently in Germany)

We picked up our little miniature car first thing in the morning. We drive a MINI and our little Hyundai seemed like something that would fit in the back of the MINI. It was also entirely gutless and although it is supposedly a 2014, it squealed, creaked, rattled, and whistled as if it was twenty years older. The gas pedal had minimal effect and it would be interesting to actually time how long it took to get from 70 kph to 90 kph, which we were frequently trying to do. Oh well. It didn’t cost much and we can tell that Iceland is hard on cars. Even the guy at the check-out counter made a point of explaining that chips are expected as a part of driving in Iceland.
So away we rattled on our way to many desolate, dramatic, and wonderful sights.

Back in Iceland