Family Vacation - Overview

I was going to start this blog off talking about the reason for me not blogging lately was because I was on vacation, and then I thought about how often I have blogged in the past few months and realized that I seem to be on par with my "normal" amount of blogging.

Anyway, I just got back into the USA last Saturday, the 30th of August, from my family vacation.
 This post will be more of a summary of the vacation and once I get pictures from my brother and my mother I'll try to do more detailed posts with awesome photos!


I have to be honest, my family does some pretty crazy vacations that have been pretty instrumental in me conquering all but two of the fifty United States. We have been to Montana (via Canada), Oregon, Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, Nevada, Hawaii, Alaska, and several places in between. This year the family headed off to Iceland and Switzerland for vacation.


Yeah, this seems a bit odd, right? Iceland seems a little bit out of the way, especially when our originally intended destination was Switzerland. Somehow, though, Icelandair has a good business going by offering cheaper rates flying to Europe when you stop over in Iceland for longer than 24 hours. For me, it was about $500 cheaper than flying from Richmond directly to Zurich, even though I had to drive to DC to catch my flight. Plus, we wanted to see Iceland, so that was an added bonus!


All the places that we went in Iceland

Remember back in 2010 when the volcano, Eyjafjallajökull, erupted in Iceland and the European airspace was closed for a week or two because of ash in the air? Yeah, well, we had to keep close watch because earthquakes began at a DIFFERENT Iceland volcano, Bardarbunga, on August 16th, 4 days before our arrival in Iceland. On the day we flew from Iceland to Switzerland the threat level had changed from Orange to Red. However we did successfully and safely make it to Switzerland. Over the week the threat level changed back to Orange and the volcano ended up erupting at some point, but we were still able to fly back through Iceland and get home safely to our respective destinations. Since then, ANOTHER volcano has erupted in Iceland, so I'm glad our trip wasn't scheduled for later in the summer!

When we got to Switzerland we took a train to Lauterbrunnen, where we spent most of our time in the Jungfrau region (see map below)

All the places circled are places that we went in the Jungfrau region

Switzerland had no volcanic concerns and our weather was crazy because down in the valley it was nice in the 60's and 70's but as we went up to the top of the Schilthorn or the Jungfraujoch, it was COLD! Talk about preparing for all kinds of weather! What a crazy trip! 




Things in Iceland and Switzerland are so vastly different from landscape to modes of transportation. Iceland is volcanos and has a lot of volcanic rock and lava everywhere. They have geothermal heated pools and rivers, and use that geothermal energy for heating houses. Switzerland has the beautiful Alps and is so very green. Every picture I took, I felt like I was in one of those Christmas villages. Check out our modes of transportation in each. The day we flew from Iceland to Switzerland I felt like I was in that movie "Planes, Trains and Automobiles".

Flying the friendly skies :)

Our transportation mode in Iceland: 

Toyota RAV4

Our transportation modes in Switzerland:

High Speed Train

Gondola

Cable Car

Cog Train

Finicula

So, including travel time, it was an eleven day, two books read, several movies watched (on the plane), lots of hiking, lots of different modes of transportation, beautiful sites, volcanic eruptions, 10,000+ miles of travel vacation. Stay tuned for more pictures and stories, but for now I'm signing off!