We're going on a trip! Back in 2006, for our 10th anniversary, we went to Japan and New Zealand (via what ended up being two separate trips). In Christmas 2014, for our 20th anniversary, I (Chris) gave Sharon an inflatable globe and a magic marker and told her to pick where she wanted to go. After months of obsessing about it, she decided on southeast Asia -- Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Laos, that whole peninsula.
Then 2015 went by. I was too busy with work to go on a big trip, but knew that the project I was working on would eventually get to the point where I could travel again. By the end of 2015 the end was in sight so we started talking about the trip again. Again we both agreed that our heart was just not in it, at least not a full-blown, epic trip to southeast Asia. So we reevaluated, and somehow stumbled across the idea of Iceland. It started out as a "quick trip" to Iceland (it's not as far as the rest of Europe) but then snowballed.
So, here's the plan:
Iceland
Arrive in Reykjavik (via JFK) and spend two days exploring the city and acclimating.
Rent a campervan (from snail.is) and hit the road. We will be driving the Ring Road that encircles the island, taking 7 days / 7 nights to see everything that we can. We will be so far north that, at this time of year, it never actually gets completely dark -- the sun sets for a while around midnight, but it only gets dusky, never completely dark. So with all that daylight we should get lots of sightseeing done, in theory at least.
Then we spend a full day getting from Iceland to the other part of the trip, via a short stop in Helsinki.
St. Petersburg
I have wanted to visit the Hermitage for many years, ever since seeing Russian Ark in the theaters. We'll be in SPB for 3 full days, and the Hermitage will be the centerpiece of that visit, but we'll also see lots of other things, of course.
Back to Atlanta via a connection in Paris.
EDIT: the trip went great! Unlike previous trips, we never wrote about it here, rather posted pictures to Facebook. Ah, the scourge of Facebook. If you want to see pictures and read the stories, go the Facebook profile of either me or Sharon, go to photos, and look for the two photo albums we put together there.
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