Hey there swrve family,

Before we confront the reality of being back to the grindstone, we wanted to take a moment and share some of the highlights from our trip to Iceland.

In a word, the experience was incredible.

In a few more more words, we can’t recommend adding Iceland to your bucket list of travel destinations strongly enough. We’ve dreamed of visiting for years and we can’t wait to go back for a return visit.

The scenery is so stunning and magnificent that you don’t realize how little words and pictures do it justice. Then you find yourself standing on a black sand beach in Sólheimasandur, in the shadow of a DC-3 that was left to decompose after it crash landed in 1973. Thankfully everyone survived.

Our favorite spot was the Fjallsárlón glacial lagoon, the smaller neighbor of Jokulsarlon lagoon, which is about a six hour drive from Reykjavik. The lagoon was still frozen enough to walk on, so we were able to get up close to the icebergs. While Iceland hosts tons of tourists, Fjallsárlón is a bit off the beaten path so we practically had the place all to ourselves. There is something utterly exhilarating about walking around on a few inches of frozen water amongst massive chunks of brilliantly blue icebergs. At times you can hear the creaking and snapping of ice as the currents stretch and bend the frozen surface.  A gentle, yet firm reminder that mother earth really is the boss. 

Another highlight of our adventure was eating our way around Iceland. Food is eye-wateringly expensive so being the cheapskates we are, we found the wide selection of local soups to be very tasty and a great value. Our favorite restaurant was hjá höllu in the tiny town of Grindavik. We liked it so much we ate there twice and everything we had was utterly delicious. Rich flavorful vegetarian and chicken soups, salad, an amazing frothy ginger orange tea served in a copper cup, chocolate pecan cake. All amazing!

On the bike side of things, we had a great visit with Alexander at Reiðhjólaverzlunin Berlin and Matt had a super ride with the crew at Lauf Forks. The conditions were a bit too thawed to hit all the trails the Lauf team was hoping to show off, but everyone still managed have fun on the bikes and a lot of laughs over post-ride beers. It’s nice to know that beer is a universal tradition among cyclists.
OK, we should probably all get back to work. Hopefully this was as nice of a distraction for you as it was for us!

All the best,

Muriel and Matt