Returned!

That's right, we did it.

M-A-R-R-I-E-D!!

I'm going to try not to gush too much, but this was, without question, one of the happiest days I have ever had. And I feel very, very (very) lucky.  To be married to the man I'm married to.  I am more in love with him now than I have ever been.  And that is saying something.

Everything went so beautifully...the whole week leading up to the wedding, Paul and I were both blown away by the efforts of our families and friends, we just felt love and support coming at us from all sides and it made for an incredible ceremony and reception.  I didn't want the day to end...I thought I was going to want to leave the party early, I thought I would be too exhausted to stay up until the wee hours, but it was all just too good to say goodnight to.  Eventually I just sort of collapsed onto Paul's lap and closed my eyes, and this apparently was the sign that the festivities should come to an end.  It was 4AM.

We crazily volunteered to host a brunch the next morning after the wedding, and so me and the husband (giggle), barely got any sleep before we were up again, clearing out empty bottles and figuring out how exactly we were supposed to make eggs for 70 people by 10 AM....  It happened, god knows how it happened, but it did.  Thanks again to our intrepid friends, who were busily running to the grocery store and making pancakes in back-rooms in order to make it all come together.  And after brunch there were goodbyes to be said and cleaning to be done and tables and chairs to prep for the rental company...before we knew it was 5pm, and Paul and I were loading ourselves into our jam-packed rental car and heading off to a nearby hotel to try and get some real sleep.  In the car we went over and over the details of the day before...how wonderful it all was, how beautiful, how eloquent and smart and lovely all our friends are...and by the time we got to the hotel I was too tired to even attempt a "we just got married" upgrade.  Any room would do.  As long as it had room service and a bed, which it did.

The next two days were full of unpacking from the wedding, returning all the various rental equipment, and then re-packing and preparing for the honeymoon.  There were several honeymoon details which had been flagrantly overlooked in service of wedding planning, and now we only had 48 hours to get prepared.  We barely had time to catch our breath after the wedding before we were on to figuring out what the best currency exchange rate was in Iceland.  It's a crazy transition, that wedding to honeymoon thing.

We flew all night long and arrived in Reykjavik early in the morning on a Thursday.  We arrived. Our bags, however, did not.  Our bags...containing all of our warm clothing for Iceland and all of our best clothing for the second leg of the trip in Paris.  The baggage clerk for Iceland Air told us she was sure our things would arrive late that night, but I had to fight to keep from crying all the same.

"Did you tell her it's our HONEYMOON?" I asked Paul.  As if her having that piece of information would get our bags to us any quicker.  As if they were just hiding our bags in the back room at the airport, waiting to see if we had a really goooooood reason that we needed them before they brought them out to us.

We spent the first day in Reykjavik purchasing scarves and looking up things to do and drinking so-so Icelandic beer at a local haunt:  Dillons, A Rock and Roll Bar, said the sign out front.  It wasn't very Rock and Roll at 4pm on a Thursday, but it was nice enough.

It was so gray and cold and we were so tired and everything felt so alien...especially without our bags and maybe doubly especially because the wedding now seemed like some beautiful far-away dream...how did we GET here?  On the bus ride in from the airport, looking out at the gray harbor and the still un-opened shops of Reykjavik I thought, oh...this is why people go to the beach for their honeymoon.  The idea of doing anything other than, well, nothing...seemed just too exhausting.

But the next morning, just as the baggage woman said they would be, our bags were delivered to our hotel, and it felt like the honeymoon might actually be able to begin.  Ah, to shower!  To change my socks!

We spent the next day and a half in Reykjavik, exploring what there was to explore...we went to the Blue Lagoon and treated ourselves to the "VIP Lounge", we wandered through the harbor, we ate...a lot.  The food in Iceland is amazing.  No one tells you this, but it is...it's so good.  Everything we ate, literally, no matter whether we'd gotten it at a restaurant or a bar or a coffee shop or some little sandwich stand...everything was perfectly prepared and just...delicious.  So, we partook of a lot of Icelandic cuisine.  We tried to find some theater to see, but didn't try very hard.  We walked a lot, took a lot of pictures, we even ended up at the art museum downtown just in time for the opening of a new exhibit and stood and drank the free wine while we listened to people give speeches in Icelandic.

But we realized quickly that we wanted to be deeper in to the natural beauty of the country, and so we took a tiny plane across the island to Husavik, a little fishing town way up north.  Almost as far north in Iceland as you can go.   Which is almost as far north anywhere as you can go.  Iceland is amazing because it's huge, but very sparsely populated.  There are only 330,000 residents, and nearly 85% of those residents live in Reykjavik.  This means you can drive and drive and drive in Iceland and not see another person for hours. Not even a car.  Sometimes not even a house.  But lots of sheep.  There are very fat and adorable sheep everywhere.  I think that Paul wanted to take one home...he was very taken by the sheep.

In Husavik we whale-watched, we ate, we fished in the little ponds near the cabins where we stayed, we soaked in a geo-thermal hot tub and drank more Icelandic beer, we read, we ate, we drove out to waterfalls and lava rock fields and strange martian landscapes, we drove through fog so thick you really couldn't tell whether the car was still on the ground or just floating in mid-air...it was good.  It was really, really good.

And just as we started to settle in, just as we started to get that, oh yes, okay, we're getting a handle on this place...it was time to get on a plane and fly to Paris!  (Tough life, I know).

Oh, Paris.

Oh, sweet, gorgeous, well-groomed Paris...

TO BE CONTINUED...